HallOween!!!

I have two vampires, a zombie and a....Jason

                         Vampire A......................................................................Vampire B

Haley, the Zombie                                                Jason as, well Jason

 rat cat....

brought to you by Haley. 

Some of the fun Halloween decor we encountered.

 I love this house, the cool silhouettes in the windows moved around. You could watch for a minute and see a murder in silhouette take place.

This was the first year we split up for Halloween. The girls went off with their friends to enjoy the evening and Jon and I took the boys around.

Our little family is growing up. :(

Birthday Girl

It's this beauty's birthday this weekend. 

Holy crap, she's turning 17!

 Had to steal this picture from her social media page because she'll rarely let me snap a picture of her these days. When I do manage to get a pic, she has to approve it before I can do anything with it lol. The joys of having teenagers.

For her birthday she wanted to check out this rock and mineral shop close to the strip and then go visit China Town.

Some of the cool things on display....

This is called Desert Rose, so cool looking.....

This is the largest quartz crystal sphere in the world apparently. 

There was a picture taken of the birthday girl posing in front of, but it has mysteriously disappeared. 

Anyway, it's as tall as a person. Huge!

Amethyst. 

She enjoyed browsing the shop for an hour or so. 

She picked out some favorites to take home with her while she was at it.

 There were so many beautiful things on display. I even had to buy something-a Himalayan sea salt votive holder. I love it, and I couldn't pass up licking it to see if tasted salty. It does. 

 After the rock shop, we drove over to China town. She really wanted to try out the boba tea that they serve there. She didn't like it as much as she thought she would.
After that she picked out some fun Asian food items form one of the markets there.

She opted for this yummy looking layered cake for her Birthday Dessert. 

There are pics of her actually enjoying it, but she doesn't really look very happy in the pics, so in consideration of my personal safety, I've opted to not post them. ;p

Track Break

So, the boys get year round school this year. This kind of presents a bit of a problem for me because for the whole month of October they don't have school, but I have to work and the girls have to go to school. Same thing for February. Ugh. I can't really afford to pay for daycare. Luckily, my boss at RC Willey was willing to work with me and is allowing me to come in from 3 to 9 for the whole month of October (well,til my last day with them anyway, which is this Friday). It's been so nice to have an understanding employer. I will miss my RC Willey family. It really is a great company, but retail is just a tough gig. 

So, anyway as soon as Jon gets home from his day of work, I leave for mine. We haven't seen much of each other, which kind of bites. But that'll change with the new job. 

Anyway, since I've been able to spend the mornings home with my boys, we've been having a few fun trips. 

We visited Ethel M Chocolate Factory last week and toured the Cactus Gardens. 

Had to snap some sweet pics while we were there. 

Enjoy. 

We had a picnic lunch and visited a park on another morning.

 Love these slides, they're a lot of fun. 

And then we visited the Wetlands park. 

Love to walk around here and just enjoy the wildlife. 

We got to see a heron. That was pretty cool!

We saw lots of bunny rabbits....

More wildlife.. ;)

We took some pics of the poo that we encountered on our walk.  They have a cool nature center you can visit, and we were hoping to be able to figure out what kind of animal poo we had encountered. We never really figured it out. 

Saw some ducks and fishies and turtles....

Another day we just hiked the mesa behind our apartment complex. 

And found more scat....

and cool rock statues....

October ended up being a great month for them to be off. The weather has been almost perfect for enjoying the outdoors. 

Homecoming Parade

Haley's band class got to march in the High Schools Homecoming Parade tonight. 

So, of course we had to go watch. 

:)

Looking cute in her uniform. 

Waiting for another parade to start...

They look miserable because it was HOT!

 Yay, it's finally starting!!

 She is somewhere in these two pictures....can you spot her? Where's Haley?????
(look around the edges, I did a really lousy job of catching her, but in fairness to me, the sun was in my eyes)

There was a fun little carnival after the parade and before the football game started. 

We enjoyed lot's of junkfood. 

Sorry, no pics....I know you're devastated.

Waiting for the game to start. 

Seriously, this beautiful sunset was the best part of the game.

Except for the halftime performance.....

We waited til after Haley performed again at halftime, and then we split. 

I used to love high school football games, but I really didn't enjoy this one. 

Lots of foul language all around where we were sitting. 

High school just isn't like I remember it. 

PSA

Freshman are friends, not food!