Plans Revisted & Basketball

John planned again this past weekend to go to Port A fishing with Noel and this time nobody had a fever so he got to go... YAY! I didn't plan anything with the kids that couldn't be changed this time, just in case, but we did manage to go see Beverly Hills Chihuahua in Mason Friday night, Madagascar 2 in Fbg Saturday afternoon and August Rush at home Saturday evening. I think we had our fill of movies for awhile! John got home Sunday with no fish, but that was OK, too. I think it was good for him to get away for awhile. He did have some excitement with a really big stingray that he caught. Fortunately he was able to cut it off his line without coming in contact with the barb - whew!

Monday was Ashlyn's first basketball game. It was a practice game in Menard so they didn't get home until almost 9. But she was excited they won and had a lot of fun on the bus trip. She got to play a little at the end - there are 22 girls on the 7th grade team, so she knew she wouldn't get to play much. Mondays are pretty crazy for us since I usually go to Austin that day and don't get back until after 7, Colten has boy scouts, and now John has a meeting for the Doss Volunteer Fire Dept (just the 3rd Monday of the month) (which he is now officially a member of). Now we also have Ashlyn's basketball games on Mondays. I've resolved to the fact that I won't be able to make to the out of town games, but I'm hoping to make it to the games they play in Mason, Why does everything have to be on Mondays?

Halloween Weekend

The kids had a great time on Halloween... we stopped by a haunted house (it wasn't toooo scary) and then spent most of our time at the River of Life Church's festival. There was so much to do there, we didn't leave until 8:30 to go trick-or-treating. By that time, most places had run out of candy, but that was just fine. We were all exhausted by the time we got home!

The haunted house we went to had this set up outside.

Here's Colten dueling with his friend. They could barely reach each other!

Saturday morning we got up fairly early to drive to Austin since I was helping to host a baby shower there. After the baby shower we spent some time with the Wolf's and the kids had tons of fun playing with their 2-year-old, Cole. For dinner that night we thought we'd see how they had fixed up the Oasis after it had burned down a couple of years ago. It was very nice (although a bit slow) and lived up to it's name as the sunset capital of the world! Here are a couple of pics from there:

Happy Halloween!!

After a long week where I spent 3 days in Austin for training and trying to get through lots of tween friend drama, it's finally Halloween! We're planning on going to a haunted house and the same festival we went to last year. Maybe some trick-or-treating, but I think most people will be at the football game in Junction tonight. At least Halloween didn't fall on a school night this year!!!

Here are my ninja's with their jack-o-lanterns we carved last night:

Plans

Since John had planned to go fishing with Noel in Port Aransas this past weekend, I had planned a few fun things to do with the kids, but alas, it all went awry. Thursday evening, Colten wasn't feeling himself, but he didn't seem sick, just said he had a headache. He was laying on my lap and I noticed he felt a little warm so we decided to take his temp. The thermometer shot up to 102.3! I thought surely that couldn't be right since he didn't feel that hot. So we took it again with the same results. We still thought it was broken, but John's temp was 98.6. Well that changes things!

I had signed up to work Friday night in the concession stand at the football game and the kids would either help or hang out with friends. Then Saturday I had signed us up to help at the Angel Food Ministries in Fredericksburg, then I wanted to take them mini-golfing or something and just have a fun day out and about. Since Colten was sick and I had already committed to working, John canceled his trip and planned to take him to the doctor Friday (he didn't have the flu, thankfully, but got some antibiotics for his sore throat). Ashlyn & I worked the concession stand and the Angel Food Ministries without him. By Saturday afternoon, Colten's temp was back down and he was perfectly well Sunday. Weird.

County Food Show

Sunday afternoon was the Mason County Food Show for 4-H. It should have been called the Hilda Food Show since the only people that came were from that area (6 kids total). Sadly, this was the fewest since we started doing the food shows, but I'm not sure why. It's a good experience for the kids, I think. Anyway, this year, Colten made personal pizzas using biscuit dough for the beginner main dish category and Ashlyn made Shepherd's Pie for the intermediate main dish category. Ashlyn of course picked the same category as another girl and got second place, but she won the beef contest and got a $25 prize. She'll have to pick a different recipe in the fruits & vegetables category so she can go to the district food show since no one chose that category for this show and only first place winners for each category can go to district. Colten was the only beginner and so got first. He won't get to go to district until next year.

Here's Colten with his pizza's

And here's Ashlyn with her Shepherd's Pie

And last but not least, here are all the kids being silly with their prizes :)

Punchers & Snakes

Friday night, we decided to check out a Puncher football game. It was fun to watch and the kids actually were interested in what was going on. I'm not sure how much they absorbed, but they asked a lot of questions about why people were yelling and what happened and how many points they got and whether things were bad or good. I was glad they were so interested! Mason won 39-6 against Cristoval, so that made it fun to watch, too.

Here's where the team ran onto the field... they sure have gotten fancy since I was in high school! They deflated it superfast and then had it up again after half-time.

Here's a pic of the mascot, Puncher Pete.

Colten caught one of the footballs the cheerleaders were throwing to the crowd and had to pose for me.

In other news, we recently had a cat that we assumed had been bitten by a rattlesnake since her head became about twice as big as it should be and had fang marks on top. We left her alone and it healed fine, but it made us a bit more cautious around the house. The other night, John & I were in the living room watching TV after the kids had gone to bed and thought we heard water running. That was weird since there shouldn't have been water on anywhere. We went out the front door and discovered it wasn't water, it was a rattlesnake rattling! YIKES! He went and grabbed a flash light and there it was, curled up right next to the steps on the sidewalk with another one of our cats staring it down and trying to play with it. It was ready to strike, so we scared the cat away and of course it came back to play (curiosity killed the cat, anyone?). We scared it away again and I ran around and grabbed it so John could shoot the snake and not the cat. Then the other cats got curious and tried to see what was going on, so I put out a bunch of cat food to distract them (that was easy) and John finished the job. Here's the icky thing - it was about 4 ft long:

John chunked it outside of the yard since it was still moving, hoping the animals would leave it alone. However, it was not there the next morning. We didn't see it until we went out the side door and saw the cats snacking on it.... ewww!

Old Yeller Days

Saturday morning, I took the kids to Old Yeller Days in Mason. The guy who wrote "Old Yeller" (Fred Gipson) is from Mason, so they have a celebration to honor Old Yeller every year. The main activity is a dog parade where people can bring their dogs dressed up to compete in certain contests like owner-dog look-alike, best costume, and Old Yeller look-alike. It was fun to see how everyone had their dogs dressed up and I was told that next year we needed to bring a dog (we'll see). They also had games, food, and music and it was all out on the court house square in the shade - very nice!

The kids had to pet every dog they thought was cute. In the first pic they are with a cute little black wiener dog dressed up like a skunk along with a large black poodle. I think the owner was going with black and white theme, but I can't remember. There was also football player, cheerleader, jailbird, tinkerbell, and bat dogs and many more that I can't remember. Very cute!

The second pic is of the kids at one of the nature booths. They made paint like the Indians did with iron rocks and water. I never knew you could do that - you learn something new every day! The last picture is their finished works of art. The people at the booth were really impressed with Ashlyn's cat drawing - I think she draws cats everyday so she'd had plenty of practice! Colten did a good job, too, with his fish and cat paintings. We did all the free games and one that wasn't (Colten is a sneaky boy! - he started making some sand art before asking me so of course I had to pay for it - and then I had to let Ashlyn make one, too!) and then headed back home.