Two Minnies

Ashton called this morning on the way to her school where she is currently a first year teacher.  It's Halloween and she dressed up as Minnie Mouse.  My thoughts immediately rushed back to my first year of teaching.  Guess what I dressed up as???  Yep, Minnie Mouse!  Kind of a deja vu moment.  I guess we are just a little related and think alike every once in a while.

Costume Crazies

Another empty nest moment.....Halloween has a whole different feeling this time of year with only one in my nest.  As any mother knows Halloween and the days leading up to it can be downright SCARY when you have children with grandiose dreams of what they want to be for the Scariest night of the year and you have to make it happen! I remember working so hard to create my children's costumes.  Ashton's pink princess costume that changed at the last minute into a pink bride.  I scrambled trying to transform the amazing princess costume that I had sewn into a bride, saving us from a young girls' tears by creating a long pink bridal veil out of leftover fabric. And it worked!  A happy bride trotted down the street in search of sweets. 

Dallin was always my ultra, creative, out of the box child who seemed to want something a little different every year.  We had our fair share of superheroes, ninjas and knights but the year of the lion with Dallin was awesome!  I spent hours looping yarn around the hood of a sweatshirt and sewing it by machine to create the fabulous lion mane.  It took hours and I have to admit that there is a bald spot in the back of his lion's head where I just couldn't sew another loop of yarn onto that silly sweatshirt.  Nobody ever noticed, but I know it's there.  Landon and Easton have both used the lion costume since then and it bugs me knowing that I didn't give 100% and finish the dang thing.  The year of my two little musketeers was great.  Landon had planned on being a musketeer but as I created Landon's costume Easton made it very clear that he wanted to be what Landon was.  He knew the color of the fabric was burgundy so he thought that Landon was going to be a "burgundy".  When people would ask what little Easton was going to be for Halloween he would proudly tell them, "a burgundy!"  Creating a robot for Landon out of foil cooking pans had to be one of the all-time best.  Landon got so many compliments from the people passing out candy and he was happy.  It was hard for him to walk and carry candy with the silver dryer tubing that that encased his arms and legs, but it was worth the discomfort.

As I pour over the Halloween scrapbook at the Halloween costumes of our past I really do have wonderful memories of trying to create special moments for my children.  I wanted them to feel cool and successful in their costumes.  I wanted them to have the costumes of their dreams.  I wanted them to feel loved and special.  I hate to admit it but, I do miss the creative process I went through each year.  As stressful as it was, I enjoyed the finished product....a happy child!  And guess what Easton, my cool seventh grader is going to be this year???  A lion with a bald spot on the back of his head.  I still have little time today, maybe I should fix it!

Pumpkin Pickin'

 A visit to the pumpkin patch for Family Home Evening was the event of Monday evening.  It was time to pick out the Carroll pumpkin for our Halloween decoration.

Easton picks a nice, hefty one!

Craig is analyzing all of the pumpkins.

Little Big Brother

Look who's in town....my brother, Craig!  He popped in for a few days while he had some work meetings in Atlanta.  We had a great time eating at Monterrey (Mexican) and talking into the wee hours of the nights.  Two thirty a.m. is a little late for this old lady, but we were having too much fun and the time just got away from us!  Glad he paid us a visit.

100 Years

It's the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America!  We went to a celebratory broadcast this evening put on by the LDS church in Salt Lake with Easton, our only scout left in the house.  I was expecting some boring speakers and was very pleasantly surprised.  It was a huge production with choirs, singing, narration, video clips and stories.  I was thoroughly entertained and even got a little teary at times.  Having been a mom of two Eagle scouts and working with another son on the path to Eagle I know how much work these boys do to earn ranks.  It's a great program that builds character and honor and grows boys.   It teaches values and service.  I'm grateful that scouting has been around for a 100 years!  Happy Anniversary!

Chili ChowDown

Oh, the annual, fall tradition of the chili dinner happened last night.  It's just something we do every year and we like it.  It's fun to have traditions, something you count on every year to bring the family together.  We've been eating chili in October for as long as I can remember in my lifetime.  The entire Carroll clan was invited and we had a special guest appearance this year from my brother, Craig who lives in New York.  He was in Atlanta to attend some meetings for work.  We had around 34 people this year in every nook and cranny of the house!  Some of the children ate outside on blankets "picnic style".  Three crock pots of chili were devoured with only one measly serving of chili put away for leftovers.  

 Spencer and Keegan

 Cousins in Costumes this year!

 The Carroll brothers minus David

 Hanging on the trampoline

 Craig entertains.  He was roommates with Stephen's brother Brent in college so he was sharing "college stories".  The truth always come out!

 Easton and Blaise

 The adult table

 Papa Carroll

 Mama enjoying time with the newest grandchild, Reya (Brent and Thomasyn's daughter)

Charlie slurped up some leftover chili that was left outside.  He also snatched a Hershey kiss and cookie for dessert!  A much needed bath was given after the guests went home.

