Ron's Surprise

I came home to quite a surprise after work (and working the concession stand for a girl's basketball game).  I headed into the bathroom and...

Surprise!!!  Ron decided that TODAY was a GREAT day to tear all the tiles off of the bathroom wall.  They've been randomly falling off here and there for all the years we've lived her, and the church council just doesn't have the money to do a "fix" so...he decided to enlist Caleb's help to tear all the plastic tiles off.  The plan is that by the time we have guests on Thursday it will be painted!  It won't be a permanent fix, but perhaps one that will get us through a bit of time.

Rachel and Ethan got in on the priming part.  Glad it's a small room!  Maybe sometime we'll paint the top half, but it WON"T be this weekend!

Happy Birthday, Ethan!

I'm TEN today!

OK, I'm almost a week late in posting this, but when you are the youngest of 4...sometimes birthday blog posts may get delayed a bit.  He hasn't had his birthday party yet, either! 

Anyway...my baby turned TEN last Wednesday! How did that happen so quickly?  He said not long ago "Mom, would you please have another baby, 'cause I'm tired of being the youngest and getting picked on all the time!"  Ummmm....NO!

He took popcorn snack mix to school for his treat.  Popcorn, Honeycomb, Honey Nut Cheerios, raisins, chocolate chips and marshmallows tossed in a bowl, and topped with melted white almond bark.  YUM!

After school was midweek, and after that...yay for Grandma Marge!  She asked him what kind of cake he wanted.  "Brown cake and brown frosting!"  so after midweek the entire family headed over to Grandma Marge and Grandpa Richard's for ice cream, cake AND cookies! 

Caleb and Cameron enjoyed a rousing game of dominos with Grandpa Richard!

Then, Rachel and Ethan joined in for the next game.

Then, Grandma, Katie and Rachel got the candles on the cake and the platter of cookies.  NO one makes chocolate chip cookies like Grandma Marge!

Ethan got to light his own candles.  And he did it without burning any fingers!

all TEN of them...lit and ready to go.

 

look at that yummy, beautiful cake!  And that wonderfully handsome TEN year old!

it takes a lot of air to blow out all those candles!

Caleb and Cameron helped with the "un" decorating of the cake. 

Happy Birthday, Ethan!

and Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for making it a special day for him!

We love you!

Rachel Taps

Well, it was new to me, too, but it sounded AWESOME! Rachel's band director selected her to play taps at the MS's Veteran's Day program last week. I had a LOVELY view of her...all ready to record it...and then the Vets stood up, LOL. Oh, well...the sound is still great!

Rachel's Band Solo

I'm not sure how proud I can be of Caleb's accomplishments in my last post, but I AM certainly proud of Rachel tonight! She performed "Scotish Air" for her band solo judging! She did an AWESOME job, don't you think?

Should a Mother be Proud of THIS achievement???

 

 

I don't know...you tell ME?  Sigh...the joys of having teen boys :-)

Rachel...

Isn't she a beautiful gal?  She wasn't pleased with her school pictures this year, and asked me to take them.  But she REALLY wanted leaves in the pictures.  So we had to wait a bit, til some leaves fell in our front yard!  Finally last Sunday, we were ready to go...

I used all kinds of stuff...Lisa's template and the red and gray papers
and yellow/red elements are from her A Simple Fall kit.
frame and leaves and buckle/ribbon are Pineapple Plantations' Autumn
Whisper kit...

I think that's all...I'm SOOO bad at remembering what I used for giving credit...

A Simple Mom...

is having a giveaway on her blog.  She's (with the assistance of Epson and One2One Network giving an AWESOME Epson Artisan 800 printer away.  One way to get an entry into the giveaway is to blog about it.  You can go HERE  to see this really cool looking printer, and read what all it can do.  It is WIRELESS, and it is a printer/scanner/fax and a whole lot more.  Stop by her blog and check it out!

 

A Walk to the Park

Before Kelly and the boys got in the car for a LONG drive home, we went to play at the park for a little while. 

Trick or Treat!

Trick or treating is always more fun when you can do it with friends!  And...if Kelly and Adam hadn't been here, I wouldn't have had an excuse to go at all!  The weather was the best ever for a Halloween night!  It was close to 70 and sunny.  It made for a lovely walk around the neighborhood!

Zorro (Aaron), Batman (Adam) and "Army Guy" (Aidan)  Don't they look GREAT? 

Then we tossed a "Men in Black" (Ethan) into the picture.

One of my favorite pictures of Kelly, EVER! 

Off on a treasure (candy) hunt!

"This is SO awesome!"

Rachel was a dead, rotting princess...and Katelyn?  Well...I don't have a CLUE what SHE was!

Caleb helped Adam at the Library's Halloween party.

Awww....they really ARE friends!  (at least til Aaron squirmed away...)

Pumpkin carving fun...

We had guests for Halloween this year!  Kelly and her boys made the trip up to our house for an all too short, but fun filled visit this week.  They arrived on Wednesday evening, and left on Saturday.  We crammed LOTS of fun into those days!

Kelly and the boys didn't get to see much of Caleb.  He had an FCCLA lock-in on Thursday night.  We had no school on Friday, but since Caleb is enrolled in 3 college classes through the ICN Network, HE had classes on Friday, after being awake all night at the lock-in.  After classes, he was home for a few hours, and then headed to the library for yet ANOTHER Lock in!  He, Cameron and Rachel worked at the library Halloween party and then they spent the night at the lock in.  At 7 the next morning, Caleb and Cameron got on a bus to travel to the state cross country meet, where 2 of our girls won (GO Jodi (4th place) and Ashley (12th place!)).  They got home at about 8 pm last night.  They were plum tuckered out, and pretty much went straight to bed.  Rachel was asleep by 11 am yesterday, and I woke her at 8 this morning for church!  It was a quiet evening around here last night.

Here are a few pictures from our Halloween pumpkin carving!

Rachel encourages us to separate out all the seeds so they can be roasted for a snack...one she and her dad really enjoy!

Caleb was a bit incoherent by this time on Friday.  We didn't let him use a knife!

Rachel asked for her dad's help in getting the mouth carved out just right.

Didn't they do a great job???