Where have all the years gone?

Years ago I used to get so excited to put up the Halloween decorations and always had them up by the first of October. This year I was considerably slower and it wasn't until I had gone to both of my girl's homes and seen their cute Halloween decorations that I decided I needed to get mine out.

Over the years I have amassed five tubs of Halloween decorations and costumes. And yes, I still have it all. After looking at the cute, classy decorations my girls had in their homes, most of the items in my five tubs looked a bit old and shabby. None of them could be classified as classy and most of them wouldn't be considered cute by anyone but me. Most of my decorations where purchased on sale at Drug Emporium (that tells you how old they are), made at homemaking meetings twenty years ago or by my elementary age children. I have a dried apple faced witch that Lonica made in girl scouts, five starched ghosts we made for family night, a paper mache pumpkin jar Preston made and this little mummy he wrapped years ago.
One summer when I had both my feet operated on, the kids and I sat and painted this Haunted House and all the little figurines that go with it. Needless to say, the paint job isn't the best but the kids got so excited every year when we would get it out. They would remember which parts they had painted and would carefully set it up as if it were a real work of art.
While none of my Halloween decorations would fetch even a quarter at a garage sale, they are priceless to me and I will keep all five of my tubs full of Halloween memories and let my kids go through them some day.

Here is one more memory of a year with a little ghost, a waitress, a mummy and a news reporter. When children are little it seems like the day will never come when they will be gone but it comes much faster than a mother could ever imagine.

P.S. Jason would never recommend anyone be a mummy for Halloween -it takes a long time to get wrapped, it's very difficult to run from house to house without your costume falling off and most important, it's very hard to go to the bathroom!

Halloween Cookies

After only one month of marriage, Garth and I had our first Halloween together. Trying to be a good homemaker, I made Halloween cookies and asked Garth to help me decorate them. You would have thought I'd ask him to build me the Taj Mahal! I didn't realize that all families didn't spend days making cut out cookies and decorating them every Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day and Easter. It was one of my family's traditions that I loved.

After that first year of marriage I realized that decorating cookies would not be an entire family affair in our new family. So for the first few years I made and decorated cookies on my own; Garth was more than happy to help eat them though. As we started having kids they all joined in on making the dough, cutting out the cookies and of course, decorating and eating them.

Well, somewhere along the line, some of the enthusiasm for making cookies left me and I haven't made Halloween cookies for years. This year I decided that I needed to make some; one, because I feel bad that Preston misses out on so many of the traditions that we used to do when all the kids where home and two, because I just love to eat those cookies. So we decided that for Family Home Evening this week we would decorate cookies. I made the cookies and then, you guessed it, Preston and I decorated them. Garth did come and help eat them though.

The rest of our Ohio trip

Since Lonica is a much quicker blogger than I am and I don't know when I will get around to finishing the blog of our trip, you can check out her blog and read all about the rest of our stay in Ohio at: http://scottandlonica.com/blog/?p=392 she has two posts about our trip.

I just thought I'd throw in a couple of other photos. This one is of the wonderful Sunday dinner that Lonica and Scott made. Hint: If you want to eat well go visit those two! We were glad that Candace came over for dinner and wished we had been able to see Dave but he was in San Antonio. This is the tree across the street from their apartment - just wish that was what I saw when I looked out my front window. I try to console myself with the fact that the leaves will change colors here in a couple more months and they will fall off and then new buds will appear the following week.

October in Ohio

Fall break called us East to visit Lonica and Scott for a few days. While we loving going east we hate the fact that you loose an entire day traveling. So while Garth and I left the house at 6:00am we didn't arrive in Columbus until 4:30 and minus one piece of luggage. Garth got the rental car and I filed the missing bag claim and we met Lonica and Scott easily a little after 5:00 thanks to the fact the Columbus' airport is much smaller and easier to navigate than Phoenix's.

After Lonica's great dinner we went around "collecting" bikes from her friends so we could go on a bike ride Thursday morning. Scott had to work in the morning and Garth, Lonica and I had a beautiful bike ride through the neighborhood, down to the Olentangy River and to a lake. It was a crisp fall day with many of the leaves already changing. Garth and I were revealing in the cool weather and thrilled to experience a bit of fall.
Here is the lake
and here is the Olentangy River.

Lonica and I played on the banks of the lake and talked about all the places we want to go and visit while Garth talked on the phone trying to get through a crisis at work back in Phoenix. On the way back to their apartment we got a call telling us that Preston (who had stayed with Raquel and Dave in Mesa for a cross country meet) had missed his plane. He was supposed to arrive at 5:30 that evening but would have to wait until the 2:00 flight and wouldn't be in Columbus until 8:30. He would end up spending the entire first day of his break at Sky Harbor Airport because he didn't realize that his flight first had a stop in Omaha before Chicago. He had a great attitude about it and got all his homework done.
Scott met us back at the house and after lunch we went on a tour of the city. We had to stop and purchase our Ohio State shirts (we were going to the football game on Sat.) and we looked around OSU and the law school where Scott really lives. Then we drove around downtown and the capital.
It was a beautiful evening and we checked out all the statues to the soldiers of the Civil War, Spanish American War, WWI and to all the famous Ohioans who became Presidents (can you name any of the eight?), Generals or just other famous people.
We had to drop Lonica off at her night class and then Scott, Garth and I went to a great place for dinner. Preston finally made it to Ohio and after picking he and Lonica up, we headed to White Castle because Preston hadn't eaten most of the day and one of his requests while he was in Ohio was to go to White Castle. He got 10 White Castle "sliders" and shared two with Scott. Those of you who haven't had the pleasure of eatting at White Castle should know that their hamburgers can be eaten in one bite (as Preston and Scott can attest-they had a contest) and we all decided that they aren't made of real food.
After we all tried to stay awake and talk we decided to just go to bed beause we had a pretty busy schedule for the next couple of days.

The Presidents from Ohio were Hayes, both Harrisons (William and Benjamin), Grant, Garfield, McKinley, Taft and Harding.