Chaperoning

 We had an adventure this weekend in Athens, Georgia.  I was a chaperone for Easton's middle school Honors chorus event.  The chosen few from his middle school chorus headed up to Athens (about an hour away) on Friday for hours of practice with other honor chorus students from the district.  They practiced all day with a few breaks.  I arrived by car in the early evening just in time to walk with the herd of middle schoolers to their designated dinner spot.  We wound through the streets of Athens, ending up at a huge park area on the University of Georgia campus.


Chick Fil A dinner was provided for the masses and the kids just hung out and ate and were typical goofy adolescents!  It was fun to watch them in action.  Middle schoolers are loud and really funny!  The girls laugh at everything and purposely do things to get attention, but they only do that when they are in the safety of a huge group of friends....then they just laugh hysterically secretly hoping that everyone around them is watching.  I did some serious observing on my chaperoning adventure!  Boys and girls at this age are so different.  After dinner they went back to practicing some more until 9:30 in the evening.  We headed to the hotel and slowly but surely got everyone in the right rooms and settled in.  I shared a room with another mother chaperone.  Can I just say that it was a super awkward situation to be in, sharing a room with someone you've never met and then trying to sleep.  It was after midnight and I just couldn't sleep.  It was weird to hear someone in the bed next to me breathing/snoring and not know them.  If I go next year I am going to just spend a little extra money and get my own room, maybe even share it with my husband!  Ha!

We got up the next morning and were out the door by 8:20 having eaten breakfast and loaded the cars with everyone's luggage.  The kids headed by bus to the Classic Center for more rehearsal and I hung out in the waiting area crocheting for three hours until we broke for lunch.  The other moms headed to Starbucks for their coffee fix.  They just gotta have their coffee to get 'em going in the morning!  We broke for lunch and took a brisk walk through town to quickly get the the Five Guys.  

We seriously inhaled our hamburgers so we could walk back to the "meet your parents" location to hand off the kids luggage before the concert started.  After the luggage was distributed my chaperone duties were completed.  I went to the concert hall to get a seat and wait for Stephen to appear.  The concert was well done and the music selections were great.  Easton's mixed women/mens group was great and they were very professional.  I loved seeing this bunch a students work so hard and for so long to prepare a top notch performance.  Way to go middle schoolers! 

After the concert we went to a greasy grill to get Easton a celebratory milkshake and some food for Stephen.  That was an adventure!  Stephen and Easton were slurping on their chocolatey shakes while we were browsing through the pictures on my phone that I had taken of the weekend's events.  Stephen reached over the table to grab my phone and knocked over his shake.  It went everywhere!!!!  All over the table, floor, bench and all down the front of Stephen.  He had it on his pants, shirt, jacket, sock, and shoes.  It even went into his boots down to his feet.  Ugh!  He was an absolute mess.  The server helped us clean it up and we got a good laugh out of that one.  Dad was just slightly embarrassed!  Duh!  He's always fun to have around.  We drove home in separate cars.  I took a pit stop at the Outlet mall to get some jeans, poor Stephen just had to go straight home because he was a mess.

Stephen works on cleaning up his mess!

Hats

These fun little hats arrived in a box from Brazil last week.  What a fun surprise and I almost missed receiving them.  I have this habit of not answering the door if I am home alone and am not expecting anyone.  When the doorbell rang I sneaked around the corner to see who was standing there.  It was a man that I didn't recognize so I ignored it and walked away.  Charlie (the dog) just kept barking and the doorbell rang again.  So, finally I answered it and it was the mailman with a package from Brazil that I needed to sign for.  I'm so glad I opened that door.

Dallin said these are old traditional Brazilian cowboy hats and that the poor people on the streets still wear them.  He said he was going to keep them and just bring them home when he was done with the mission but they smelled like manure and were stinking up his apartment so he had to send them and get rid of them.

Spooky Performance

My favorite piano recital of the year happened last Saturday.  It's our Fall recital and it's really fun!  My piano students work hard learning their songs to perform for the audience and this recital is extra cool because we get to wear our costumes for it.  How awesome is that?!?  With great excitement my students and their supportive families arrive all decked out in their Halloween attire.  Some of our costumes were ninjas, peacocks, cowgirls, monsters, and Superheroes.   We had such a variety of costumes this year, showcasing some serious creativity.  I even get involved dressing up every year.  This year I was a scarecrow thanks to an old costume that I put together for Ashton many years ago.  That big ol' costume box that I throw every possible thing in that could potentially be part of a costume in the basement sure comes in handy.  It's good to be that person who keeps everything because "you just might need it someday!"

I definitely have fun teaching this group of children piano.  We laugh a lot and enjoy making music together.  I am grateful to be able to bring the gift of music into their lives.