Our Yard is Fenced!

Finally! After 5 years and 8 months of living in our house, the backyard is fenced!! It was a lot of work but Brad did an awesome job with help from Richard. It is one of those things that we had always talked about doing, but never got around to doing it until now. And, wow, what a difference it makes for the dogs!

The effect it has had on the dogs...

Man, there's got to be something to blog about...Hmm...

Well, the girls and I enjoyed a nice 2 and a half days off this week. It was parent/teacher conferences this week. We learned that Alanna is a "delight" to have in class and Makenna is a "peach!"

Brad and I finished raking and picking up the wet, rotting, yucky leaves today (oh, yeah, and
Brad did most of the work)!

Hopefully, this weekend I will post some pictures of the fence that Brad built around our backyard.

Have a great weekend everyone! Brad and I are off to a date night with our friends!

Just Over One Year of Blogging

Well, its been just over one year of blogging for me; 97 blogs to date. I know I don't always update as often as I think I will, but I try. I figured I might as well post while I have a little time between housework and going to Alanna's classroom to help with math. Besides, Makenna told me last night I really need to change my background since it is no longer Halloween. So I thought I would go through and try to post 5 of my favorite pics from the last year. I will choose 5 because that is the number of photos you can upload to blogger at one time and it takes quite awhile. Who knows, maybe if I get ambitious I will do another post with some more of my top fave pictures.

Wow, that was a lot harder than I thought. It's really tough to pick just 5 pictures. I guess maybe I will have to post some more pics when I have time; unless, of course by then I have something more exciting to blog about!

Halloween 2009: Mystery Dinner Party Part 3

The girls...

The toilet paper game...

I passed around a roll of toilet paper and told the kids to take as much of it as they thought they would need to play the game. Nobody even asked me what the game was until after they had passed the toilet paper around. Notice the amount of toilet paper Makenna has wrapped around her neck. For each piece of toilet paper they took they had to tell one thing about themselves. Some of them had a lot to be said, and others, like Alanna only had to say 3 things. This was a great icebreaker for the beginning of the party.

So the party turned out to be quite a success! I even had a mom tell me that her daughter had so much fun and that it was the best party of her WHOLE life.

It was a great Halloween, it was fun having it on a Saturday with beautiful weather. We took the girls trick or treating after the party and then finished up the night with drinks from Starbucks and a game of Rock Band.

Halloween 2009: Mystery Dinner Party Part 2

The menu...all of the food, utensils, and drinks were renamed on the dinner menu with Halloween names. This way the kids had no idea what they were ordering.

The kids filled out their own orders 4 menu items at a time. It was a 3 course meal, and by the end they had ordered all 12 items off the menu.

Silverware- skeleton shovel, witch's broom, devilsh dagger

Spaghetti sauce- bat's blood.

Parmesean cheese- moldy bones

Fruit- spider slime.

Garlic bread- vampire venom.

Salad- goblin guts.

Drinks with gummy worms- worm juice.

It was so fun seeing what each kid ordered and to see the look of surprise on their faces when they were served parmesean cheese, ice cream, a knife, and spaghetti sauce.

Halloween 2009: Mystery Dinner Party Part 1

For Halloween this year we hosted a Mystery Dinner Party for the girls and some of their friends. It was a great idea and we all had a lot of fun with it. Here is what we did...

These were the invitations. We let each of the girls invite 3 friends. Two of Makenna's friends couldn't make it so we ended up with six kids total.

We decorated the kitchen and dining room.

Halloween Cat

Alanna's idea of fun...