Halloween in all its Splendor

I absolutely LOVE LOVE Halloween and we had a fabulous time, celebrating it all month long. It started by getting the decorations up end of September and enjoying this holiday for a while. The previous post tells about our first Halloween Party with my old co-workers and friends. I guess they still like me, or put up with me, because they allowed me to come back to the Halloween party. The rest gets jumbled up because there were so many events, so i'll just tell about them.This was the Fall Festival at a local park. I need to write the city a letter of appreciation for a job well done. The had lots of carnival games that were age appropriate and halloween themed. My kids had a blast. They gave out hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls and my kids ended up with gift certificates for a free kids meal at Del Taco. They were elated. We spaced wearing our costumes, but met up with Carson and his mom. Hi Mario! Love the gloves.

Back somewhere towards the beginning of the month, I got together with some girlfriends and they taught me how to make homemade caramel apples. Boy, they were good. This was the first time I had ever made them. The homemade caramel was to die for and the if that wasn't good enough, we dipped them in white chocolate and decorated. The mint grasshopper cookies took the cake.

One of our holiday traditions (as long as we are in the area) is Thriller of course. We had a hard time finding a babysitter so we ended up taking Olivia with us and she had a ball. She waved her hands and bounced around on our laps during the whole thing. Maybe that is a sign we should put her in dance, but she really liked it. She liked it from our seats, from a distance, and nothing up close. That freaked her out. Howie enjoyed it again, but for some reason, didn't have the nerve like he did last year and wouldn't really take any photos with the characters afterwards, I only got a shot with him and a Zombie before the show started. Maybe he was just too tired and grouchy.

We just LOVE LOVE LOVE Thriller. If you are in the area or have the opportunity, Oddssey Dance Theater does a fabulous job. I guess there are about six locations across Utah that do it each Halloween.

This is our tradition and version of pumpkin carving. I think it is because I don't like carving, too messy. Not to mention the frugal side of me hates to let a pumpkin rot because I can use it in baking throughout the seaason. There is one draw back, I do miss roasting the pumpkin seeds. Howie made a face on the front and Livy on the back, dual purpose pumpkin.

Attended Howie's school Halloween parade around the track. It was fun and there were a lot of great costumes. Howie is the Thing from Fantastic Four, but they aren't allowed to wear masks. He was a trooper to clunk around in those feet.

Trunk or treat at the church. There was a poster board in the foyer that talked all about it. I swear it said our ward, turns out it wasn't. Oh well, we joined in for the fun anyways. I guess there will be confusion when multiple wards use one building. The kids had fun regardless. We brought candy to hand out from our trunk. We did contribute. I feel justified in helping them eat their soup in breadbowls (yummy!) because we contributed, not just party crashed the place.

Livy is a munchkin, Howie the Thing, Tommy a mad scientist, myself a ghost skeleton.

Attended the Halloween Mansion, a must every year by Green Valley and Howie enjoyed the train rides. They are so cool, they give out FULL sized candy bars.

A Goulish Family Photo

Livy picked up the trick or treating thing pretty fast, what kid doesn't? Some people even dressed up. It was great.

Me and my kiddos on Halloween, comes close to perfection in my opinion.

Livy giddy about her booty. Hope you enjoyed a SAFE and hApPy HaLlOwEeN!

Muuuhhhhhhhaaaaaa

(that's my spooky laugh)

Save a Sister 5k Run 2010

Each year we have made it a tradition to participate in the Save a Sister breast cancer walk/run. The past three years I have walked it and pushed my kids in a stroller completing only the one mile portion. This year I attempted to run the 5k. Martha and Hillary did it with me.

Pre-race jitters. (I am looking oh so lovely since martha and I had just raced over there from working/sweating at our Bountiful Baskets site just minutes before.)

And the gun goes off and the race starts! Lots of happy faces at the start of a race, less smiles at the end. :)

They didn't have a finish line sign, only the start. Myself, Martha and Hillary: red faced beauties. No time worthy records but for a good cause.

Searched back through my files and found the previous years Save a Sister Races.

2007

2007 Me (pushing Howie), Martha, Michelle and Maria

2009 Me pushing Olivia one month old, Kristi pushing Skarlett 2 months old and Martha pushing her grandson Braxton, newly born also. Yes, you can imagine, we did the one mile walk.

2009 Amy. Kristi, Trina, Martha, Myself, and Suzanne, all friends from work who participated.

For the life of me I can't find 2008. I don't know if I didn't participate for some reason or what. Hopefully I can find the pictures and insert them later. Maybe, that is if I actually did the race!

