Sheri and Keith's Halloween Party!

We had such a great time at Keith and Sheri's annual Halloween Party last night.  It just happened to fall on the same night that the Ducks were playing USC to keep our spot at #2 (make that #1)  in the nation!!!  We all watched the game in our costumes and cheered the Ducks on to a very exciting win!

GO DUCKS!

Keith and Sheri looked so great in their Mr. and Mrs. Potato head costumes!

They even had pockets in the back with different accessories that they changed throughout the night.

I loved it, it was so creative!

Pancho and I pulled out the ugly 80's costumes again!

The difference was that this time Pancho actually shaved a real mohawk in his hair, and grew a mustache.

We watched the game and cheered the ducks on!

more pictures of the party!

The angel and the madonna wanna be!

The Devil and "mohawk man"

Christy, Me, Amy (Velma) and Annie (Vampira)

Pancho sporting Amy's "Velma" glasses,

as well as a gold lame' jacket, mohawk, handle bar mustache and hammer pants.

Wow! That's my Man!



Carving Pumpkins . . .

I was so proud of us for actually fitting pumpkin carving into our busy schedule. 

Max didn't have practice Monday night, so we got the pumpkins out!  The kids drew the faces that they  wanted on their pumpkins and Pancho took care of the carving.  I nominated myself "official photographer" and of course I got stuck with clean up duty too!

Lucy giving Daddy directions . . .

Max, making me nervous with the knife!!!

Lucy was very proud of her little pumpkin family.

Max had a definite "plan" for his pumpkin.

Yup! The old "barfing pumpkin", the kids thought this was so funny!

The finished product!

Lucy's Soccer Party

Lucy did such a great job in her first ever soccer season.  We were so proud of her.  She was actually scoring one or two goals per game at her last few games. It was fun to see her improve so much!

This was Lucy's first soccer trophy!

She was so excited about it!

The other great thing about soccer has been that Lucy is getting to make some new friends and spend more time with her "besties".  This seems to be the year that the girls are really forming friendships.  It is so much fun to watch, because I know there is a good chance that some of these girls may be Lucy's life long friends!

Lucy's head coach, giving her her trophy. 
Her coach was very complimentary of her and said that she was "most improved" on the team!  I thought it was very cool that she had four coaches!  All of them were dad's of her friends.

The Pumpkin Patch

We took a quick family trip to the closest Pumpkin Patch on Sunday.  We actually fit it in between Lucy's soccer game and end of the season pizza party and Max's football game.  Our schedule on Saturday was actually busier, so we had to fit it in on Sunday!  Luckily, as the kids get older, they seem to be OK with a race through the Pumpkin Patch! :)

. . . most of the time they actually do get along pretty well!

Our  "Fulton Girls" picture.

Whoo hooo, a fairly decent family picture.

I have always known that these two look alike, but I am beginning to see how much they act alike as well.  It has been so much fun to get to spend so much time with Max this year.  Because I am one of his teachers, I get a unique look at his life.  We spend a lot of time together, and I am loving every minute of it.  Max is really funny.  His sense of  humor at school reminds me a lot of Pancho (luckily the "cleaner" version of Pancho).  He cracks Mr. Floretta and I up all of the time, and the other kids in his class think he is quite the comedian too.  Thank goodness he knows when to turn on the humor and when to turn it off (maybe he could teach his dad that one).

Oh ya, girl power!

This guy just keeps growing and growing!   Sam  is about 1/2 inch away from being taller than Max! .  . .and No, Max is not very happy about that.

Shopping for the perfect pumpkin!

I talked them into picking out a "clean" pumpkin, instead of one of the muddy ones out in the Pumpkin Patch.  You know you are a high strung mom when . . . .

Lucy was so happy to get a ride on the "cow train"!

The boys were too cool for the cow train, they played in the maze instead.

She made one cute caboose on the cow train!

The Gansen's Halloween Party

We got invited to a HUGE Halloween Party!

The family of one of Lucy's friends at school,  throw an annual Halloween Party and this year they invited all of the first graders and their families (there are 50 first graders).

The invitation asked that the kids and the adults dress up!

So here is a preview of Halloween, as we got to wear our costumes one week early!

Lucy was a Kitty (again)  :)

Sam was so excited to be Mario

Max was an Oregon Duck Football Player (again)

....and Pancho and I a were really ugly 80's Prom Couple.

Pancho has a mullet and Hammer Pants!

Audry and Lucy at the Party!

Sam was so excited to find Kaiden (Luigi)
Kaiden is in Lucy's class.  Kaiden and Sam played together all evening!

