Pumpkin Carving 2009

So...none of you may remember but last year I was accused of being a Halloween Nazi. This accusation came on account that I didn't try to secure some pumpkins until Halloween day and unfortunately, they were all sold out. This resulted in a year without the carving of pumpkins...which apparently is a tradition at our house. A few weeks ago I bought three large pumpkins so that when Ariel came home for the weekend, the kids could carve their pumpkins together since they wouldn't be together on Halloween. They did a fine job. If I had to give out pumpkin carving awards, based on their efforts that night, they would be as follows: Megan would receive the "best cleaning out the guts" award. Aaron would receive the "most likely to stab himself or one of his sisters" award. Ariel would receive the "most likely to get bored and quit" award. (As can be seen in the photo when I had to "help" her with part of her carving.) I guess we ought to throw an award in there for Todd too, he wins the creepiest knife picture. It is now five days before Halloween...the pumpkins have long since molded and slimed. They will be taken away in tomorrow's trash and dumped in a landfill somewhere...but the memories of those jack-o-lantern faces will live in our hearts forever.

Brace Faces..

Megan got braces on a week or so ago. She looks so cute. I figured this would be the only time I would be wearing braces at the same time as my child, so I told her we had to take a photo.

The Brass Challenge - October 10, 2009

The "Zoey" rock..weird huh? See the head, ear and muzzle?

A natural arch

Aaron and Zoey slept all the way home

On Saturday, Todd, Aaron and I woke up at 4:45 a.m. to get ready to go to the Brass Challenge. That is a cycling/running race put on by Metro police. Todd has done it a few other years but has always done the cycling part of the race. This year he accepted an invitation to be on a running team. His leg of the race was 5.1 miles and uphill. He was on the Leads Exhausted team and there were ten of them in all. The race was out at the Valley of Fire about 45 minutes north of Las Vegas. It is a beautiful place, I really love the unique scenery out there. It was quite cold as the race began. Todd had the third leg of the race. He did an excellent job. I was very impressed. It was a tough course. I followed along side of him in the car a lot of the way and took some video and photos. I am sure I threw off his groove a few times with my "cheer leading." He finished in 44 minutes. A most impressive time for the the uphill climb he did. We stopped for a few minutes and climbed on some beautiful red rocks. As we were walking along trying to find some climbing rocks, I found a giant "Zoey" rock. I could not believe how much the rock looked like the profile of a miniature schnauzer...I know I am pathetic. I was unable to enjoy climbing on the rocks because in a moment of brilliance, I chose to wear flip flops to the Valley of Fire. We walked up about 1,649 stairs to see some petroglyphs that were 4,000 years old. That was really cool. When the race was over, we met at a park in Overton and had a picnic. We were starving and the food was really good. We had a great time, though we wished Ariel and Megan could have been with us. Oh and by the way...Todd's team came in first place out of the "mixed teams" a team made up of boys and girls.

GVHS Homecoming

This past week was homecoming week. It felt weird to have Ariel gone for such a big Stuco event, but Meg is in her second year of student council and does a great job keeping the tradition alive... Meg dressed up as Indiana Jones, a Jedi Knight, a pirate, a green toga girl covered in "blood" and of course her homecoming GVHS t-shirt for spirit day. She passed out beads at the parade. We had fun watching the parade, we go every year. The highlight was seeing our friends little girl, Haven, with her face painted for class of 2022! She was a hit with everyone. It was so cute. My favorite dress up day for Meg was pirate day, she was an awesome looking pirate...when she came down stairs all I could say was, "WOW! Piracy is your thing!"

Camp out at the Boulders

Aaron and Todd went on another scout camp out to a place called the Boulders. Todd said some of the boulders were as big as cars and houses. The boys had a lot of fun climbing around the boulders. One of the scout leaders brought some chairs to chop up and use as firewood. Todd suggested they just put the chair right on the fire without chopping it up, it worked really well and the boys thought it was awesome. The night they were gone camping, I had a strange dream. In my dream, we were at a big house with a lot of other scouts and their families. The boys were going to be passing off a lot of requirements. The leaders told us that one of the requirements Aaron needed to pass off was to shoot another scout with a gun, a real gun. They assured us that he would only be shooting him in the leg and that there would be medics and people there to help the injured scout. The boy who needed to be "shot" to fulfill his requirement happened to be one of Aaron's friends, named Evan. So they paired the two up for this "shooting" event. In my dream, I was the only person who had a problem with this insane requirement. Everyone else was "good" with it. I remember how panicked I felt trying to convince someone, anyone..that this was crazy and a terrible idea. After spending considerable time trying to talk some sense into people, and failing, I finally took Aaron out into the garage where it was quiet so we could have a little chat. I explained to him that this was a terrible, terrible thing and how bad it was. I told him if he got nervous and missed Evan's leg and hit him in the chest or head, he could kill him. I asked him if he wanted to live with that grief the rest of his life. I told him that even if he only shot him in the leg, it was still going to be very painful for Evan to be shot in the leg and that he would have to watch Evan suffering, and would be responsible for that suffering. Finally, I convinced Aaron that he could not fulfill this requirement, and then I woke up from my dream. I was very disturbed about having such a violent dream. Around 9:30 a.m., Todd and Aaron came back from the camp out. Aaron came up to me in the kitchen and said very quietly, "Mom, I have to show you something, but don't tell dad about this, he will get mad." He then proceeded to pull up his shirt and showed me a small bloody area on his chest and said, "Evan shot me with his air soft gun. He didn't know there was any pellets in there." I was more than a little surprised at my psychic abilities, I had just discovered. I did not even know the boys had taken air soft guns camping. It was very weird. No...sorry, I am not accepting any calls for "psychic advice."