Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Halloween!!

I AM EXHAUSTED!!! I can tell I'm getting old because I just can't play like I used to! :-)

We had a very busy day today. Around 11am Scott and I walked to the school to meet with Gage's class for Gage's Student of the Week week.


Here Scott is telling Gage's class about his job at Ducks Unlimited. The kids were interested and very engaged. There was one boy who had his hand raised nearly the entire time. Gage is in the orange shirt to the left of the other kid in the orange shirt. Today was orange and black day at school.


The kids were listening very well to Scott while he was reading "The Birthday Cake". He's not quite as good as Mrs. Schmidt, in the library, because she has definitely set the standards HIGH!


Gage wanted to point out a few of the details in the illustrations that the others may not have noticed. In case you're wondering, the little microphone Scott is wearing around his ear is for one of the girls who is hearing impaired in Gage's class. Apparently they have this mircophone synced with her hearing aid somehow, and just speaking in a normal voice through this microphone allows her to hear what is going on.


Gage was the mail man at school today. Scott brought a Ducks Unlimited Greenwing magazine "The Puddler" (a magazine publication for kids) for every kid in the class to take home, so Gage put one in each of their mailboxes.
We ate lunch with Gage as well. I hope he doesn't ever ask me to do that again! BOY OH BOY was it LOUD in the lunchroom. I definitely enjoy my quiet, peaceful lunches at home. That also told me that I definitely don't want to start subbing in the lunchroom in addition to the library! I like the library, where everyone is supposed to be QUIET!
At 3:05 Scott and I picked the kids up from school, plus 2 extras, and got them dressed and ready for Trick-or-Treat for Others to Eat for our Cub Scout den and Girl Scout troop. There were only 4 of them all together, but they did an AWESOME job in collecting nonperishable food items for the needy!



Commander Rex (aka Gage), Ahsoka (aka Emma), Dorothy (aka IsaBelle) and Darth Vader (aka T.J.) The boys just wore their neckerchiefs since their uniform shirts wouldn't fit over their costumes. The tunics for the girls worked great to wear over their costumes.



Emma and IsaBelle. What a couple of cuties!



T.J. and Gage the Star Wars/Clone Wars duo!



We took turns ringing the doorbells and it seemed to work out great. We had a few people who didn't understand what we were doing and gave the kids candy, despite being told by Gage that they were trick-or-treating for canned goods for the needy. One lady was very rude and said she doesn't do Halloween because she's handicapped and can't get around, and after I told her we were trick-or-treating for the needy she replied, "Oh, well I can do that!" She went and got a few items and apologized for being so snippy and said we were doing a nice thing.



We went up and down our street and the street next to ours. We were out for a little over an hour. The kids were getting tired and were ready to go home at just the time we were going to start heading that direction anyway.


Everyone is excited about going home. Before we went home, our last stop was at Gage's Cubmaster's house and we hit the motherload there. They gave us a whole sack full of stuff and he gave them each some candy because what we were doing was hard work! It really was hard work!


We'll be donating all of our food items to a local shelter in need. We need to figure out which one is needing it the most and then see if we can get all 4 kids together to deliver the items. I think that will help them to see what a good thing they did this afternoon!
After we ate supper, we headed out for another round of trick-or-treating, only this time for goodies for the kids to eat! :-)

Emma dressed as a Jedi in training, named Ahsoka, from the new Star Wars movie called Clone Wars.


Commander Rex and his blaster with Ahsoka. I think Emma was to have a light saber for her weapon? Both Gage and Emma forgot about that!



If anyone stumbles upon Star Wars scrapbooking supplies, please let me know. I'm in need of some for last Halloween and now this one!


Our first stop, The Hocking residence. Juanita and Kim were waiting for us and the kids were very excited. They are quite spoiled! Not many kids get beanie babies when they go out trick-or-treating! We are very fortunate to have such wonderful friends. Thanks guys! The kids are snuggled up with them as I type!


We stopped at our previous neighbors', Lee and Val's house as well. We had excellent timing because their little granddaughter, Brittin, showed up at the very same time. Emma couldn't wait to get inside to hold her! She was an adorable little lion! We just loved her little piggy tail sticking out the back of her hood.


Emma and our neighbor Dave. The kids really enjoy spending time with Dave and Maggie. Emma especially likes all of the teasing Dave does. She gives it right back to him too!


We decided this year to go down to this house that is always decked out for every holiday. Halloween is the biggest holiday for them. We soon discovered why there weren't many trick-or-treaters out in our area of town, because they were all down at this place! This was our first year to stop here and I'm sure it will be an annual tradition now. There were cars lined up all over the place. Some of our friends from church live near this house and when we stopped at their house they said that we were the 215th trick-or-treaters to stop at their house. They keep a notebook with them on the front step and give a tally mark for each person who stops. In fact, many of the people who live in this area just sit out on their front porch or steps because there are so many people trick-or-treating in the area that there's no use going back inside! This skeleton was one many decorations at the Halloween House. There were many adults dressed up in scary costumes helping out with the traffic and crowd control! I should have stepped back to take a picture of the entire scene! It was amazing!



Emma couldn't wait to get home to check out her loot. I'm sure some of you are laughing at the quantity of treats she has. We have about 6 different houses that we have to drive to all over the north end of town, so we don't actually get to many houses. Then we typically go up and down our street and we didn't hit all of the houses again after our earlier outing. The kids love it and we usually stop to visit at each place for a bit. I actually like that we don't end up with TONS of candy, because guess who would be eating most of it? That's right, ME!


Gage and his loot. He wanted to show me a couple of his favorite things he got. A koala beanie baby from Kim and Juanita and a little can of SpooooooKIWI, a pure cane soda drink that he got from one of our neighbors. These guys are definitely spoiled because they get special treats at several of the houses we visit.
I was totally going to skip out on blogging tonight because I couldn't even keep my eyes open to watch the news; however, I always feel guilty if I don't blog because I know my Mom and Dad each read my blog as part of their daily routines. Thanks for keeping me accountable guys! I love you!

1 comment:

Kara said...

Wow! You'll have to give us the address of that house for next year! Sounds impressive! YIKES! That skeleton guy looks pretty scary!