Halloween Fun

 Halloween came up quick this year as we are all preoccupied with 100 other things.  We still managed to have a little bit of fun and enjoy the time together.

 Some pre-Halloween crafts are always a must.  This year they got mixed in with homework as well, but we had fun anyway.  Trunk-or-Treat at church is always fun too.

 Trunk-or-Treat and pumpkin carving with spooky houses!  It's like gingerbread, but for Halloween.

 Noah's cell.  He had to build this for science class.  I've been in heaven this year with him in the class.  It's right up my alley.  It was a cookie cell with candy representing the different organelles of the cell.

Halloween Night we had one of the old Tree Kids come over and celebrate with us.  We had pizza and witches brew.  It's become a tradition at our house.  Our Trick-or-treating group has gotten smaller this year, but we still managed to have a lot of fun.  The kids especially liked trading their candy after we got back home.

October posts

It was a hard October.  It was actually quite sad.  It's one of my favorite months and I just couldn't get excited about it this year.  There is much change going on in the Afualo household and I think that is why I had a hard time do anything except the basics.

 This is going to be the October catch-up post.

Yummy Halloween Treats!

It's been unseasonable warm this year and I spent the day at the beach enjoying it.

Nana and Papa came for the weekend.  It was the weekend we put the house on the market.  We loved having them with us even if it was a super busy weekend.  Lily and Noah also had a swim meet and did a fantastic job in their races.

Pumpkin Patch!!

Flying High above Scripps Ranch!

Lily, Adam and I took and afternoon off and went to Disneyland for the day. (Oct 25th)  We had a lot of fun and got to explore the new Cars Land. 

Our Traditional picture at Toy Story Mania

We love Disneyland at Halloween Time. 

A visit with Family

Family is the most important thing in my mind.  That includes all family.  So when one of my favorite cousins calls and says she is going to be in town for a week I make every effort to see her.

We had to change plans a couple times, but we were finally able to get together for dinner with Bethanne and Nathan and their family.  Oh what fun we had.  It may have been short, but we packed it in.

The kids swam in the pool/spa, we barbequed and then we went to the beach with some sparklers.  All in all a successful family outing.

We found it funny that Sam and Adam had the same pose.

Having fun...Again.

Life gets away from us some times.  We get so wrapped up in school, work, church and extra-curriculars (all good things by the way) that we forget to relax and have a little fun together.  Damon and I have talked about this a couple of times this week.  So when we found ourselves with an open weekend we decided to have fun.  The only problem was we couldn't think of anything "fun" to do.

Over the past month I've driven by a sign in Poway advertising their rodeo.  I always thought that would be a great family activity, but hadn't done anything about it.  Then yesterday a friend posted on Facebook if anyone wanted to go to the Poway Rodeo.  That was the final push for me.  I ran it by Damon and he hesitantly said that we should do it.

So the kids dug out there bandannas and we moseyed over to the Poway Rodeo.  The kids wanted to buy some cowboys hats.  So they brought some money to do a little shopping.  They found their hats and we found some seats.  We ran into lots of friends there.

 

 

 

We had a blast at the rodeo.  The kids really got into it.  We can't decide what competition we liked best.  The kids like the Jr. Barrel Racing.  Damon and I like the bull riding. Lily and I didn't like the calf tying competition.  Steer wrestling was kind of cool.

All in all, a successful night of family fun. 

1st Fall Swim Meet

 We had our first fall swim meet Saturday.  It was nice and hot. We were at the pool nice and early.  Lily was not happy about that.  She is not an early riser.  We managed to get to the pool on time though with some herculean efforts.

The kids both did really great.  Lily was a bit nervous since this was her first swim meet, but she swam hard and can now set some time goals. 

 Noah managed to take off 13 seconds from his 50m butterfly.  We were very happy about that.  He continues to try to reach the goals he set.

We are so proud of our swimmers!!

A Surprise Field Trip

Our friends, the Melanson's, were in town this past week for a work conference.  They were in Anaheim.  We had planned to spend a day or two with them.  However, life kept getting in the way.  Damon and I couldn't seem to get our schedules together to see them and the kids are super busy right now so that wasn't working either.  We didn't think we would be able to get together at all.

We figured out a plan and even though it didn't include Damon, who was busy with a luau,  the kids and I ended up driving up to Anaheim early Saturday morning.   The fun thing was that the kids didn't know what was planned so Saturday morning while they were sitting around at 6:45am watching cartoons I handed them all a sheet of paper.  It happened to be their Disneyland ticket.  It didn't dawn on them at first, but it only took 5 seconds to realize what was happening.  I wish they moved that fast on a school day.  They were ready to leave at 7:30am.

We spent a nice, but hot (hottest day on record for us) day at Disneyland with Pete and Julie.  The park wasn't even that crowded.  I was a bit surprised by that.  We haven't been to the park on a Saturday.  The kids loved being back at Disneyland (it's been a year... shocking I know) and really loved spending the day with Pete and Julie.

Pete and Julie eventually had to leave to catch their flight back to Oregon, but we stayed and played for a few more hours.  On our way out we rain into our old babysitter Kaitlyn.  She used to go with us to Disneyland a lot too.  That was fun to see her too.

All in all a good day.  Even the drive home wasn't bad.  We were exhausted when we got home, but are glad we made the effort to see our friends!