Pumpkin Story

Howie had an assignment from school to decorate the pumpkin and write a story (mom writes it, he makes it up) about it. We did this last month but an apple was the topic. (It was very short last month. He drew the apple running and his story said "Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Apple Man.) We cut out scrapbook paper to decorate his pumpkin. His story was pretty cute so I wanted to share:

"Once there was a Halloween Jack-O-Lantern that was very spooky. If you tried to eat it, pick it or touch it, it would bite you. One Day a boy picked it while it was asleep. He took it home to his garage. At night, the pumpkin came to life and broke down the garage door. He wanted to bite the boy who picked him. They boy was sleeping and then he bit him. The boy turned orange and grew a green stem from his head. The End. Mmmuuuuuhhhhhaaaaa"

Really, that last spooky halloween cackle/sound is really written on his paper. We don't know if that is how to spell it so you know what we mean, but hope you get the point.

Halloween Party

Oh, What a Night! Late October back in 2010. Cheeeezzzzzy, I know. We had an amazing time at our Halloween party.

It started out with these lovelies I had fun making, inviting my goul-friends to not forget the date for our big bash.

Julie's home was decorated perfectly for a halloween bash. I loved her framed art. Forgot to get a pic of the other one, of the count.

Okay, starting out with the food! Oh my, have you ever seen such a beautiful cake??!! I thought it was a decoration for the longest time. Sara did an uber-cool job on this witches hat. It kind of reminds me of the sorting hat from Harry Potter.

love the stitching in the back

The kids and I, along with Tommy, had a fun time making these shrunken heads. Here's the details.

My famous jello worms. You can't have a party with witches brew. Fun spread of some of the food. Shirley's famous sugar cookies and a new addition of witches fingers.

Witches hats, pretzel treats and bloody fingers, but I really had fun making pumpkin bread bowls. Thanks so much Falon for the yummiest !bestest! recipe EVER!

Howie enjoying some of the treats.

Josie and Mark bringing 70's back, Steven and his cute fairy girls. Shirley as Dorothy 50 years later (that's what her button says). She was great along with her basket with a blanket that said, 'RIP Toto'.

Melissa and Chole, Boston loving the witches brew, Toto's tomb, cute table decorations.

Phantom (Tommy), Steven with crazy eyes, Jess and Sub, and Kenzie

New guy Andy and family, Dino Boston, Steven and his posse of fairy daughters (got them in here twice), Shirley and her daughter devil and monkey grandson.

Me and Sub, The Thing and the Munchkin, Tara Taysome punk something, cute fairys and Chole and Sam along with cat women Kenzie.

Brook and Rick, one rocking hot pirate Julie, Melissa sporting her baby bump as a basketball, and Erin and AJ.

My old work team, fabulous as always.

Tommy and I sported the Phantom and Christine duo.

Our little family, Phantom duo, The Thing and our little munchkin.

I had a lot of fun with my hair and have to give a huge shout out to Julie for helping me create this look! Thank you Thank you Thank you. I LOVED it. I felt like I was dressing up for Prom again.

Our party was complete with pinata!

Just wanted to show you how cool the back yard of Julie's home is for this annual event. Halloween lights strung all over the yard. It was so fun, the weather was perfect, we didn't want to leave.

We had a spooky body parts laboratory but didn't get any pics. I would lead each of the kids that wanted to do it to a dark corner of the yard where they got to feel body parts. Witches eyes (peeled grapes), petrified rats tails (chow mien noodles), dried up witches skin (torn tortillas), oger ears (peeled and slightly dried apple wedges), small witches' heart (peeled tomato), smeared cat intestines (cooked cold spaghetti) and ogre tongue (banana peel). Most of them were grossed out.

We had smores later when the sun had set.

This was the result of a campfire ghost story gone very badly for this little girl.

Check out this cool photo of Chole doing a summersault. Way cool.

Caught Julie, the lights and the full moon together, cool effect.

And there you have it. A frightfully spooky Halloween bash that was a monster of a good time.

Registered Nurse

This deserves a post of its own. Tommy just passed his nursing boards and is an RN! This has been a long hard road for him and we are really happy for him. He has been struggling with this test (not the information but the actual test itself and all of the anxiety that comes with it) for quite a while and is very relieved to have it finally behind him! We might be adopting a new motto for our family: 5th time is the charm! We are a firm believer in try, try, try again. Way to go Tommy!!