Happy Halloween!

This was the first year that I got to decorate my very own house for Halloween. I was pretty excited. That is. . . until I discovered I really don't have any money to buy regular house decorations. . . let alone Halloween stuff! I did end up getting a Frankenstein towel that was put downstairs in the "guest" bathroom. I don't know if I even had one guest in that bathroom to enjoy my one and only October decoration! I got to use it however. . . and am thoroughly impressed with how soft it is. . . that I am considering keeping it up year round!!

I did buy an outside Halloween welcome hanging thing. I tried hanging it up, and it got super windy and just blew down like the same night! So I ended up taking it back inside, and never attempted again to get it hung back up. . .


On Friday night, I got Nephi to carve pumpkins with me for the second year in a row. I needed a Jack o Lantern to show the kidletts that this was a house to hit on Halloween night!! Last year when we carved pumpkins, we made the delicious tortilla soup as well. It was very tasty of course, but I think I much prefer the Jack o lantern pizza tradition instead. Let's face it. . . I am just not a cook!!




Now, two nights later, my pumpkin has already withered, and the light inside of it ran out of batteries. I did however somewhat put my sign back outside. The nail is lost, so the sign just kind of got propped up against the post on the house.


Oh well-- I turned the porch light on. . . hopefully the kiddos will still feel welcome!

Here's to better decorating next year. . . .

Happy Halloween!

Why Las Vegas is better than California. . .

I seriously do NOT make these things up. . .



Emily keeps telling us that she is moving to California in January. But today she told me that they are leaving sooner than they thought. . .

Miss Kelly: So when are you guys going now?

Emily: ummm. . I'm not sure. Sometime before December 15th though.

Miss Kelly: Why December 15th?

Emily: Because after December 15, the airports in California will all be shut down because of the volcano that is going to explode sometime around then.

Hmmm. . .I guess her family wants to be prepared and settled BEFORE the imaginary massive volcano erupts causing the state to shut down. . .

Quite the little party. . .

This redbox is where my story officially starts. . . this very redbox, located in the Indianapolis airport many many months ago. For this is the redbox I was standing at when I first learned that there was going to be a little baby Kunz. . .

A couple of months ago, I was talking to Molly about a baby shower for her. Would someone plan something in Indiana. . would she have one in California . . . or what? She didn't really know if someone would throw her one in Indiana, but she doesn't know a ton of people in California still, so I offered to fly out to Indiana and throw the shower for her! I was pretty excited, and ended up getting mom and Bonnie in on the plan as well. Good thing for that!

Bonnie was up and running with all the plans. Her and Molly seemed to be on the phone a lot, so at one point I complained about not being involved enough. . . but then Bonnie would give me a choice about something and I wouldn't really know which one to choose. . . all her ideas seemed great to me! So in the end. . . this is what I was in charge of.


No. . . not the cutlery. . . the buckets! I showed up to Indiana with four pink buckets I stole from the classroom- and that was it! That was my baby shower "to do" list!

Bonnie on the other hand. . . did amazing things. . . she basically brought a whole baby shower in a suitcase. . . I think everyone was pretty impressed!




but let me back up a little. I took Friday off of work, and flew out to Indiana Thursday night. I was flying standby, so of course I didn't go straight to Indiana. I left Vegas around 8 pm and arrived in Indy at about 8:45 am Friday. It was a three leg route, lousy seats, and actual very little down time in airports. . . I just went way out of the way to get to where I wanted to be! But it was free, so I really can't complain there can I??

Mom, Bonnie, and bon's kids arrived the night before from San Diego. Unfortunately, there were car issues, and timing issues, so I didn't actually get picked up until 10:30 am (hence I had time to take random airport redbox pictures).

So Molly and her little welcome crew finally came for me and we were off for quite the busy weekend! Friday we did lots of shopping, and eating, and decorating. I was out sometime in the night, while the others stayed up until 2 in the morning continuing down the list of things to do. On Saturday, we spent the day at home. Some were cooking, others were decorating, and I found my place in the nursery for practically the whole day putting up this tree. . .

Yes, that adorable tree was in fact, over 150 separate pieces to put together. Quite the lengthy process, but it turned out perfect.

The party started Saturday night. Lots of Molly's friends came, and Bryan's parents drove in from Michigan.
It was a pretty splendid evening. She got lots of cute stuff, we played some not too heinous baby games, and ate a ton!



After the guests all went home, we slowly started in on some of the clean up. At one point, Cayd went to the back room to change into his pj's, but came back out wearing some fresh new pants and a shirt announcing that "mom said we aren't going to bed tonight!"

The family had a 5:30 am flight Sunday so someone got the "good" idea that it would probably be easier to stay up all night and sleep on the plane, rather than waking up early. For some odd reason I went with it, realizing later that they got to go and sleep on the plane that morning, on the other hand, Molly and I had to go sit through three hours of church!

Mom and I were the only ones that actually made it to the 4 am wake up time, but Molly got pretty close as well.

And this story kind of fizzles out there. . . Family left, we went to church, came home and ate some lunch, then it was my turn to head out to the airport in the late afternoon. Such a busy busy weekend, but totally worth it!

Why Las Vegas is better than Indiana. . .

A little background. . .

Joel is a boy in my class. He moved here from Indiana. He is always talking about Indiana. . .

