Trick-or-Treat

Our little cowgirls got ready for their night of grabbing lots of candy. (Abby was supposed to be wearing her cowgirl boots, but when it was time to leave, we discovered she had outgrown them since we bought them last spring. Nothing like waiting til the last minute). I don't know who in the government got the bright idea to move daylight savings time back a week, but it really messed up trick-or-treating. Since it's a school night, we got to start long before it got dark outside. We saw a lot of other families out doing the same thing. All in all, it worked out well because its much easier to see everyone.

If you look closely at this door, you will see a guy dressed up as a Christmas tree. I've seen him do this before... he has the attached extension cord to go with it. He really knows how to get into the Holiday spirit!

And finally, you can see the collection of cavities... I mean candy... that the girls brought in. The neighbors all seem so generous. No longer is it just one piece of candy, apparently. One neighbor was giving out giant sized chocolate bars (word traveled fast because there was a constant stream of kids at his door). Another neighbor invited our girls inside to make caramel apples dipped in 6 different toppings. Both girls had a lot of fun (as you would expect), but they got so many complements on their good manners that they used. They did a wonderful job of being polite and telling everyone 'thank you' and 'Happy Halloween'.



P.S. I dug up the following picture from last Halloween.... Emma still plays dress-up with that pumpkin outfit from time to time.

Again... and again...

So much for our last trip to the Pumpkin Patch... Abigail's Brownie meeting this week was held out at the Pumpkin Patch. They did lots of Brownie related things before heading out on a Hayride together. Jen didn't get to spend much time seeing what they were doing because she was running around everywhere with Emma. You would think Emma would be bored of the place by now. But she loves going on all of the bounce houses / slides.

Finally, Jen and Emma went back again on Halloween with Emma's friend Lauren after their gymnastics class. I guess we can finally say this is the last trip because it's all closed up now... and moves on to being a tree farm next month for Christmas Trees.

Emma's Fall Festival Party

Today was Emma's Fall Festival Party at Mother's Day Out. Here you see cowgirl Emma having fun with her best pal princess Jordyn. The kids attempted to make a few crafts, had pizza, and then got loaded up on candy corn and cookies.

Brownies

This year, Abigail is starting Brownies. I'm not sure what her ambition was to do it... I think it was because of the cookies (yes, she gets to sell cookies in the spring). We had a couple of choices of groups to put her in, and we ended selecting the one at our church. All the girls there did Daisies together, but Abigail knew a number of them from church, so she fit right into the group.

Below is a picture of one of the projects they did together that was really neat. They each sewed a heart pillow to give to ladies that are recovering from surgery from breast cancer. It's just an example of being part of a group that already spent a year together and were able to put together a project such as this.



Last weekend, Abigail got to go on her first outdoor adventure. They had a big campfire, made s'mores (which Abigail has been dying to do), and sang songs. Their first trip out reminded me of one of the first camp-outs I went on with my dad in Boy Scouts (more below)... A couple of days later they found bites all over their bodies, most likely chiggers. Now, if they had let us men attend, we could've shown our outdoor experience.

I reference my early camping expedition... we got to the site, and the older boy scouts and dads there told us that a particular spot would be nice and soft to sleep on. It was some kinda tall brush that had been trampled down a bit. Sure it was soft, but we got lots of chigger bites from the overnight trip. ouch.

One last time (we hope)

What will probably be our last trip out to the Pumpkin Patch occurred on Sunday. Jen and the girls went out after church to meet up with her side of the extended family while I stayed behind to attend a meeting at church. This is an annual get together with the cousins creating havoc all around the place. Below, you see the gang heading into the BIG hay maze. Kids can get lost in this thing for hours... but they seemed to navigate it well. Fortunately, Emma and Brandon are old enough now to join the older cousins in the fun.



As expected, there were dozens of pictures taken by all to try and get at least one with all 4 of them looking in the same direction. I've included the 2 best ones that I could find. Who can blame the kids, who have all the fun things that you can do out there such as hay rides, bounce houses, mazes and of course lots of yummy food like cotton candy, popcorn and snow cones. Add in the hundreds of people walking around and bright sun on a beautiful morning, and the last thing they want to do is all sit and look the same direction for a few seconds.