Luckily the Gansen's House was massive.  There were about 200 people there!  This was just one of the rooms in their house.  They have a huge 3 story house and all three floors were packed with people.  Pretty much everybody was dressed up. I wish that I would have taken more pictures of some of the great costumes.  Pancho and I were very happy to find the Theater Room where the Oklahoma vs. Missouri game was on.  We cheered Mizzou on to a win with about 25 other die hard duck fans!  The  kids had an absolute blast playing with all of  the other kids, we hardly saw them the whole  night!

The Corn Maze with my O'Hara Buddies!

This could be a new tradition!

For the second year in a row, a group of my very best friends from work, went out to dinner and then to the Night Time, Very Scary, Corn Maze.

The group actually started out at about twice this size.  A BIG group of my co-workers met at Cornicopia for dinner.  Then, some went home and this little core group went to the Corn Maze together.

Leslie drove us all out to Lone Pine Farms in her big truck.  These crazies rode in the back of the truck in the pouring rain!  (I am not sure what Mike has in his mouth, but I think it his cell phone).  They got pretty cold, but we were all laughing the whole time!

I took this picture out of the back window of the truck.  They were cracking me up!

The quality of this picture turned out pretty bad, but this was taken by a random teenager right before we entered the Maze.  I dont think that I have belly laughed this much since we went last year!  My stomach literally hurt from all of the funny inside jokes we all share as well as the added bonus of

#1 Leslie hitting me in the head with a corn cob (she was trying to throw it in front of us  to scare us and missed)

#2 The Chainsaw Guy jumping out in front of me, and me diving over a fence and landing on my head as my friends all fell backwards into the mud!

#3 All of us almost falling over in the spinning tube, we were sure that the ground was moving.

#4 Someone in our group peeing their pants (for real) because they were laughing so hard (for the record it wasn't me).

Now that is some good times!

This is my "Work BFF" Michael. 

I took this picture of him freezing in the back of the truck! 

Then the die hards went to Quackers for some karaoke!

Michael serenaded us with some hilarious song choices, his randomness cracks me up!

Then Keely and Mike followed up with a duet.
I love them both, but it was pretty bad, which made it even more funny!

Another fun night with my super fun teacher friends.
I can't wait for the next "Friday at Five", there is talk of going to Skateworld! Ha ha!

Lucy's 7th Birthday!

I know it sounds cliche, but I really can't believe my baby is seven years old!

Lucy was so excited for her birthday this year.  In fact she was way more excited than she has ever been before.  She woke up early on her birthday, and the excitement started when she saw that her bedroom was full of pink balloons and Hello Kitty streamers (our family tradition).  She  jumped out of bed and couldn't wait to go to school where she was sure to be the center of attention all day!

She got to open one present before school.

Every time the commercial for Fin Fin Friends had come on the TV in the last month, she would call me into the room and say "I want that for my birthday"!  Sure enough, she got it first thing that morning.

My mom came over right after school on Friday and I rushed home from work to get everything ready for the party!  Lucy wanted to have a tea party and a sleepover.  I wasn't sure how a sleepover was going to go with first grade girls so  we kept the party small.  She invited 3 girls who had spent the night at our house before.

Because the guest list was small and we had the party at our house, we could spend more of our budget on gift bags for the girls.  They all got enough fun toys and activities to keep them entertained for hours!

The first to arrive was Ali and the girls ran right upstairs to change out of their school uniforms. They came back downstairs in nearly matching outfits!

..... opening up their gift bags.

They got coloring posters, bracelet making beads, silly bands, Hello Kittys, rings, and more!

Grammy deserves a lot of credit for this party.  She was fully in charge of the "Tea Party" part of the party.  She made so many cute little cookies, cupcakes and sandwiches.  It was adorable.

The Party Girls!

Lucy blowing out her candles

Lucy was really enjoying being the center of attention.  This was her special day and she was making the most of it.  She got lots of great presents too!  Max wins "Brother of the Year" award.  He made all of the girls balloon animals, played on the trampoline with them and played chase with them all evening.  Sam, on the other hand wins "Annoying Brother of the Year" award.  He was actually supposed to stay at a friend's house but that fell through, so he got a lot of joy out of bugging Lucy and her friends the whole night.  Too bad his Birthday is next month, payback could be bad!

At about 8:00pm we told them it was almost midnight and put on a Barbie Movie.  They all fell asleep at  around 9:00 on our family room floor.  I slept on the couch right next to them so no one would be scared.  It was so cute to listen to their adorable conversations!

This actually ended up being one of my favorite birthday parties.  It was pretty easy and stress free.  It was fun to watch Lucy interact with her own little group  of friends.

Lucy is growing up to be such and amazing girl.  She has lots of friends, she is playing the piano and singing all of the time now.  It was fun to watch  her play soccer for the first time this fall, she did such a great job.  She really enjoys reading and has been reading chapter books for quite some time now, and she absolutely LOVES school!  I love this little girl with all of my heart and I only wish I could slow time down so I can enjoy every second of being her Mom!