Still here :)

Yes, it's been a while. My goal last fall was to make a blog, and I achieved that goal. I guess keeping up the blog was not on my priority list, hehe. It's still here though and it was nice to read the few other blogs on my page that I haven't looked at in months either. So anyways, just a quick post to say I'm still here and I'm planning to write more :)

Party time!

We decided to have a Halloween party all because of this invitation! We found this cute idea in a magazine and then re-produced it! Even though it was a fun party, I think the invite was the best!

The scroll inside says, "We're dying to have you over" with the party details. We had a few friends over from the ward. One fun thing we did was carve a pumpkin all together. Each person drew a piece of paper that said one part of the face (nose, left eye, right side of mouth, etc). After each person carved their part, they'd tape paper over it so nobody could see the other parts. Then we took off all the paper and it was pretty funny. Here's a pic of the result.

Oreo truffles that are so delicious! My new specialty, haha! I even drizzled some orange frosting on them to make them look more professional. I definitely need to work on my drizzling skills!

Some other snacks we had to go with our pizza!

I love pumpkin seeds! I saved these to bake for my kindergarteners!

I also took some pics of random decorations we have for Halloween. I promised Kyle's mom I'd send pics, so here ya go! These pumpkins are on our house lights, so they look cool at night.

One of my only "cutsie" things outside. Kyle wants the outside to be scary, haha!

My Halloween mat I got at Dollar Tree!

My cute scarecrow and frame. Kyle snuck a scull in there, lol.

Our graveyard

Nasty

This is what we picked at Michael's with our 40% off coupon, haha. Kyle is going to put a strobe light behind it. It actually looks pretty cool.

This isn't Halloween, just something I made at enrichment a few weeks ago.

It says, "Charlton Family Est. August 14, 2010"

And lastly... a peak at our costumes! I'm dressing up as a moose from "If you give a moose a muffin". We're supposed to dress like a book character for school. Hopefully I can get the moose ears to perk up. It was actually a fake moose rug I found at a thrift store and cut head and paws off, lol. Clever clever. Kyle is dressing as a star trek alien for those of you who don't know about

his Star Trek craziness, haha.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Fall!

Yay for Fall! Since it's October 1st, I found it fitting to get out our Halloween/Thanksgiving decorations. Canadian Thanksgiving is next week! Being only our 2nd Halloween married, we both have decorations which we brought with us to the marriage. So I started pulling out a few nasty things like severed limbs and puddles of blood and finally just started putting all of Kyle's gruesome Halloween decorations in one pile, while I put mine in another. As you can easily tell, my pile has many cutesy happy Halloween decorations, while Kyle's pile tells a very different story, haha. Here are some pics of our piles :)

Kim's Pile

A cute little ghost my mom gave me a few years ago :)

Picture frame I got at Target for $1.00

Kyle's pile
All I have to say is... beware if you come trick-or-treating to our house. hehe

Balloon Rally Weekend

We went to my hometown of Prosser, Wa for the Great Prosser Balloon Rally. We experienced the whole works... waking up early to see them set-up and take off, walking down the bridge to see them touch down into the water, the street fair, and then night glow that evening. Fun times with family! Here are some pics!

Getting the balloons all set-up Saturday morning.

This is my little sister and two of my nieces with us!

All the balloons beginning to lift off

Balloons over the Yakima River

Ready for the night glow to begin

Night Glow

Remembered

Last week, a little boy from our elementary school passed away.   He was in an older grade and I did not know him.  I always have to question the purpose for a child's death, I know I shouldn't. I guess this boy at our school had some heart problems and surgeries previously.  Our school had a special circle of friendship for him where all the 4th graders wrote messages to him and sent them up in balloons.  I was not there that day (didn't think my Kindergarteners would understand or behave calmly), but I was told that the song, "Somewhere over the rainbow" was playing as they let the balloons go and at that point a rainbow appeared in the sky.  Here is a picture from a co-worker.   A real testament that God is in control, no matter the purpose.   
                     

When I was in High School, I did an internship in a Kindergarten classroom to see if I really wanted to go into teaching.  I was in  that classroom for 2 hours a day.  Kindergarteners have a funny way of getting into your heart.  That year, one of the girls in my class, little Becky, was in a car accident with her mom and 2 baby sisters.  They slid off an icy road into the river and all drowned.  Whenever I would go back to the Kindergarten class, my heart was pained when the other little girls would tell me that Becky wasn't there, that she had died.  A sweet little 5 year old. That was almost 10 years ago.  I guess the point of this blog post is to say that I remember.  That she is remembered. 

Wal-Mart Fun

So while I waited for hours (seriously) to get my new battery at Wal-Mart (yes, for our new car, haha), I found this creepy decoration in the Halloween aisle. First it yells at you, then it has this really evil mad man kind of laugh, and it was shaking so much I thought it would fall off the shelf!

New (Old) Car!

So our trusty little car named Robe (pronounced Robie, it's a Probe, but the letter P fell off many moons ago, so it just says robe on the back), has been making me nervous this week. This car has driven me so many places and helped me out so much. It took me from Washington to Rexburg numerous times my last year of college, and then from Washington to Utah for my student teaching. It has driven me to Canada to see Kyle. This summer it has taken us all the way to Los Angeles and everywhere inbetween. I have put over 60,000 miles on that car in the past 4 years. Kyle and I have managed fine for a whole year with only 1 car, but now that Robe is threatening to stall at every stop sign, we started looking into buying a second car. We've been looking on Craigslist and at a few dealerships, but today, we found something we really love. It's nothing close to a new car, but for us, it's something we've both always wanted, an SUV. It's big enough for a few kids, which we hope to have in a few years, haha. So even though the gas mileage on this car will be half the mpg we get with Robe, we're very happy to have a 2nd car without having a car payment still! We got it for only $1800, yay us! It's a '97 Ford Explorer.  We have yet to find a good name for it, but are open to suggestions :)