After the fun, I met up with the gang at a wonderful local restaurant called Life's a Beach. It has a huge wood patio deck out back that extends from the main building out to a huge sandpit. While the adults are sitting at their table enjoying the beautiful 80+ degree sunshine of the noon hour (it ended up being 91 before the current winter blast of wind chills in the 30s on Monday night showed up), all the kids were running around building sand castles and lost in their own vacation paradise. The concept really is a well planned out one... and it has good food to boot. Add in the constant soundtrack of Jimmy Buffet playing, the view of the tops of trees, a couple of fountains in the middle of man made water areas, and a couple of softball fields off in the distance, and you would have no idea you are in the middle of the metroplex.

And if that isn't enough for ya... the Bar (inside and out) is decked out with the NFL Sunday Ticket in HD. I counted at least 7 different HD games going on the different TVs, none of which looked smaller than a 42" Flat Screen. A vacation spot all in itself.

Rain rain go away

Just like my last trip, it just wouldn't be good trip without a little flying adventure. Because of the wonderful storms in Dallas this morning, 2 flights got cancelled and all the other flights are delayed at least 90 minutes. I was supposed to return on a 7:40p flight tonight, but it currently is scheduled to leave at 9:30p... which means 10:30p probably.

Anyway, I had flexibility on my side. My dad is picking me up at the airport... so I was able to re-route myself on a flight to Love because those flights are running on time. Its the big dis-advantage of the hub system that American runs. When a delay hits the area, they up and delay every flight that day in order to allow for connections to still be made.

I can thank Southwest for the extra flights by American. My kids (and my sanity) luv ya southwest!

The Chiefs

We might be all smiles in the picture, but the Bengals were a disappointment. The offense, outside of 2 drives, was still on their bye week. Having a somewhat makeshift offensive line didn't help, but they were just not in-sync at all.

KC did their best to keep the game close, but in the end it was just way too much of Tony Gonzalas, who had 2 TDs.

The fans were great though. No problems like we would've expected if we had on Cowboys jerseys in Chicago. And the sun only hit us for about 30 minutes of the game.. giving us wonderful weather for the game.

27-20 Chiefs

The Bungles

Well, its halftime. The weather has turned out beautiful, if not a little hot. Luckily, we have spent the first half in the shade. We are in the first row of the club level looking right down the Bengals sideline.

The Bungles are doing their best to make the Chiefs look like an all-star team. Its 20-7 and the game shouldn't be even that close. Above is the next to last play of the half where the Bengals did get a very minor win by stopping him at the 2.

Here's hoping that the the Bengals can find the magic of the first drive in the second half and turn this game around.

As expected, the fans are totally decked out in Red just like the Bears game. Why Cowboys' fans can't come to games in all blue is beyond me.

Go Bungles

Who Dey!

Well, it didn't take long for the Bengals to get on top. After holding the Chiefs to a FG (thanks to 2 personal fouls flags on the defense), they took all of 4 plays to score a go ahead TD.

Go Bengals!

Arrowhead

We have made it to Arrowhead stadium for the Bengals vs the Chiefs. We are hoping that the hometown fans are a bit more friendly than the ones we sat around in Chicago a few weeks ago.

Go Bengals!

Pumpkin Patch (Parts 2 and 3)

We made it out to the pumpkin patch twice this week. First, on Wednesday afternoon Emma went with her friend Lauren. They pretty much had the place to themselves and it looked like they had a great time.




Then, on Saturday morning, Daddy took the girls. There definitely was a lot more people there and it was really starting to get crowded when we left around 10:30a.

The Great State Fair of Texas

Another October family tradition is trekking out to the Fairgrounds for the Great State Fair. The girls are always very excited to go. The reasons include seeing the ferris wheel (but no one ever wants to ride it), merry-go-round, and playing games on the midway. Finally, every event that we go to has to include the purchase of cotton candy. I sure wish they could make that stuff not be so sticky.

