All Hallows Eve Recap

Tarls super awesome costume in all it's glory. He did awesome on the stilts! He took Kalyana and Makayla trick or treating and never fell down. Everyone loved his costume! People were raving about it and even crossing the street to make sure to come over and tell him how awesome it was. Needless to say, he was happy his hard work was appreciated so much! Tarl and my mom made an awesome mask but with the dark, the stilts and the little kids he thought it would be best to just paint his face instead of don the mask. Thanks for your help with that mom!

We spent the entire day decorating the porch. Tarl wove the spider web and then used his high tech web sprayer to cover it (if you look closely you can see it in picture #2). We sprayed down several of our decorations with glow-in-then-dark spray and had our huge black light outside above the window (it illuminated the web fantastically!) and our little one inside the door. We had a strobe light, fog and Thriller playing out the window. We also had a bone curtain across the door that has a motion sensor and would open (and make noise) as people approached. As we were putting everything together we came up with several good ideas for next year. I'm so excited, I can't wait!

Kalyana got to wear her costume to school today and she chose to be a black cat again. Since she had her make up on all day by the end of the night she said her cheeks were burning. When I tried to wash it off, it hurt her worse (plus by then she was completely exhausted) the poor girl! Also The girls and I painted our pumpkins while Tarl was doing the decorating.

My sister stopped by with her handsome little Austin and her hubby Anthony to show us their costumes. Awesome! They even went out with Tarl and the girls for a bit. PS I went to the grocery store this morning to restock on candy, and those normal size bags were on sale for .99 and 1.99. FYI for next year!

Halloweens Past

Six years ago today, Tarl surprised me by coming into town to visit me. He had just returned home from his mission a few months earlier and I was attending BYU. He came with me to my classes that day and then we spent the afternoon running errands and drawing a Tigger picture as a present for my mom.

Later that evening Tarl asked if I wanted to go for a walk. While on our walk he stopped under a street lamp and and gave me a really long hug. He whispered a cute little poem (that he wrote) in my ear and the last line was, "Deborah Michelle will you marry me?" He got down on one knee and opened up the ring box (he was hiding it in the sleeve of his coat). I was ecstatic this day had finally come! We had been dating since 1998 and I knew he was the man for me! The picture on the left is moments after we got back from our walk. Can you tell how happy I was?! I couldn't stop smiling. He told me later he was SO nervous! Funny because I had no doubt I'd say yes, but I suppose it's still kind of scary.

These are pictures from our first Halloween married in 2002.

Trunk-or-Treat

So you may have noticed this time around I got a different costume than my soccer player. Tarl was disappointed I picked such a simple ('lame') costume and wanted to dress me up more. He picked out my costume (a witch) and painted up my face. He even sprayed my hair with BRIGHT orange spray but it doesn't show up near as well as it did a few minutes after he sprayed it. Nobody knew what either one of us were but at least we had fun dressing up, participating and getting into the spirit of the season. Plus all our kids were pretty obvious in their costumes so I don't mind if we weren't with ours. I wonder what I'll end up as tomorrow.

Tonight we had our annual Trunk-or Treat. I think this has been happening for several years now but I still meet people who have never done one before so I'll explain. The ward gets together the day before Halloween at the church. Our particular ward had dinner, a costume fashion show, cupcake walk, and pie eating contest. Then one person from each family goes out to the car decorates the trunk and the kids come trick-or-treating along the back of the cars. I think it started as a safe way to trick-or-treat.

I have mixed feelings. I know since malls, wards, and neighborhoods do this now, less and less people are actually going door to door. Sad! AND less and less people are even home to go door to door to! Pathetic! I even had to take Kalyana up to a neighborhood above ours last year because we only had about 6 houses on our street of say 40 houses.

The good part is you get to see your friends, see their costumes (in the light), visit, and get candy quickly. Not many people actually decorate their trunks though. Last year I think there were 5 of about 30. At least people passed out candy though. This year I saw more, black lights, streamers, jack-o-lanterns (good ideas for next year!).

Tarl and I spent the entire day getting our costumes and car ready. The picture in no way does it justice so I'll explain and you can just close your eyes and image how awesome it looked in the dark! We had it covered in black spider web. The skeleton was sitting on the bench next to skulls with lite up eyes. We had a black light across the top and glow sticks strewn all over, a strobe light and a severed arm. We tried to get our fog machine to work but the plug was about 3 feet to short of the outlet.

I think we still pulled it off though. Tyce and I sat in the back with a cauldron full of candy while Tarl took the girls around to the other cars. Everyone RAVED about our car! Several people even came over to take pictures and tell us how fun our car was! All the kids were squealing about how cool the black light was and how their costumes were glowing. Even the parents who were stationed at their cars had to come over and get a peak. When it was all done quite a few people came around a second time (and a third!) just to look and ask us how we did it all. The whole night we seemed to have a large group of people crowding around. It was really neat and fun to see everyone enjoying our hard work!!

