Fry't Night

Last night was so much fun. We had a party at Katherine's house. It was a Halloween/birthday party. Saturday was Katherine's birthday, so we were celebrating hers as well as Julie's birthdays.

I was lucky enough to show up with these 3 guys. Brock was a Rogaine salesman, Shane was an HOV lane (looking for a passenger) and Nate was Mr. T!

Nate's costume was incredible. He spent hours getting ready and was pretty much unrecognizable.

I thought Katherine's costume was super creative and cute. She was a refrigerator magnet.

I was wife #2 in this little arrangement. I thought it was hilarious. I got to use my pregnant belly again from last year. I don't know if you can see the poof in the front of my hair, but I also had it braided down the back. Kristin's uni-brow cracks me up.

I thought Jason and Autumn looked amazing at GI Joe toys! I got there a little late so they were tired of posing, but they'd pose like the little plastic toys.

Aaron and Chantal looked great as well!

Julie's parents made amazing pirates.

Kim and Becca

Tatum & Mauren

I couldn't resist taking this shot of Nate's bling.

I was mixing up some batter and Jared caught this picture of me. It was pretty fitting. It also shows more of my hair. It was nice not wearing any make-up to a party too! :)

Here's Jared's close-up.

You'll notice the title of this post is called "Fry't night." We combined this with a fry party. People brought tons of stuff to fry. These at the top of the picture are oreos. I also tried snickers, pickles, jalepeno poppers, and cheese. Too good, but too bad!!!

This is the fryer set-up. There were two types of batters as well - pancake batter for the sweet stuff and regular fry batter for the rest.

Katherine had a movie set up in her garage too.

Julie was a cowgirl and Nikki was the Octomom. She was hilarious!

Here's a better shot of Brock. He used his work name badge for the before shot and he got this Donald Trump wig for the after. I thought it was pretty creative.

Kath's sister Alicia was "Shrimp on the Barbie." I loved this one. :)

Here we have more Dalmations with Cruella.

Nate was trying to sign a card for Julie and this is how he was bending down! He definitely won for the best costume!

As if all this wasn't enough, there was also sumo wrestling and a fire in the backyard. You can't beat it!

Camping

I was excited to go on my first camping trip of the season! It's been awhile! I was getting pretty nervous because the weather's been REALLY warm lately, but we got a cool front that rolled in just in time for the weekend.

It actually got quite cold Friday night. I think it got down into the high 40s or low 50s. The bad part about this camping trip is that it's been pretty dry so there was a fire ban. Kath's lantern did not really keep us warm. I love this shot of Katherine was majorly bundled up.

We camped at this really cool spot just off of Lake Conroe. Katherine brought her canoe so we had some fun with that.

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My favorite was Jared trying to hit the girls in the canoe with golf balls.

It was just a few of us - Wendy, Katherine, Julie, me, and these two lovebirds - Jared and Kristin. We took lots of pictures with Jared's camera. I'll have to get some of those to put on here.

Julie's Back!!!

Julie's back for a couple of weeks for a visit. Sadly, we don't get to keep her her whole off season since she's living in Portland this winter.

Anyway, it was Red Ribbon Week this last week at school so we had some dress-up days. Monday was a cowboy day so I was wearing a hat. Earlier Monday evening, Wendy took me out to dinner for my half birthday (nice, right?) and I hadn't even had time to change out of my hat for that. After dinner, I decided to go see Julie since she'd gotten that day. I felt a little sheepish wearing my hat over there so I texted to let her know that I was wearing one. When I walked into the Martin's living room, this is what I saw!

I couldn't stop laughing! Those Martin's are hilarious! We had to do some poses in the hats.

Howdy!

Here's Julie's hat pose!

I was back over at their house on Wednesday for Julie's 30th birthday. She's showing her muscles holding that heavy, but very delicious birthday cake.

Classic Julie face. I think Jared made some remark to her just as she was about to blow out the candles.

She got them out on the first try.

Katherine was the faithful ice cream scooper.

School Randomness

I've had a few fun things at school lately that I thought deserved a post.

The other day, toward the end of the day, I got a call from the front office saying my appointment was there. I didn't have an appointment, so I asked who it was and she said "Mr. Buttars." I told her to send him right back. Nate had taken the day off for Jr.'s birthday and they stopped by to say hello on their way to Old MacDonald's Farm. It was fun to have them there for a little bit.

Last weekend, Janelle hosted the second annual "Witches of Pine Forest" party at her house. It was tons of fun. She went all out this year and even had a pinata! Luckily we didn't have any "America's Funniest" moments.

