Facepainting

On Saturday afternoon, from 3pm-6pm, I volunteered at Charles' school's Fall Festival to do face painting. At first they asked me what I charged, and then I told them that I would do it for free as long as they ordered the supplies for me and provided a couple volunteers to help keep brushes clean, collect tickets, etc. while I painted as many faces as I could. Thankfully they also found me another face painter who also brought a friend who was in town and could also paint faces. Wow, so amazingly we had a team of three skilled face painters! And although our line was never extreemly long, we never had any breaks lasting more than a few seconds. Let's just say that I was completely exhausted at the end. We filled up an entire baby wipe box of tickets, I would say that we easily painted over 100 faces. With each face being $3 - $5 in tickets, and the cost of the supplies only being $80, I would say that we helped the school make some money.

I painted Caitlyn's and Amy's faces.

Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles!!!

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and I got out the bubbles for the kids to play with out on our deck. At first only Charles and Amy were playing with them, but it didn't take long for Ryan to notice the bubbles floating down to the basement level and see them outside the basement windows. Sure enough, I heard the door open to the outside and Ryan came walking up the stairs to the deck and joined the fun. I was so impressed with all three of the kids. They each have greatly improved their bubble blowing skills. Even Amy had no problems blowing her own bubbles. Many many bubbles floated away over to the neighbor's house that is still being built. The construction workers were pounding away inside, and probably enjoyed seeing the streams of bubbles floating by as they worked.

All three kids playing together on our back deck. Yes, Charles is still in his soccer uniform because according to him it is comfy!

Charles showing his skills at making really big bubbles.

Ryan pointing out a large bubble that he just made!

Ryan blowing lots of smaller bubbles. Notice that he's not standing on the deck floor like everybody else. Typical Ryan, has to be different!

Amy blowing bubbles.

Amy carrying her approved for Amy bubble toys. If the containers are tipped, the bubble solution doesn't come out as with the bottles that you see in the background.

Trick or Treat Night

Well, we had a great time this year doing the Trunk-or-Treat kids' outreach at our church on Sunday. Our pastor decorated the back of his truck with an Angry Birds theme and wore a funny red angry birds hat. The game at that station was a bean bag toss. I unfortunately didn't get to see much of the event (had to just go by my friends' facebook albums who took pictures of the event). I spent the whole evening painting as many faces as possible. Seth and I didn't dress up this year. The kids were pretty disapointed, so I guess we may plan to dress up next year. I didn't buy a costume for Amy as she already had plenty of dress up clothes and figured this would be a perfect time for her to get more use out of them. She LOVED being a princess! She was cute, and bossy at the same time, hillarious! Everyone noticed her, she talked the whole time, mostly about candy and said things like "I GOT some MORE candy!!!!" with awe, enthusiasm, shock! And then she also announced to everyone that she said Thank you! And she would be the one marching out in front of the boys saying "Comon guys! Let's get some more candy!" Oh my goodness, there were numerous times when I couldn't help but laughing. Charles and Ryan were less thrilled with their costumes. They wanted to be transformers or power rangers etc. but none of those costumes were left by the time we made it to the store. I thought that the knight costumes were perfect, and they eventually agreed to wearing them. Oh well, it didn't keep them from having fun. And they took on their roles of protecting their little sister very seriously. They were her knights in shining armor, and pointed out cracks in the sidewalk, held her hand when going over tricky parts, shined the flashlight in front of where she was walking. She did very well and only fell one time (and made sure to tell the family all about it too! Ooops, well it was what was on her mind when she went for more candy. She couldn't help but explaining why she had tears on her eyes. I think she got a few more pieces of candy at that house!)

Here the boys were told to pretend they were protecting Amy against a bad guy. Lol!

Since we did the Trunk or Treat on Sunday night, we weren't up for a huge night of trick or treating on Wednesday, so just opted to go down about three streets an one that had a cull de sac at the end. Just enough to put a few layers of candy at the bottom of the kids' pails, but did not fill them up as we have done in the past. I think we were out for maybe an hour. It was just the right amount of time, as all of the kids still had enough energy left to walk back to the house. We didn't go to any of the neighbors' houses this year, because there are only about four or five houses with families living in them and most of them with little kids were taking their kids to other neighborhoods. Next year should be different though. All in all, we had a great night! And Charles and Ryan even agreed that this was the best night of Trick or Treating that we've had so far. And I definitely think that it has a great part to do with the fact that they met several kids their age that they knew from school. The boys both take the bus home to their grandparents' house in the afternoon and so were trick or treating in the same neighborhood as the kids that ride their afternoon bus. One time Charles said out loud "Hi Joseph! So THIS is where you live!" Lol!