Halloween School Celebration

Thursday was our last day of school this week and our Halloween party day for school.  Our day started early with two excited kids!

This year Sadi actually came up with her own costume. She wanted to be a nerd.  I have no idea where the idea came from, but it was super cute.  She was adamant she HAD to have freckles, and glasses.  She really wanted braces too, and when I told her I couldn't find any fake ones she told me to just get her some"real" ones.  She was really committed to being in full costume...at any expense.

Chase REALLY wanted to be Boba Fett, a bounty hunter from Star Wars.  He told me HAD to be something cool (you know 5th grade and all).  Funny thing was not many kids knew who he was (except for the die hard Star Wars fans).  VERY COOL.

I had work all morning at the school with some of my officers.  Since our whole month has been based on the book Charlotte's web, we dressed up as some of the characters from the book.  I went as Fern.

Once the work was done, I was off to help out in third grade in Sadi's class.  Her class just finished the book The Witch's and so they were spending the morning watching the movie.  All the third grade teacher's dressed up as characters from the book/movie.  It was hilarious!  Sadi's teacher was a witch (who stayed in character the WHOLE day), and the other two third grade teacher's dressed up as a mouse in a mouse trap, and formula 86.

When I heard they were doing a whole theme, we decided to make these witch's shoes filled with a Halloween treat for them.

And for the kids we made a sweet treat...

The kids loved watching the movie, and then got a break for lunch and some outside time before the party.  Third graders are just the cutest!

After lunch there was a parade, and then I headed to 5th grade to party with the "big kids".  The upper grades also went with a theme, from the movie Inside Out.  I loved this!  Chase's teacher was the character Joy (yellow dress).

I had planned to make eyeballs for Chase's class but for some reason NOWHERE carried that one item I needed to make them so at the last minute we came up with some ghost cookies.

Chase and his friend dressed up as similar characters again this year. 

It was a battle of good vs. evil all day. 

One of the girls in Chase's class came up with this Minecraft costume and made it herself.  I loved the creativity!  This was one of my favorites in the parade this year.

The only thing scarier than a bad guy were these two sumo wrestlers!  These are two of Chase's friends...which were hilarious!  Honestly when they turned around, I could not stop laughing.

It was a full day of partying with good friends, sweet treats, and these two ghouls!

Look what I found!

When Matt comes home and says those words its frightening (he can tend to be like the kids when "finding" something).  The last time he found something, it was a duck and a chicken on the highway in an abandoned basket.  Guess who got to take care of those two?  ME.  This past week he came home from his walk around the neighborhood with this....

He found this guy walking down the middle of the road and just had to rescue him.  We thought it might be a desert tortoise which are known to be wild out here, and our state reptile.  The kids quickly became attached and wanted to keep him and name him Esio Trot (from the Roald Dahl book).  We made him a habitat, researched all about desert tortoises and made him a nice dinner.

The next morning while out on his walk, Matt found the owners of this cute little guy (whew!).  His name is Dozer and he is an exotic African tortoise who can grow to be 200 lbs.  To be honest I was very relieved.  I have decided this is exactly enough time to have a pet.  We learned all about him, had fun feeding him, and playing with him, and sent him on his way.  And hey, only one of us cried when he was gone.

Fieldtrip to the Farm

This week was the 3rd graders field trip to Lattin Farms out in Fallon.  I went along as a parent helper.

Sadi has such a good group of girl friends in 3rd grade, many of these girls are also on her cheer squad.

I really got lucky with the group that was assigned to me.  Sadi got to have 2 of her best friends with us for the day, and they are some of the best girls.

We started with a ride on the cow train.  Sadly I think they are growing past the point where this is still exciting.

While we waited for the rest of the group to take a ride they enjoyed playing in the corn boxes.  Sadi was brave enough to get buried

 These two besties were happy to just relax and chat in the corn.

We learned about bee's and the pollination process, and then we took a hay ride to the pumpkin patch.  It was not only slim pickings, but they were all a bit on the smallish side.

Small but perfect for this trio.

Finally we were off to the corn maze, which was the highlight for these girls.  We had only 25 minutes to get lost in the maze and complete a questioner.  We did some learning throughout the maze, but mostly had fun running around trying not to get lost.   We ran into Sadi's teacher near the end and saw her "cheat" her way out of the maze.  What are you gonna do?  Of course we followed her. 

Luckily we did since it was time for lunch!  Sadly those that got lost in the corn missed most of lunch.  It was a great day spent with some great kids, and my most favorite 3rd grader!

Traffic

 The traffic in this town is just getting ridiculous! 

The above photo was taken on my way to take the kids to school, the photo below was later THE SAME DAY.  Different roads, different herds. 

We ain't no one horse town let me tell ya!

Break from School

This past weekend I brought Kelsey home from college.  Between her job on campus and me working at school all the time, it had been over two months since we had seen her.  Her Residential Advisor (a.k.a.boss) advised all the Resident Assistants who could, to get away from school/dorm life for the weekend and take a break before finals week.  I picked her up on Friday and we went to lunch and then surprised Chase and Sadi.  They were so excited to see her.  On Saturday we spent a good part of the day at cheer.  Sadi was excited her big sister was there to see her cheer.

It was our last game of the season, and the whole team wore pink for breast cancer awareness month (cheer and football).  It was a whole lot of pink in on the field that day.

Someone got really bored at the game and so Kelsey let him read one of her textbooks (that SHE was SUPPOSE to be studying).  Kelsey made him give a synopsis of what he read, and surprisingly he did pretty good.  Never too soon to start thinking about college :)

Our weekend went by pretty quick and before we knew it, it was Sunday and time to get this kid back to college.  She showed us her bulletin board she made for the month.  She had planned a premiere showing of The walking dead that night for her dorm to coincide with this. 

I think it is safe to say she is enjoying Sophomore year, even if it is a lot more work.

Kicking off October

The first weekend in October we FINALLY had a break from Cheer so we decided to head up to the Salmon run in Tahoe.  We were in search for some fish and fall colors.  It was the big kickoff weekend for the Salmon run which we usually don't go to since there are so many people, but this was to be our only weekend cheer free so we decided to brave the crowds (which ended up not being bad at all).  We first checked in with Smokey the bear...to be bear aware.

We also played a few fish games and took our picture with Sammy the Salmon.

Then we were off to the river to see the fish...which there were none.  I mean NOT A SINGLE FISH to be seen!  How could this be the biggest weekend?  We have gone in the past just a week or two later in the month and missed the spawning altogether and been witness to a river full of dead fish.

We decided to hike up the river and look for some fall colors...none as well.  The leaves all seemed to have just dropped and not even changed.  We did find a cool Beaver dam.  We looked for the Beaver, but he never made an appearance.

We stopped into the underground viewing area where they had at least planted some Salmon for people to see.  Not the same effect, I'm gonna say.

I just could not believe there was not a single fish.  The rangers said it was because we hadn't had a good rain.  Hmmmm....interesting since it had just rained.  We weren't ready to give up (or at least I wasn't).  We then hiked all the way down the river to the lake where it feeds into  (where the Salmon begin their journey).  Surely we could see at least one fish?...Nope.

We made the best of the day and ate our lunch on the beach, and the kids found this upturned tree with its roots exposed and spent a lot of time climbing and playing on it.

Not the best day for fish or fall foilage, but a great day together with family.