Annie's Halloween

 On October 30 I fell asleep whispering Halloween is tomorrow!  Candy, candy, candy....

Then happiness broke on the morn' of October 31!

I made ghost and pumpkin waffles for the kids (who are no longer decked out in costumes, but rather wear understated t-shirts...however, Charlotte did wear a partial costume with her slacks, shirt, and corset), and sent them off to school to have whatever fun would befall them.

Charlotte had a test.  So...not so much fun.

I had a great time at work.  The children were all dressed in their "character day" costumes, and as I rode my bike to work I saw their little parade.  I lamented a little bit about my last parade last year.  My babies are grown.

When I got home, Davey was already here!  We spent the afternoon hanging our new floating candles!  Thanks Patty and Jim!  They looked awesome when we hung them, but it was nothing compared to them in the middle of the night!!  Then Davey and I hung hooks to hang my lights out on the lanai, thanks Mom!

When the children arrived home we began our festivities by carving pumpkins!!  

Even Mr Bones joined in the fun!  Ha!

I wrangled Chewie into his shirt.  He was not happy about it, but he was a champ and wore it the rest of the night.  Don't let his pathetic eyebrows sway you, it's a canine manipulation.  He's spoiled.

Inbetwixt this time, Mom came over to join the festivities, console Chewie in his shirt, and help hand out candy.  I was also baking a chicken pot pie with ghosties on top.  I didn't take a picture of it!  Can you believe it!  I made the whole thing from scratch too!  Except the chicken.  When Oliver told me that was unacceptable, I told him next time I would raise a chicken, slaughter it, and then cook it for our pot pie.  Then he told me he hates chicken pot pie.  This is my life.

Here's my inspo pic

And it looked almost just like the photo!  I was very proud.  It was tasty too!  Just don't ask Oliver if it tasted good.

After we inhaled that potpie and took our pumpkins out to light them, the kids threw on their costumes and headed out to do some serious candy damage to their treat pails.

Oliver was a ghost, and he added a hat and sunglasses.  Halfway through the trick or treating journey, those sunglasses were ditched in favor of eyesight.

Gabriel was the grim reaper.

Gabriel  with his pumpkin.  It was a ghost flying sideways.  Oliver with his pumpkin.  He is wearing glasses and has buck teeth.  So cute.

Charlotte and her friend Collie.  They were both plague doctors.

All three together.  I told them they had a very black and white theme this year.  I can barely see them.  But if I closed the garage door, then I wouldn't be able to see Oliver.  Ah well.  Gabe is supposed to be sneaky to creep up and steal your soul anyway.

Charlotte's fabulous costume, and her pumpkin.  It's very hard to see.  I'll try to take a better picture later.  Apparently, her pumpkin has a 'rizz' face.  Oliver thought it was great.  Teens have their own language.

We bid them farewell, and the three old folks sat down to enjoy the parade of children walking through the neighborhood.  So many cute costumes, so many cute kids, and so many kids that recognized me from work!  It was fun.  Chewie got lots of pets, and we went across the street to see our neighbor who goes all out.  They were dressed as Lord of the rings, and it was incredible.

Soon the kids trickled back home in pairs lugging their booty.  Eventually we packed up the remaining treats and headed inside where spider donuts and hot cocoa awaited.

We watched Garfield, Charlie Brown, and Bad Guys Halloween.

Then Charlotte and I bid goodnight to the boys and we stayed up to watch Over the Garden Wall (Charlotte's own personal Halloween tradition).  We got about four episodes in before the busy festive day caught up with us and we fell victim to our heavy lids.

I bid her goodnight, and went outside just real quick.

The streets were silent, with bits of Halloween lights still on, and broken off streamers from lost costume pieces in the streets.  I remembered our pumpkins and blew them out.  Then something rustled in the bushes and I hauled tail back inside.  Halloween is still creepy!

I went around the house to turn off all the lights.  First the tealights by the TV, then the pumpkin lights in the kitchen, followed by the floating candles, and lastly spooky town.  When I shut off the last of the trees I whispered "Goodnight Halloween".

