october

i love this time of year.  lots of things to celebrate and do!

this october 11 was the 70th birthday of one of my favorite men in the whole wide world...my dad!  the family got together in edmond at texas roadhouse steakhouse to celebrate.  

since i got stuck...i mean, since i had the pleasure of sitting closest to all the kids, i got some great pictures!  (i think i was the only mom who thought stuffing rolls in your face was funny!)

dad got to ride a saddle while the staff sang to him.  the first time he sat down on it backwards which cracked the singers up.

grammy wanted a picture of pappy with his grandkids.  i love this one!  look at spencer and pappy!

two peas in a pod!

the birthday boy.

i love this man.

fall break finally arrived, and the varmints and i kicked things off with lunch and a road trip!  of all the restaurants to choose from we ended up at long john silvers!

you know, long john silvers always SOUNDS like a great idea, but just a couple of hours after eating there i am reminded why i DON'T eat there!  but the hats are so cool!!!!

our pirate faces...aargh!!!!!!!

for our road trip we played right, left, or straight.  that means whenever we came to a stop sign or a place to turn someone would say right, left or straight and that's the way we went!  we just traveled the back roads of bartlesville, but it was fun!

i love cows.  this one was on the side of the road right by the car.  no fence!

i wouldn't want to meet this guy in a dark alley.

the boys wanted to see if the bull would charge them if they had red.  the only thing red in the car was my umbrella.  they stood in the road twirling the umbrella and taunting him, but he didn't move an inch.

the boys had never walked on a railroad track, so we did that.

the weekend of fall break, the jones crew came over for a visit.  we went to the local pumpkin patch for our annual pumpkin gathering.

this was the first pumpkin i picked out.  the pumpkin patch was kind of small, and most of the pumpkins were obviously just placed in the field.  this one was still attached to the vine.  i set it up, dusted it off and stood there admiring it.  the next thing i know some little kid came out of nowhere and grabbed my pumpkin!!!  he yelled to his mom, "i want this one!  i found mine!" and walked off with it.  sigh.  oh well.

colby took this picture of me with this pumpkin.  pumpkins make me smile!

the three of us girls were surrounded by boys all weekend.  we were WAY out-numbered!

the week after fall break was red ribbon week at school.  on wednesday we released balloons with a message asking people who found a balloon to log on to a website (www.ifoundaballoon.org) and tell how drugs have impacted their lives or the lives of someone they know.

i've never done a balloon release in all my years of teaching, so it was really something amazing to see.

within 24 hours our first balloon had been found in pennsylvania!!!!  how cool is that?

a couple of days before halloween we finally carved jack-o-lanterns.  colby sketches his out first, and then i carve it.

his was easy to clean out this year because when i cut off the top, i found pumpkin soup inside!  thank goodness it didn't stink or i might have puked!

spencer carved and cleaned his own pumpkin this year.  it turned out really good!

saturday, october 30, we went searching for a costume for spencer.  our first stop was the mall because daryl thought there was a halloween store there.  wrong!  but we did spot something interesting in the parking lot.....weiners!

seriously!  we got out of the car and there were 2 weinies on the ground, no buns or anything!  colby had to take a picture because he thought it was HILARIOUS!

the next stop was wal-mart.  we had fun trying on all the masks and wigs!

colby ended up being darth vader, and spencer used daryl's inflatable sumo suit and went as a wrestler.  daryl and i went with another couple and dressed up as the flintstones! 

daryl and i were fred and wilma.

kashia and michael were betty and barney!

before all the trunk or treaters got there, we witnessed an epic battle between darth vader and abbie kadabbie!

the boys got so much candy that they filled 4 big bowls!

this weekend daryl went to a conference in dallas, so the boys and i partied!  not really, but we had an interesting adventure friday night.  

first we had dinner and watched a movie.  when it got dark, we got ice cream at braums and played "ultimate freeze out."

it was 40 degrees.  we rolled down the windows and cranked up the a/c as cold as it would go.  then we drove around town until the last person's window was still rolled down.  it was SO STINKIN' COLD!  i lasted 8 minutes before i quit.  colby lasted 12 minutes, and spencer was the champion!