The dynamic is definately different at an adult party with a pinata. No one was running for the candy, but these ladies were all picking through it saying, "My kids like . . . " or "My husband will eat . . . " I thought it was funny.

Just this last Friday, we had a "Pay to Play dress up day" where the kids could pay $2 to dress up like a storybook character. They had some cute costumes. Even Tricia dressed up. Our counselor was Cruela Devil (sp?) and lots of the special ed team dressed up like the dalmations. It was really cute. You can tell that my class has a lot of Star Wars fans. Oh, by the way, this is not my whole class - these are just the ones that dressed up.

Lastly for this post, on Friday, my friend Amanda came in as a vendor for her "Mandy's Wall Candy" business. She brought her little 6 month old named Bentley. He was so cute! You should check out her stuff HERE!

Super Saturday

I'm one of the counselors in our Relief Society Presidency - the counselor in charge of additional RS meetings.

We had a big one on October 23rd - SUPER SATURDAY - a.k.a. craft day. It was a lot of fun and we had a good turn out. Here's a picture from when we were setting up.

I signed up to make a bunch of stuff. I just snapped a few pictures with my phone to show what I made. I painted the crows and the candy corn. They're currently up in my house and will stay there until Thanksgiving! :)

I painted this Jingle wood craft and attached paper to 3 of the letters. I still need to finish the J. I'm looking for some cute paper to do that one. I think I'll attach some buttons to the l as well. I saw that on an example and thought it looked really cute.

I like this one as well. I actually made this one the Friday night before at Carrie's house. She was teaching it and didn't have an example yet so it worked out for both of us.

Last, sorry this isn't a better picture, but we learned how to make these really cute flowers out of fabric and put them on headbands. I need to practice some more with those! My first Super Saturday was a lot of fun and a big success!

Week of Workshops

This last week I was gone from Sunday evening all the way until Saturday afternoon at two different workshops.

Sunday evening I drove to Round Top, TX to the Round Top Retreat for a "Capturing Kids Hearts" workshop. The retreat was amazing. The main house had 3 stories. The first two both had these huge wrap around porches with tons of rocking chairs.

This is a front view of the big house.

The grounds were huge and so beautiful. There were at least 4 other houses on the property too, that they would use for bigger groups than ours turned out to be.

I loved this covered arch walking into the grounds from the parking area.

This is a side view of the big house from the parking area. When I drove up in the dark, I thought it was a huge barn.

There were walking trails all around the grounds that we put to good use!

There was a little pond just off to the side that had awesome color! It reminded me of the lakes I saw in Canada this last summer. Becky and I posed in front of it! :)

Here are Dunia, Becky, and Lori.

This is inside the big house in the meeting room we had our trainings in each day. It was pretty cold in there so we had to bundle up!

Lori and I were just across from them that first day.

This is the side of the bedroom I stayed in. I loved the old antique style of everything there.

Here's our whole group just before we finished up on the last day. I feel like I got to know most of them pretty well. It was a fantastic training! I highly recommend it.

We had to rig up something fancy to get our cameras set for the timers. I love this shot!

I drove straight from Round Top Wednesday afternoon to Corpus Christi for my next workshop. After I checked in at the workshop, my first item of business was to get to the hotel. I ended up on the 17th floor and it had quite a view. The ocean was just to the right.

Here's the morning version of that same view.

I took this from the front of our hotel. It looked just as beautiful all three mornings I was there. The timing was perfect to see the sunrise.

As you might expect, I took a few!

This and the next one are both from the bus that took us from our hotel to the place where our conference was.

Love it!

This view is right outside of the America Bank Center where the Autism Conference was held. This is the USS Lexington.

Here's a zoomed in picture of a couple of the planes on it.

If I wasn't in a big hurry, I enjoyed walking to and from the conference back to the hotel. This courthouse was on the way and was so pretty.

Thursday night I met up with my principal and old principal for dinner at Joe's Crab Shack. They had some fun dancing while waiting for our food to arrive.

Here's the whole group of us. Jen came down for this conference too. It was really good to have her there.

This is a view of that big convention center as I was walking to it one morning.

The palm trees that lined the walk were date trees, I believe. This is the only one I saw that was growing fruit.

Jen was a presenter on Saturday. She actually did it twice. I attended her second one.

She was in this huge room and did a really nice job!

Here she is just prior to presenting her second class. I left right after it was over. I was anxious to get home after being gone so long!