While I brushed my teeth I listened to It Came Upon a Midnight Clear by the Carpenters, and then Jingle Bell Rock (because I have to, it's tradition!).  Oddly I was a little worked up, so I spent the last few minutes of Halloween reading a spooky book in bed before nodding off.

Truly the best holiday.  Ever.

June 2024 Phone Snaps

6.8 My Naturally aged man smokin' meats

 

6.8 So, this is hilarious.  Landon, a kid from our ward who also goes to school with Gabe always comes into the lunch line trying to get chips even though there's a note on his account that he can't.  When Gabe was invited to his birthday party over the summer, I put together a big bag of chips from the Lunch Ladies for his birthday.  He loved it!  So excited!

6.19 Out for a walk with Chewie.  This is a view from a retention pond down the road.

6.19 Gabe making creepy faces with this blanket.  You can't really see it in the photo, but he'd pull the blanket tight, and all his facial features would be visible.  Creepy!

6.19 Oliver has started seeing Megan, Dave's hair stylist.  She's from CA, and she's the coolest.

6.24 Gabriel's garden with the new solar light Patty gave me.  It looks really neat at night when the sun goes down!

Goodbye, June!

Summer is going by too fast!

Father's Day

 We began our Father's day traditionally.

With a lot of smoke in the house.

I tell you no lies.  The amount of times I have filled the house with smoke making eggs James probably totals more than the fingers on one hand.  And that's just reprehensible.

So, the day before, Dave and I headed to the world's best (Jacksonville's best) Italian bakery and got some donuts.  We don't get donuts a whole lot these days, so it really is a treat when we go.  Dave doesn't ask for much on his big day, pretty much just Eggs James.  And while it's unusual for it to be burned or gross, I do usually always raise my blood pressure from almost setting off the smoke alarm.

It's the steak, it needs to be pan seared before finishing in the oven, and it's not the steak that smokes, it's the stupid pan.  Stupid, stupid pan.

Nevertheless, breakfast was good, Oliver came to pilfer ("taste test") the steak, and we all sang our traditional "for he's a jolly good fellow" as we brought him breakfast.

Long gone are the days we would bring him funny gifts from the kids saying they thought he was 800 years old with blue hair.  They're too old for that now, and life is different.

Something else was different...this year Gabriel had his last year singing the Father's day song with the Primary.  We really only have two more....Primary Program and Christmas.  Then we're all done with little kids. :(

And now I've gone and depressed us all.

Back to Father's Day.  At church, the big boys all had a good day with a pie social.  The women brought pies, both savory and sweet, for the men to enjoy while they got some good social time in.  I brought in a french silk pie, and a broccoli and ham quiche.  There were so many pies, and they were so yummy!  Yes I got a few good bites along with the rest of the gleaners when church was over.

After church we took a Father's day photo.

And a few pictures for the church website.  We haven't updated them since we moved in!

Don't worry, we didn't post half of those 😂

We had a good rest of our day relaxing, watching movies, and eating grilled burgers for dinner!  I was surprised Davey didn't want to smoke something (ribs?!), but hey, the man of the hour gets what he wants.

We sure do love our Davey!  Happy Father's Day!

Anastasia Mini Golf (again!)

We went mini-golfing...again!

Starting last year, I began a summertime tradition where the kids (and Dave too) get to choose one place to eat and a place to visit.  Currently, the children are still working out what they want to do.  

Oliver wanted Chick-fil-a breakfast (checkmark in that box), and Gabe decided to mini-golf.  Since we loved the Anastasia Island mini-golf that we did last year, we went again!  Charlotte and Gabriel made the honor roll (yay Charlotte!  It's been a really rough year!), and therefore get in for free...or half off, one of the two.  And thank goodness because their prices have gone WAY up.

Inflation will kill us all.

Moving on.  We grabbed some dinner on our way, since we wanted to go after the sun went down.  I think the high was near 100.  Luckily the late afternoon storm blew out and we had a very lovely warm breezy evening.

I kept having to tell everyone to open their eyes while taking this photo.  We're a family of squinters.  Look how tall Oliver is getting!

