Happy Halloween! Boo!

I have really enjoyed this Halloween season. I can't believe it is over and time to take down Halloween decorations and put up Thanksgiving. It always goes very fast. It is sad that I don't have a little child to dress up and take trick or treating anymore. Brady was thinking about going ... but decided not to go this year. I think he is getting a little old - a sophomore in high school should be partying not trick or treating. Next year he will be 16 so it will be easier to do some fun things with friends on a group date night or something fun. This year is kind oh hum.... but we enjoyed the day.

Friday Brady had his monthly seminary devotional. He did the same one as last year - minus the pumpkin poop as we are trying to cut back and not spend as much this year. Here is a link to the October devotional. This is the pumpkin we used this year and he did take sugar cookies for the class. It was fun and his class love his devotionals.
Thursday one of my customers Mary Kay gave me a Halloween treat. She is always coming up with a treat for every holiday for her co-workers and her children's school class.

Spectacular treats for me.... I feel loved and appreciated.

The witch is bubble bath, a hand stamp, chocolate, Halloween pen, pumpkin succor, and a Frankenstein Spooookiwi pop all in a kitty bucket.

These are the pumpkins we carved this year. The three large ones in the middle we grew in our garden, the two other pumpkins were left over from my Primary party.

Unfortunately as our children grow into teenagers - it becomes begging and pleading to have them participate in all the fun. I carved 4 pumpkins while Brady carved one. Shaking my head right now...

Brady's pumpkin is the forth smiley face by the skeleton.. At least we have a beautiful display of pumpkins all lit up outside our door. I think I am still a kid at heart - never to grow up. I know I will still be doing this as a single - kid less woman.... Never grow up is my motto... Hopefully my children will get to this fun age someday too! :-D

Happy Halloween!

Brady's District Race, the last race of the season....

Last Friday Brady ran his last race for this years Cross Country season. It is really sad to see the season end. I enjoyed every moment of this season .... every year is gets better and better. Plus, Brady gets faster and faster - which is awesome.

Thursday night they had the last spaghetti feed. Usually we are in charge of bringing a salad and french bread as a sophomore, but this time the team made a special request for Brady to bring my homemade cookies... wasn't that fun to have a request from the team. I have them soooo fooled that I am this great cook... ;-D... Anyway, we made the chocolate chip cookies and I made sugar cookies with spiders and spiderwebs that I blogged last year here:
Brady is such a silly kid ... look at that face. They are waiting for the race to begin. I thought the boy at the front with a foot/leg in his hands was interesting... To bad I don't know what he was doing... I was only focused on Brady (of course).

This is a shot across the pond at the runners in the fall weather... trees bare of their leaves. It was an overcast cool day.

Brady ran soooooo fast this race. Best time ever!!! 20 minutes 5 seconds... Woo Hoo!!!!!! This is Coach Rusty's remarks from the team website.

"Brady also had one of the best races of the day with a 50 second lifetime PR and an incredible race. Get hungry for next year... awesome cookies as well. "

I laughed at the cookie remark. .... But, it is very exciting that he did sooo well!!!

The best part is that our Varsity Girls and Boys get to go to state. This is the first time in 7 years that our boys have gone to state!! It all comes down to our awesome Coach Rusty... In 2 years he has really built and conditioned these great runners. We are blessed to have him!

After an incredible race -- he needs water.... lots of water!!

Really mom, a picture while I am all sweaty?? Seriously.... :-D

Brady had this on his wrist????? What???? Then he pulls me over to a fellow teammate.

Whale and Barnacle??? What does that mean?

Ooooh... barnacles stick to a whale and Brady was the whale and the teammate needed to stick by Brady and push himself. It was nice that Brady was a leader and helper.

I don't know the teammates name - I'll have to update it later. Very cute motivation!

This is Jake and Brady. Jake is in our ward. Brady and Jake run at about the same level. As they ran by me I would yell "Brady to pass Jake". I think it helps to have someone around you that you want to beat. I am sure this helped Brady have the best race of his life - trying to beat Jake and Jake was trying to beat Brady. Brady pulled ahead and beat Jake - Yeah!

Brady is the only Y/M or Y/W from our ward that goes to a different high school... We are sorta like the members from the "Mission field" and far away from the close knit atmosphere in our ward.

It's fun when we run against each other and I can visit with other Mom's from our ward. Plus, when they have a spaghetti feed they do it together - vs me doing it all by myself.

In a way it's kinda sad that we don't fit into our ward's school boundaries and feel that much more away from the core of our ward... Oh well.... what can you do? It's all good.

I enjoyed the race and celebrating Brady's successes over the season. We have a banquet in November which is always lots of fun to end the season and share the successes with our coaches. I love cross country! Go Warriors!!

