HALLOWEEN NIGHT AND BOOKS AND 9 CHILDREN!

Halloween was wonderful, because we shared it with people I've come to love a lot!  Since we can't spend Halloween with our families (who live far away) we spent it with our "adopted" families here in Kentucky!  Who are these "lucky" (some would say unfortunate since we've decided to claim them) families?  They are none other than: the Bettenhausens, the Larsens and the Schmids.  The Melansons were also invited but got sick at the last minute!

Here are the kids BEFORE candy!

Key Lime Pie and Lemon Drop are "PRETENDING" to sleep.

They can't fool me!

I told Jalapeno to dress up...  I even splurged and got him a skunk costume!

He wore it!  Kudos to this big "kid!"  I'm proud of him and his sense of humor!

Two of my favorite people:  Jelly Bean and Lemon Drop

Aren't they adorable?

The teens took the younger kids trick-or-treating, while the "adults" visited and ate chili.  Chili is tradition at our house.  Mmmmmm!  Scott and I always fix chili with corn bread for this fun holiday!  I love celebrating!

Sooooooo - I love reading.  But I haven't had much time lately.  I did get to read two books in the past month:  The Skeleton in My Closet Wears a Wedding Dress by Sally Johnson and Cress by Marissa Meyer.

The Skeleton in My Closet Wears a Wedding Dress isn't something I would normally read, but one of my good friends from Las Vegas wrote it - so I bought it with the intent to read it right away.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to read it right away as my daughter "stole" it first and read it first.  As soon as she was done, I picked it up.  I couldn't put it down.  I enjoyed it!  Sophia, the main character, has a lot of emotional baggage because of her sudden divorce.  I thought it was uplifting to see that good things did come from such a sad experience.  I thought the book was humorous AND thought provoking.  It was engaging and sensitive to difficult topics (like divorce and depression).  It provided a sense of hope in such a sad situation.  I look forward to reading more books from my friend.

Cress was the 3rd book in the Lunar Chronicles series.  I STILL love the series.  I STILL think it is appropriate for teens (with no bad language and no immorality).  I STILL want to read the rest of the books in the series when they come out.  Full disclosure:  I love fairy tales.  I also love SciFi.  And Marissa Meyer did an excellent job putting these two together.  It was a page turner.  And if I say anything more, I'll probably give somethings away.  So READ these books.  They are fun!

I LOVE KIDS!  I really do!  And I was privileged to get to have 9 of them for an entire week at my house.  The Larsens were kind enough to trust me with their 7 children for them while they went out of town.  I LOVED it!  The kids were AWESOME!  And it was nice to know that Scott and I could handle a LARGE family.

Do you know how hard it is to get 9 kids to pose without making weird faces?

Check out Kotten Kandy's odd face...  And Doritos put pretzels in his nose?!

Me and a daughter and a son...  Who knew I had a son?!  :-)

9 kids - ages 16 to 3!  :-)

Believe it or not, we still homeschooled with this small army.  We ate well.  (I'm not great at fixing breakfasts and lunches - I consider making dinner a feat) but we managed to keep them all fed.  And we kept them clean.  And we got to church on time.  And we went to the park twice.  And we showed them the Liken the Scripture videos (which a couple of them would sing afterwards and make me smile!)  And I got to tuck them in to bed and sing to them at night.  We still were able to do our scripture study and family prayer and FHE.  I enjoyed every minute!  And I really do love those 9 kids!  I'd "adopt" them all in a heartbeat!