About halfway through the game Gabriel started to unravel.  He's usually dead last in just about every game we play, but today he definitely allowed it to bother him.

Then to add insult to injury, somewhere around this hole, he dropped his ball in the drink.  We spent the rest of the game sharing a ball.

Here's a comparison photo for you.  On the left is last year, on the right is this year.  Again, look how much Oliver has grown!  Gah!

Davey wanted a photo too.  Don't mind the Chick-fil-a sauce down his belly.

This golf course is such a fun place, it's also so nice and clean and well maintained.  However, it was a Friday night, and boy were there a lot of people.  We did spend a good amount of time waiting around.  But...being from SoCal, this was par for the course for me (pun intended!  Ha!).  There's always a million people in CA, and you always have to wait for everything.  It's a good exercise in patience.

Davey wanted to take a pic of us waiting. A "nice" pic.  He said "And this is what I get!".  Well, yeah.  That's us!

The skyline, and trees were so beautiful.  Once we got to the top we could see the ocean!

I wish this photo came out, because Charlotte inspired me to take it.  She's always so conscious of the beauty around her.  I really love it.

 Well, unfortunately, Gabe's score did not recover, although he tied for last with Oliver.  We all got skunked again by Dave.

I told the kids we would practice in secret and one day we'd all beat him!

Last night with Oz: The Great and Powerful

Summertime is such a cool time for the Library!

They have a ton of really fun programs (here I come Happy Hookers!) for the kids, and of course we're there weekly for their reading challenge.  Today Gabriel had a library activity with a couple of the boys from Activity Days.  It was a STEM activity where they built little robots and then got to drive them around.  He had a blast!

He also attended another class that was all about being a spy!  He had to come up with his own name (I think it was Sneaky Lizard), and he told me he couldn't tell me anything that went on in the activity because it was secret spy stuff!  Normally that would worry me, but the lady that runs the activity is the sweetest, and I don't think she has a nefarious bone in her body.

Tonight we also bid farwell to Oz.  He's been such a fun addition to our family this past week and a half.  He's such a sweetie, and even though he keeps pooping on Charlotte's carpet, we've had fun with him and we wish him well.  

In fact, we're hoping he is adopted by a friend of Charlotte's.  That way we can still see him from time to time.

Usually at night I would go kittysit in Charlotte's room while she took her nightly shower, because boy this little guy loves trouble.  Oliver and I wore him out pretty good running him in circles and playing with him.  When Charlotte came back in, she picked him up and his instantly fell asleep.  Not kidding...instantly!

Charlotte once asked me if she thought he'd remember her.  I told her that if cats are like dogs, he will remember her his whole life long.  More importantly, she gave him a safe home where he felt loved and knew that people were here to care for him.  That gives him the best start to life knowing that his forever home will be people he can trust and love, just like he could trust and love us.

He was a lot of work, gave her a lot less sleep, and made her room smell to high heaven, but I know she'll miss him.  Like my friend says, it's nice to have another heartbeat around...even in a house full of heartbeats.

Bye Oz!  Your life will be wonderful and great!

Jumbo Shrimp Game

We do love a good Jumbo Shrimp game!

A few years ago we got together with a few other couples to go to the Jumbo Shrimp game (Jacksonville's  resident AAA baseball team).  It was our first time at this stadium seeing this team, and it's really fun.  It's a very small stadium, and has a nice hometown feel, while still being very decidedly pro-baseball.

This year, our same friend set up another game but this time with families and friends!  There was a huge group of us, and it was really fun!

Early in the game with switched Porter with Charlotte.

Porter was less than enthused with the game, much to our delight.  We spent a few minutes getting photos and video of him totally passed out.

His family came with, but are not huge b-ball fans.  One of them brought a book.  That made me lol really good.

After the game we got a few photos:

Like Olls with Porter

All of us together!

and the couple that made this family possible!...

We also caught the fireworks show afterward, it was awesome!  Great show!

Alas the Shrimp did not win, and alas, it was Hip Hop night, when the following night was Star Wars night (gah!).

But we will live to see the Shrimp another day!