Our conversation today. . .

Miss Kelly : Hey Joel- guess where I'm going today?

Joel: Where?

Miss Kelly: Indiana!

Joel: Awww. . . you are so lucky!!

Miss Kelly: When did you move away?

Joel: When I was like 4. . . before I started Kindergarten

Miss Kelly: Do you have family there? Do you get to go back often?

Joel: My grandma and grandpa used to live in Pennsylvania. . . but when we moved here, they moved into our old house!

Miss Kelly: cool! Why did you guys move here?

Joel: Well. . . the church was kind of weird there. It was really big and crowded. We had to go on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays and Sundays! And the cafeteria was too small. . . there were too many kids. So you had to go on weird days, like Saturday and Sundays.

Miss Kelly: Hmm. . . did you go to a church school?

Joel: Kinda. They had this basement there. You got to eat snacks down there. You also had naps down there everyday. My mom was afraid that I would eat a snack, then take a nap and fall asleep, then I would choke. So we moved to Las Vegas.


hmmmm.. .
Indiana. . . choking capital of the world??

Vocabulary Fun

In the kids vocabulary quiz today, the instructions read:

Describe someone you know. Use the word elderly.



My favorite response:

My grandma is elderly. She's like 52! (no joke!!)

Whoops. . . my mistake!

So I have mixed feelings about any of the Dollar Store type places. I mean. . . who in their right mind goes in there and actually buys underwear?? I definitely believe in bargains, and I love being able to buy the puppy a new toy for just a buck, but those kinds of stores sometimes just gross me out.

Being in the profession I am however, it was nine o'clock at night and I found myself in need of a lot of random junk for work tomorrow. Of course when I am looking for stuff for work, I usually need lots of it, and it needs to be pretty dang cheap. Where else can you buy Dominoes, ping pong balls, toothpicks, marshmallows, and mini puzzles all for just a dollar??
So I got into my fancy Dollar store apparel, headed out, and shortly found myself in the company of some other Dollar store shoppers. I filled my basket, got into line, and as I pulled out my money to pay... I noticed my hands. . .


WHAT IN THE WORLD??






I left the store feeling so grossed out and annoyed. Seriously, maybe saving money is not worth it when I literally come out of there dirty!!

So I come home and try to wash my hands of this ink that doesn't seem to want to come off. I pull out the nail polish remover (cuz hey- that takes out everything!) and got my hands pretty decently back to their correct color. . .

Then as I am laying on my bed I notice these purple marks all over my comforter- and not far from these purple marks. . . a chewed up black pen. . .

DANG DOG!!!

......................................................................................
Dear Dollar Store,
I apologize for calling you dirty, when it is actually my own home that seems to be in shambles. Thanks you for all of your wonderful deals. I will be back soon.
Your # 1 Fan,
Shawna

And that's what friends are for. . .

It was a pretty exhausting weekend. . . so hopefully I can make this snappy!

A friend of mine and her husband were going to Italy for a week. Grandma agreed to babysit the kids, but mom was looking for someone a bit on the "funner" side to take the kids for the weekend, so I was asked.
I needed to be up in Summerlin by 5 am Saturday morning. First thing on my arrival, my friend gave me a hug and apologized for making me wake up with a 4 on my clock. It was pretty funny.
I told her, "no worries, that's why I showed up in my Pj's, I'll just take a little snooze on the couch and I'll be good to go!" That's when 3 hyper little children came running downstairs with no intentions on going back to sleep. . . and I realized it was going to be a pretty long day!
Considering I was hired for my "fun-ness," I knew that sitting around all weekend was not going to be an option. So around 8 am while I was already building a robot, the topic of breakfast came up. They told me that they have pancake mix (that wasn't going to work for me!). . . then the little one slyly told me that they like Dunkin Donuts too. . . and that was an option i was more willing to take! And that is when our busy little weekend began! In two days we were able to fit in a baseball game, several park visits, skymania, color me mine, and a birthday bbq. Not to mention, we ate lots of junk food.
On Saturday night, my plan to exhaust the children and have them in bed early actually worked. We redboxed Marmaduke and the kids were knocked out by like 8 oclock!
On Sunday the kids were up by 8, ready to roll! They wanted to ride their scooters around the block while I walked Doogle but then were feeling sorry for their own dog so asked me if I would walk both dogs. Yeah- trying to drag a spazzy little puppy and a large blind dog probably looked as silly as I felt, but somehow we managed.




We are at the local neighborhood park when Grandma showed up in the early evening Sunday. We all walked into the house together to discover that the diabetic dog (which I also got to give shots to) had eaten an entire plate of leftover cupcakes that were brought home from bbq. . . whoops! No worries. . . grandma says it happens all the time and that's probably why he is diabetic to begin with.
It was a pretty fun weekend if I do say so myself. The kids were actually really good and got along with each other so well. Poor little Doogle was such a little sport too. He had a blast, but I got many pleading stares as the kids constantly hoisted him up to carry him away, or send him down a slide.
Usually in the car, Doogle is always attempting to ride on my lap. Today however, on our ride home, he chose to go to the very back of the car and sit on top of all the stuff that I had to drag with me just for our one overnight stay. He looked so silly back there so I (safely) snapped a picture of him.