Booootiful Food and Pumpkins

Every weekend I make breakfast. We never have cereal on the weekends, it's always the yummy stuff. Saturday I made ghostly pancakes with chocolate chip faces.
The idea came from Gourmet Mom on the Go and her pancake ghosts idea is here:

Sunday I made them again without the chocolate chip faces. Brady didn't really care for the chocolate chips in his pancake and picked them out on Saturday. He's no fun!

Sunday I made ghostly mashed potatoes. I got this idea from Cherie's blog last year when I started following her. Aren't they cute. I used olives for the eyes.

Then we slimed them with gravy. Such a cute easy idea. I just put mashed potatoes on a baggie and snipped of the corner and squeezed out the mashed potatoes.

We had a really nice Sunday dinner with a roasted chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, relish tray with olives, raspberry muffins, and apple juice. Jason and Sharon came over later and enjoyed the food tooooo - but didn't want cute ghostly mashed potatoes -- they missed out on all the fun. I told them we need to start having Sunday family dinners.

At church on Sunday, the Primary Presidency gave all the teachers a treat for Halloween. A mummy candy bar. aaaaahhhhh

Here is the back "Been Dyin' to tell you how much we appreciate you in Primary". That was very nice and thoughtful. Spoiled teachers!

These are the three pumpkins we grew in our garden this year. Yeah! I don't have to purchase any this year to carve!!!!!

This is the pumpkin Brady painted during my Primary class party. He painted both sides.

He did such a great job and is very talented. It sits on my coffee table in the living room. I love it! Thanks Brady for giving me such a fangtastic pumpkin!

Elder Kevin Stadlbauer has Returned With Honor

Kevin and his brother Shawn

Last week our missionary, and my nephew returned from serving an honorable mission in Serbia. It was really nice to see him and hear how he has grown into a wonderful man. You can see the Lords hand in him and feel his testimony of missionary work.

My sister Cindy and her husband Kelly, my Mom in mauve, Kevin behind her, Chris my oldest sister and Kevin's mother and her husband Kurt, Sondra and Brady, Shawn and his girlfriend.

This is our picture after church. Kevin gave a very inspiring and touching report of his mission. It was wonderful!

Grandma Zoey and Elder Kevin Stadlbauer. We had a nice family dinner Saturday night. It was great to get together and enjoy having Kevin home.

Missing from this picture is the eldest son, Justin - he snuck out before we took pictures. My sister Christine has 3 sons. Shawn the youngest, Kevin the middle and returned missionary, and the proud parents Chris and Kurt. They were not ready for this picture - but I thought it was fun!

Now this is a great family picture - minus Justin.

10 Gifts to Bring Home From a Mission.
President Gordon B. Hinckley

1. Knowledge of God and Christ.
2. Knowledge and love for scriptures.
3. Increased love for parents.
4. Love people who you serve.
5. Appreciation for hard work.
6. Knowledge of importance of teamwork.
7. Recognition of importance of good dress and demeanor.
8. Appreciation of the beauty and value of personal virtue.
9. Faith to act and courage to try.
10. Humility to pray.

I can say that Elder Kevin Stadlbauer brought home each of these gifts. He is a great example to our family and he served an honorable mission to the people of Serbia.

Pink Brady???

Friday night Brady's cross country team held a twilight team race. It was from about 7PM until a little after 9PM. The divided up the team into groups. Teams competed in a 1 mile race event with prizes for winning teams, best costumes, best cheers, and top 7 largest improvements from the first time trial to this one.
Brady was part of the Pink Panther team!! Yeah Pink Panthers!

This meant that they had to dress in pink. We were assigned to have the pink Halloween hair spray. Brady told me Friday that I needed to get him some pink hair spray and off I went to the store. I went to 3 different stores trying to locate Pink spray. Yeah, I found it at Fred Meyers and returned home.

However, I failed to understand that we were supplying the WHOLE team with the spray. Oh great.... off again to the store during rush hour traffic (not loving it and the mis-communication). This time I made Brady come with me. We purchased the last 2 cans on the shelf of Pink spray - giving us a total of 3 cans.... I hoped this would be enough.

I dropped Brady off at school with his pink hair spray in tow. After a dark 9 pm, I wondered how late it would be. Finally Brady called and off I went to pick him up. This is what he looked like: Grrrrrrrrr ...... Brawny steal and fast as lighting.... and PINK (he he)... Such a manly color! Someone was assigned pink shirts. I love the Pink Panther paws. Not to mention the pink hair. Yes.... there was enough for the team members to all have pink hair. AND Beautiful PINK legs....

