Happy 243rd Birthday Marines!

 On Friday they held the Pageant at the theater.  Dan and I invited the missionaries and we attended it.  It was pretty awesome.  Well, it is the Marine Corps Birthday Pageant, so how could it be anything but awesome?! I thought it was pretty cool that they had the high school JROTC cadets doing the uniforms thru the years.  The cake cutting was nice to see, and I suddenly thought that perhaps I should take a picture of it.

My sole photo of the Pageant.  

Friday evening was out Ball.  As we were heading out, Dan realized he needed to put the trash cans in.  So he did that.  And I was amused.

Delaney took this photo for us.

And we got a selfie at the Ball!

Recent Happenings

Delaney went in for a sleep study.  Dan went with her and sent this photo.  He said she really wasn't as distressed as it looks in this photo.  The sturdy went well (for her!  Dan had to sleep on the floor), and we will pick up the results this week. 

We celebrated the end of the school quarter with lunch out in town.  We tried a new restaurant that was full-on Japanese. 

When you walked in, you picked your food and paid at a machine.  We were a little unsure about some things, so we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.  It was the best! Everyone was delighted with their meal.  So much so that I only took these three pictures.

On the left is delicious tonkatsu (breaded and fried to perfection!) chicken in fried rice with an egg cracked on it as it is served, so the egg cooks in the hot dish.  And on the right is yummy curry rice and tonkatsu chicken.  It was so good! 

This is the result of 3 hours of rolling change with two other ladies.  The middle school PTO (of which I am a part) is raising money through "Penny Wars" and the kids dump all their change into jars in their homeroom.  Apparently we did not think through this idea.....  On the plus side, it has made $400 in 2 weeks. But rolling 4500 pennies and yennies is incredibly tedious!

This is my face when my sister sends a surprise care package!

Halloween

 Callie stayed in to pass out candy.  She likes to do that. Marian doesn't like people, so she hung out in the back bedroom with her book.  Josh ran off to the library to do homework in peace.  Delaney had a friend she went out with, which left me and Rylee.  I walked Rylee the 1/2 mile to her friend Maggie's house and then we traipsed all over the neighborhood. I do love that the base mandate was Trick or Treating Hours were 6-8pm.  It was nice to know exactly when you could start and when it was over.  We did a LOT of walking, and hauled in a lot of candy.

Rylee is a bat. We made her the cute wings with some awesome spiderweb fabric that Delaney donated to the cause.  Rylee was delighted with the result.

Can you guess who Delaney is?!! If you have watched the Disney Zombies movie, then you know she is Zed.  I thought she did a fabulous job on her costume! And her hair id totally green.

A too-dark photo of Rylee and Maggie.

A Doggie Tale

 What is Levi looking at?!

Callie's food! 

So, Callie loves Levi. But she loves all animals.  And she talked us into another foster project.  We did not make a wise decision.  We let her say yes to the first dog needing a foster home.  In her defense, it did meet our requirements- potty trained and kennel trained.  Unfortunately, we need to add "not a marker" to the list.

We were suppose to meet the lady with the foster organization at 4:30.  She was late, so the girls killed time.

We ended up with Briggs.  He is super cute and pretty sweet.  But he does not know how to be a dog. 

This was the closest he and Levi got.  Briggs simply did not care about Levi at all.   

 Briggs is a cute dog. And he did not bark, or get into the trash, or chew stuff. He does have epilepsy, and he has medications for it.  But he still had 3 seizures in 3 hours on Halloween.  So that was a learning experience. 

It took him a couple days to warm up enough to snuggle or to let us pet him much. 

He was a spaz in the car.  He had to be buckled in or he'd climb all over the car and on you and if the windows were open, there was a strong concern that he would jump out.  

The downside to this cute face is that he felt the need to pee on every wall and corner and door to mark it as his territory. And he was sneaksy!  I would find sprinkles of pee everywhere, no matter how well I thought I had watched him. Sneasky!! 

He did not show the belly till day 5.  And while he was very sweet, it was not enough to make up for the peeing all over.  I do not like cleaning up pee! Especially when it isn't something he would easily train out of. 

But oh, he was a nice little dog, aside from that!

Fortunately, we had committed to take him for only a week.  And they were able to find him another foster family in that time.  So we had him Monday to Monday.  And I'm not going to lie, I was glad to see his pee-sprinkling self go.  Especially once I discovered he had left a parting gift.  Somehow in the 15 minutes I had left Marian and Callie's bedroom door open, he had snuck in there and marked the laundry basket (of clean clothes!!). The little bugger.  We discovered the wet spot after they came home from school, hours after he had left. 

Branch Fall Fest

The Branch held it's Halloween activity on Saturday evening.  The Relief Society was in charge and did a great job.  they put different activities and games in each room and the kids could go do each event and collect candy at it.  I sat at a booth where they could make thumbprint pumpkin pictures.  Callie brought her friend Sofia, and they manned a game.  Marian helped out at the face painting table.  Much fun was had by all.

On the way to the church.  Very excited.

Marian wore this sweet convict uniform, and Rylee was jelly... to match Delaney's Peanut butter side.

Marian at her booth.

She did an awesome job.

Callie and Sofia doing their thing.

Rylee got a great spiderweb on her cheek.

She loved it so much, she went back for a bat on the other cheek.

Delaney also wanted her face done.

She went with a ghost.

Marian wanted a full photo of her costume.  This is her "Before"

She had Morgan paint her face.

And here is the "After"! 

They had this amazing photo op set up.  So we took advantage. 

Spooky girls. 

 Peanut Butter and Jelly!

She loved that mustache.

A gaggle of silly girls.

 Did I mention how silly they are?!

Marian needed one final selfie before she took off the paint.