Hot Dogs and Halloween

I need to catch up on a couple of events. Halloween happened already and I haven't put up that post yet, so I am doing two posts in one day!! I was just talking to my friends while we were at the park and I was telling them how inconsistent I am. I really did want to do this blog as a little journal for our family and cute sayings, but I just can't make it up those 14 stairs in our house to the computer often enough. I keep forgetting to record days like I had a little while ago where everytime I turned around, some crazy random mess was there. I was out detailing the car and was in the back picking up old chicken nuggets, socks, barbie dolls, tools, etc... and was just about done when I saw Sammy run by with red markings all over her. I recognized those markings immediatley as Sharpie markings which are strictly forbidden in our house (but of course I have them because I need to write the kids' names on their water bottles). I guess I am not good at hiding them. Sammy had taken that marker and had written all over the driver's seat along with the console and steering wheel. After cleaning up that mess as best as I could, I walked inside and the house was turned upside down. The freezer door was wide open, Ollie was running around the house with mud up to his ankles and a box of cereal was tipped upside down from the top shelf with a pile of crunched up Cheerios underneath it and, of course, our girls were all half naked running around in their underwear. Later on that day I found a box of popsicles under the computer desk that had obviously been there for a while because the carpet was juicy and red. That is why it takes me about 8 hours to clean the car. My intentions to not waste money on something I can do myself usually go by the wayside because the consequence of not having my undivided attention on the kids requires too much energy, clean up and time. I'd rather pay the $16 dollars... until I forget and do the whole thing over again.

Halloween was great! Our Bishop asked each family to make a "Family Mission Plan". Our ward missionary was telling me that she may not be a good proselyter, but that she throws a Halloween party for her street to help strengthen relationships. I decided that was a great idea. Powell and I handed out 110 fliers to the houses in our neighborhood the Saturday before Halloween and bought 700 hot dogs, 700 buns, 10 giant cans of chili, 15 lbs of cheese and 10 lbs of onions. I must have an intense fear of running out of food, because we now have a year supply of hot dogs. We used almost 300, but will now have chili dogs for every other party we throw. John is the same way because we have about 10 bags of candy left over as well. (He bought all the candy). Thank goodness for John becasue he is always the one who buys the pumpkins, carves them and helps the family do fun holiday stuff. Sometimes I get too bogged down with the big stuff that I forget about the smaller, family stuff.

Jeff, Heidi and Wrigley came over and looked sooo cute. I wish I would have planned better so that I could have dressed up and gotten John to as well. Powell was a ninja, Hannah was a princess ninja, the twins ("Hammy" and "Hopi" - that is what they call each other, it is hilarious) were BYU cheerleaders and Gracie was a witch (Grandma Karen bought that for Savannah and Haeley, but it was a little small so she gave it to us).