Happy Halloween

I love Halloween on Saturday. I also love it when Halloween occurs before the time change.

We relaxed most of day and then leisurely put on the girls' costumes about 5:30. I've grown lazy in my old age and I don't sew costumes anymore. We picked this year's costumes out at Target. I begged Brooke to be Super Girl, but she would have nothing to do with it. We settled on Bat Girl for Brooke and a 60's girl for Erin. Erin loved the way I did her hair and asked if I would do it for church tomorrow.

The girl's buckets were full after only 45 minutes and they were content to head back home. The weather was so nice which is surprising since two days ago school was cancelled and we had a foot of snow in the front yard.

I've been accused recently of favoring certain children on my blog, so I forced Michael and Jacob to join in a group photo. We laughed when Rex suggested that they dress up like each other this year.

Hope Halloween was great for everyone!

Totally Wicked!

On October 10th a group of twenty friends and family went to see Wicked in Denver. It was a fabulous night that started at the Cheesecake Factory and ended in a standing ovation for the cast. We thoroughly enjoyed the performance despite the fact that Elpheba was played by the "stand-by."

Some of our group

About a week later my friend Candice called to see if we had seen the performance and I said we had. She was looking to get tickets for her daughter's birthday. The website makes it very hard to find open dates, so I suggested that she called the Box Office directly. She called me a few minutes later to tell me that the were sold out except for a few seats with obstructed views. She then asked if I had heard about the lottery. I hadn't. She proceeded to explain that 2 1/2 hours before each performance they hold a drawing for 20 tickets. All of these tickets are GREAT seats and only cost $25 compared to nearly $100. WOW! We made plans to head down with our families on Tuesday night to see if we could get tickets for her and her daughter. I couldn't get Wicked off my mind and suggested to my SIL, Suzi, that we try and get tickets on Saturday night. Unfortunately, there were about 60 other people there on Saturday and our names weren't called.

All day Tuesday I thought about how exciting it would be to have our names called and surely between 12 of us we could get 4-6 seats. We thought our chances would be even better with it being a Tuesday night that was cold and rainy. There were still at least 60 people who had the same idea, but weren't we happy when the first name called was Michael Johnson?! We listened as 9 other names were called (each person was allowed to buy two tickets, so only 10 were called). Not one of these names did we recognize. We were disappointed to say the least. We had hoped to get at least 4. We had already seen the show so we insisted that Candice take Michael's tickets. We discussed it back and forth for quite awhile outside the theater. We really wanted her to take the tickets and enjoy the show and she didn't know if she could enjoy the show knowing she had taken Michael's tickets. The man who drew the names then approached us and said that there were a couple of seats in the Mezzanine that had opened up and we should head to the box office. When we got to the box office there were four tickets left in the Mezzanine two together and two single seats. Candice bought the two together and gave me back Michael's tickets. I called Suzi and told her to get ready and come down to see the show. After the call I started to feel the same way Candice had felt. I looked at Michael. He said with a smile he was fine and he wanted us to take the tickets, but something continued to nag at me. So in a last minute decision we made the show sell out. We bought the two single tickets for Suzi and myself and Jacob and Michael took the tickets Michael justly WON. These two tickets just happened to be on the second row. When the boys were seated Jacob called and said they wouldn't feel good about taking the seats unless we agreed to use them during the second act. Suzi and I went to the second row for the second act and it was AMAZING. The costumes were beautiful, the facial expressions (especially from Glinda) were fabulous and we were able to see that many actors spit A LOT.

Overall, what a great night. We went to the Stage Door afterwards and saw many of the actors (no Elpheba) and had our picture taken with the Wizard, AKA Larry (Richard Kline) from Three's Company.

Our picture with the Wizard, Richard Kline, aka Larry, Jack Tripper's friend

Newest Halloween Decor

My sister Liz turned me on to a great "crafty" website:
www.theidearoom.blogspot.com/.

This gal has some really cute ideas, one of which I HAD to copy!! It took a few days to complete as well as a few trips to several different store to get the bottles, but I'm so happy with the way my newest Halloween decorations turned out.

See the orginial idea here:
www.theidearoom.blogspot.com/2009/09/creepy-halloween-apothecary.html

Print out your own labels here: www.flickr.com/photos/lovemanor/sets/72157602788222231/

Welcome October!

Sweet at Six

Is it cliche to say that the past six years have flown by? Probably - but they really have. I remember heading to the my 40 week OB appointment like it was yesterday. They hooked me up to some monitors and did a LONG stress test which Brooke didn't pass. Knowing her personality now, I know she was just playing a joke on us! They induced me around lunchtime and less than ten hours later (I know a long time for my fourth child) she was in our arms.

Today is Brooke's birthday and I hope it was special for her. She climbed into my bed shortly after six and I smiled at her and said, "Happy Birthday." She looked back at me and said, "Happy Birthday." She is such a sweetheart.

Her birthday celebration started last Saturday when we had a "Pajama Party" (think sleepover, minus the sleepover, wear your jammies and come eat breakfast, HUGE hit!) with some of her friends. We served breakfast: french toast sticks, bacon, eggs, hash browns, strawberries, juice and milk. After breakfast we decorated pillowcases that I tye died the night before. They turned out so cute. It was quite a quest trying to find 100% cotton pillow cases, but finally I found them hidden on the end cap at Target. Then we opened presents. At one point Brooke thanked one of her friends by saying, "Thank you, your majesty." I don't know where she comes up with these things! Keeping with tradition, Aunt Liz's present was an AWESOME mini cake for Brooke and cupcakes for the guests. She even decorated each of the kids to look like Brooke's friends. I have to say I was a bit sad as they dismantled each adorable cupcake. Brooke had an intense desire to smash her face in her mini cake, so we let her. It wasn't too messy and she was in heaven!













Today I made cups o' dirt to take to Brooke's class (I had to convince her that we've made cookies on a stick for so many years that we should try something different). The kids loved them and Brooke loved the attention. Her teacher let her decide whether she wanted "cha-cha's" in her birthday song and she chose to let the kids add the "cha-cha's." If you don't know what this is I fill you in next time we're together.

After distributing the extra dirt to some other teachers we were off to a soccer game for Michael and then we met dad at Mimi's for dinner before his meetings. After we ordered, Brooke opened her presents and was thrilled with her new Nintendo DS because Erin bought one a couple of weeks ago with her birthday money she has been saving since January.















Overall, it was a picture perfect day. We love you Brooke! You're the sweetest six year old we know!

I know this is a repeat, but it sure helped to have blogged about the Turkey Trot last year. I just copied what I wrote on my blog onto my page. I created this page during a Scrapmatters Speed Scrap. As you can tell I'm not going in any particular order, but at least I'm getting something done.

Another day, another page

So I realized that I didn't say how many days in a row I'd like to create a page and I'm still thinking about it ... maybe 15, maybe 30, maybe tomorrow I'll decide.

A goal too lofty?

I don't even know if I dare post this, but here goes. I really want to get some digital scrapbooking done, so on my list of things to do each day is create at least one page. So here's the one for today....