Our first stop was the rides. Here, Abigail did an awesome job of getting Emma to join her on the ride, and then made sure not to spin the tea cup too fast, and finally when Emma started to get scared, she didn't spin it at all and tried to make Emma feel ok. We were so proud of her being such a caring big sister.


After trying out another ride that Emma didn't want to get on, we headed down the rows of games looking for a fishing game. We ended up playing a simple duckie game and then 2 booths down from it we found a fishing game (just our luck). The fishing game did produce the princess crown you will see below... better than any stuffed animal that she could've won.

This year we thought the girls might take their imagination and dress-up talents on stage at the backyard circus, but it turned out that they both were quite shy and decided just to watch. This led to lunch, of which Abigail and I both enjoyed yummy Fletcher's corny dogs.

Below is the annual picture of the girls with Big Tex. A nice change this year is the removal of additional vendor booths around him... and replaced with a bunch of model trains going around.


We made our way over to the Food and Fiber building it pickup some samples of tea (Abigail thought it looked like apple juice and quickly gave it to us saying she didn't like it), a free ice cream cone for everyone and a visit with the Elsie the Borden Cow and a new baby calf. This led us to the annual car show and another exciting part for the girls... getting to play around in lots of different cars (mostly mini-vans). I don't think we will be getting a new car anytime soon, but the AC was a nice break from the heat.

By now its mid-afternoon and we stop by the children's barnyard. Of course, all the animals are stuffed from being overfed all morning long and really didn't want to eat the feed that we bought at the door. We did find one baby goat to stop by and eat our hard earned money.



Then a visit to the children's farm where the girls learn what its like to be a farmer... and a quick stop at a play sand area with a Texas sized sand display of the fair and Dallas skyline... we made our final stop for some tasty funnel cake. It was loved by all.


All in all it was a good day. The weather could've been a little cooler, but from what we heard it was even hotter on Monday (along with 22 area school districts all off and some new boy band doing a free concert that caused it to be packed beyond belief). Just like our trip to Sea World, who ever came up with the crazy idea of putting down black top for lots of people to walk around on in mid-90 degree heat is beyond me.

Pumpkin Patch Part 1 (of many)

Today was the first of what will be many trips to the pumpkin patch. With it being all of 3 minutes from our house, our family goes out there quite often every October. Sometimes, it's just Jen and the girls (as it was today), or the 4 of us, or we go with some of our friends or family that want to visit it.

Today's first visit was a reward for the girls going to get their flu shots (bribery always works)! The rain moved in; however, and made it a pretty short trip. They still had fun!

A Leader

Today, Abigail got recognized at school as a 'Leader'. As we understand it, they select one student from each class at the end of every 6 weeks, so this is the first group selected for this year. As you can imagine, we are beaming with pride that Abigail got selected from her class of 22 1st graders.

Below is the text from the letter in her right hand from her Principal:

October 2, 2007

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Butler,
Sending you this kind of letter is such a fun one to write! I am always eager to share the qualities of stellar students on the morning announcements because they become the role models for all others. We are pleased to honor Abby as one of this year's leaders. The classroom teacher has written the enclosed information to explain the reason why your child was chosen for this special recognition. Being able to share examples of stellar behavior, attitude, and responsibility along with other characteristics enables us to teach good values in real life situations. We are so proud of your Leader! You are to be commended as parents for the fine job you have done to bring your child to this point in life. Thank you!


Below is the text of the award certificate in her left hand:

This Leader Honor is presented to Abby Butler in appreciation for outstanding character and performance.

It is an honor to recognize Abby Butler as an outstanding leader. Abby has demonstrated her ability to lead others through her respectful and responsible behaviors. She is a loyal friend and a tremendous help to her classmates. One can always count on Abby to do what's right. She strives to be the best student by doing her work with care. She is a role model for others. What a joy and blessing to have Abby in my class!