Brady earned 10th place for best improvement in time for a 1 mile race. Woo Hoo. He received this cute adidas baby sandle... Yeah for Brady! It's great that he is continually improving!

Here are The Team Time Trial results:

Overall

1st Dylan 4:41 Yellow

2nd Taylor 4:53 Blue

3rd Michael 5:01 Silver

4th Chris 5:02 Black

5th Clayton 5:04 Silver

6th Ryan 5:07 Black

7th Sam 5:12 Pink

8th Nick 5:15 Pink

9th Rorie 5:16 Blue

10th Callie 5:21 Yellow

11th Sora 5:23 Blue

12th Lila 5:30 Silver

13th Taylor B 5:42 Yellow (Cherie's son) Woo Hoo Taylor a Freshman. He will be the one to watch in the coming years!

14th Becca 5:46 Silver

15th Zach 5:47 Yellow

16th Dan 5:47 Yellow

17th Chelsea 5:50 Black

18th Brady 6:00 Pink Yeah a 6 minute mile... I think that is awesome!

19th Nathan 6:01 Blue

20th Cody 6:04 Black

21st Connor 6:08 Pink

22nd Molly 6:08 Black

23rd Sarah 6:10 Pink

24th Connor 6:12 Pink

25th Ashley 6:15 Black

26th Meghan 6:20 Yellow

27th Jessica 6:20 Silver

28th Cipi 6:31 Silver

29th Sara 6:56 Black

30th Kristina 6:58 Blue

31st Kara 7:50 Silver

32nd Kelsey 8:08 Blue

Team Scores

Yellow 55 (oops we had a problem with the timing system!)

Silver 61

Blue 71

Black 88

Pink 94

This race was such a success that it will now be an annual event for the team. Coach Rusty makes everything so fun. Who would have thought high school boys were be OK wearing pink? I just loved it!

Flashback Friday - Halloween

When Jason was a baby, my sister Cindy made Carebear outfits for her girls and Jason. Jason is "Grumpy Bear". Next to him is his cousin Laura is "Love-A-Lot Bear".

Kind of crooked, but isn't Jason the cutest little Halloween stuffed animal ever? I had soooo much fun playing with this one - it is my favorite :-D.

Now here is a vampire I would let "suck my blood". He is my all time favorite vampire - above Edward and Stefan. Jason is the vampire of my heart!

I'm a Winner of Scentsy Products

I'm super excited that I have won a fabulous prize from Shauna's site, "Trying to Stay Calm". There is a button on my side bar for her fun site. She has give aways every day and it is awesome, especially when you win. Woo Hoo!

I've entered a bunch of times and now I have finally won a prize. I won a Scentsy warmer and I picked out the Grapevine warmer. This will fit into my kitchen decorations of chefs and grapes. Isn't it beautiful?

I'm not sure how it works because I have never been to a party. However I see the scent blocks around my customers houses. A few of them have the wall plug ins from Scentsy.

I also get 3 scent bricks. The flavors I chose were: Cinnamon Vanilla, Vanilla Walnut, and Sticky Cinnamon Bun. As you can tell, vanilla is my favorite candle flavor. I love the fall and holiday smells with a spiciness to it. I hope they smell delicious!

Have you ever tried a Scentsy product? What flavors do you like?

I am really excited to receive this in the mail. If I love it, they may have a new customer with the give away.

Spooktacular Decorations!

I FINALLY put up my Halloween decorations. I know you are shocked. Of course I am the decorating queen for every holiday, but this year I postponed putting up my decorations until after Lawrence's (AKA Larry) visit. This past Saturday while Brady was in Bend Oregon for a cross country meet I decided to pull out my many totes with Halloween decorations and get them put up.

Every time I start to unload a tote, I can't believe how many things I have. I get a little overboard on holiday decorations - it's my weakness.

Here are the scary spiders that adorn the fireplace rock. Oh how I wish I had a mantel - but alas, I don't yet.... but one day I will and then I can decorate that too! Until then - it is just a scary spider ridden view. I opted not to have spider webbing since I have started to build fires in this cold fall season.
My wicked witch hangs on my living room wall.

This is a view of my living room coffee table. I love my new furniture and color on the walls. Everything looks so warm and inviting!

Here is a close up to my Halloween ghouls.

And a close up of my favorite witch!

My piano scarecrows and fall flowers. (not to mention that beautiful flash in the picture-LOL)

My Kitchen:

This is on top of my fridge.

On top of the microwave.

Kitchen table and window.

A close up to my witch in the window and her cat... I am a very witchy house..

My Bathroom...

It all starts with some bats.

Behind the sink.

Don't you love the feather haired witches... Love them!! - here is a close up!

Click here for our outside decorations from last year and it looks pretty much the same this year.

Boo!!!