Grandma Lou's Halloween Party

Grandma Lou spent a whole bunch of time and energy preparing for her annual pumpkin carving party and dinner.  This year, the house was full - Attendees were as follows - Andy, Tina, Taylei, Keanna and Kyler Williams; Grandma Lou and Grandpa Craig; Diane; Mary Dawn and Braden Meier; Nikkii, Kynlee and Kenzee Sperry; Granny Bailey; Dan, Lisa, Zeak, Jake and Kaci Woodland; Skip, Tracy, Jaxson, Talyx and Lexxis Tischner; Mike, Susie, Daniella, Genika, and Brenton Allred - plus a very special witch.  I usually spend the whole night sitting at the table carving and scooping "guts" but I was a late arrival this year (I had to present at a stake primary training).  

Kyler was sleeping when he arrived at the party and he didn't wake up on the right side of the couch and he was extremely tired and/or irritated for most of the party.  It definitely isn't worth waking him up anytime.  Due to this fact, there are many evenings that he falls asleep on our way home from work and then wakes up around 9 pm.  He is then awake until midnight - when this happens, Andy and I start a movie for him when we go to bed and he is quite content to watch it.  We are only woke up when the movie ends and we need to start a new one. 

When we were at Gardner's Village yesterday, there was a booth where you could make yourself a broom.  The cost for said broom was $3 or 2 for $5 .  They were quite cute but we decided we would stop on the way home and purchase the supplies to make our own during the party.  They turned out even cuter than those we got the idea from.  Wouldn't it be neat if Taylei could get the broom to fly her around the house and back?
For quite some time, Keanna and Dan have had quite the rivalry regarding who the biggest loser is (I guess it would be more appropriate to say who can find the largest object in the shape of an L and show it to the other person first).  Posting about it seems like it is a horrible mean thing but it really is done in the spirit of love and fun.  Well, this little competition continued on to the pumpkin carving as evidenced by this pumpkin Dan made for Keanna.

This is a horrible picture - but you do with what you can.  As part of my primary training I taught the new song "My Eternal Family."  This song is about building an eternal family.  I spent a considerable amount of time praying about how I could present it that would give the music leaders an idea and also to inspire them a little.  I had ideas but nothing solid and the meeting was only 3 hours away.  Heavenly Father blessed me though and I figured it out.  I took a minute to do an early family home evening lesson and showed the lesson to the few families that were left at the end of the night.

This is a picture of the all of the masterpieces that were carved/painted for the evening.  I think Taylei ended up carving/decorating 4 pumpkins - Keanna got two in and if you look close you can see Kyler and his purplish/blue pumpkin that Kyler painted.  Taylei was really hoping to paint her pumpkins but my intent was to bring the paint to do a little face painting on the children (this was to help make up for the disappointing lack of face painting at Gardner Village).  I was late getting there and so Taylei ended  up getting what she wanted.  The pumpkin were cute with paint but even though acrylic paint is water based I've never figured out how to get it out of clothes.  The paints will not be coming next year.