I love Halloween!

Neighborhood Halloween Party

My super cute neighbor Emily threw a Halloween party today. She's also the same neighbor that has been hosting a weekly music class for the 3-5 year olds. They go over to her house every Wednesday and sing and dance. Kalyana loves it and comes home and teaches me all the fun songs she's learned.

At the party today the kids all posed for pictures and sang us their songs they've been practicing. Then they played pin the tail on the black cat and spider ring toss. All the moms brought goodies to share so the kids got some snacks and headed outside to play. While Kalyana was on the phone with Grandma Cheryl today she told her she was going to be a black cat (this was the first I've heard of that) so I had to throw something together. When she got off the phone she saw I had her costume ready and she was so happy she said, "Mom you knew I wanted to be a black cat huh? Thank you mommy!!" After she put her costume on and Tarl and I painted up her face she even showed me her cat walk. She kept asking me if she had to walk like a cat at the party, she makes me giggle! I sure love being a mom!

I'm having a party!!!

I love these books! I've had the chance to see these books on a few occasions and my mom even got my girls some last year at my cousins party. They are so fun and SO great! You can't buy them in stores but I promise, if you've never seen them, it's worth checking out! Go here to see more and buy some for my party! I got these:
And want to get this:

Kiddie Party

We really enjoyed our time with Tarl's family this last week! We were able to throw a great Halloween party (thanks to everyone who helped!) and I think the kids really had fun! We made fun sucker ghosts and bats, played donut bobbing (it was super funny to watch the little kids trying to do it), and even got to hit a ghost pinata (drawn by Tarl!). We were really impressed with all the fun costumes, even some of the adults dressed up. I'd have to say my favorite was my brother-in-law Chad's clubbin' costume, but sadly I didn't get a good picture of it. Believe me though, it was awesome!We all had a great time getting to visit with everyone. It's not often enough that we get to make it up there so we really try to pack in as many visits as we can. I even got a few 'girl trips' in!
Of Tarls siblings six of the seven live near his parents so when we get up there we're able to see almost everyone. On this particular trip we were able to also see the new homes of several family members (well at least new to us because we haven't seen them yet): Shantae & Chad's, Marshae & Derek's, and Doran & Meggan's. I loved them all! The kids enjoyed making bread and cookies with grandma, going to the park, playing with their cousins, having tea parties, grandpa's scary costume (ok 'enjoyed' might be stretching this one...I think almost everyone was really terrified!), playing dress ups, jumping on the trampoline, hearing about the caribou hunt (or as cousin Abani called it 'baracoot') and lots more!

Fire, Fire, Fire

Today we got our very own personal tour of the fire department by Tarl's uncle. Tarl went down there to talk to his uncle and while he was there his uncle told him to bring the kids over to take a look around. It was an awesome tour!

Some facts I learned were:
-About 130 firemen will have died this year in line of duty.
-They keep all their trucks equipped the exact same way so that at a split second decision they can find the tools they need.
-Ladders are not only for vertical fires but for horizontal crossings.
-Their outfits and equipment weigh in at 150 extra lbs.
-They keep their trucks plugged in to charge up the battery's and flashlights.
-They sometimes take fan into the house, cut a hole in the ceiling and create it's own chimney.
-Sometimes instead of just water they'll use foam. Basically it's just soap, water and air. The contraption (shown below) mixes it all together and sprays it out. Some of its uses are that it can sit on the fire longer than water or it can show them where the fire is (if it is sprayed on the forest floor and a hole opens up in the foam, they know fire is underneath).
-There are two types of fire, buildings and forest so they use a different truck for each. The forest trucks are basically a tank and no ladder.
-Inside the trucks, inside their chairs are their air tanks. The air tanks are incorporated into the seats so they can strap them on while they're driving to the scene.
-There are two colors of trucks, white and red. There is no difference other than the kids generally like the red better :)

Kalyana has been telling us for several months that when she grows up she wants to be a fireman. However on the way there she said she wanted to do it all except honk the horn...it's just too loud. So the very last thing that we did before we left was Tarl got to climb up into the truck and play with the flashing lights and honk the horn. In this particular truck the horn is in the bottom right corner of the cab, under the passenger's foot. Kinda interesting eh?

Kalyana and Makayla's favorite part was the trucks. The loved climbing in on and around them! We even got to see them testing the hoses.

This fire station had smaller clothes for the kids to try on, but they didn't think it was as exciting as all the adults had thought it would be. They both got pretty shy when it came to putting on the clothes (even though it was just us, grandpa and grandma, and our favorite guide Uncle Merlin), but they sure looked darn cute!

At the end of our tour Merlin gave Kalyana some fun cups that change color when you pour in something cold, a few pencils, a fireman hat, and her favorite a fire extinguisher flashlight.