As September winds to a close, it has been filled with plenty of activities and a little down time.
From hanging out with my munchkin and watching the movie "Rio" 10,856 times, to celebrating my oldest turning 9 this past Monday, it has been quite a month.
Oh and I can't forget my first gall stone attack. yippee skippee.
October is looking to be just as crazy but I hope I will have more of a mental handle on the things coming up.

The past couple of weeks I've been scouring Pinterest for ideas on making Kelly's birthday special.
For the first time I let Kelly have a sleep over and we allowed her to invite 5 friends. Four of the young ladies showed up and that was just about perfect.
The night itself? That was exhausting.
Petty fights and some very stubborn girls made parts of the sleep over miserable.
I must say how proud of Kelly I am for doing such

a great job of balancing and playing with each girl. By Saturday morning Kelly was in tears over her friends arguing about almost everything.
Believe me when I say that i put pick up time to be 11am and all the girls were gone by 11 that there wasn't a big sigh of relief that it was over.
Will I ever allow another sleep over? Yeah, most likely, will I be more careful on who we invite, most definitely.
I learned plenty of lessons over this experience, ones I won't soon forget.

On Tuesday, Rob held his first pack meeting as cubmaster and scored a huge hit when he had the boys play a game where with your facial expressions you wiggle a cookie from your forehead down to your mouth.
That sentence seemed to run forever, phew.
I must toot my own horn in that for the first time in years I have bought the kids' Halloween costumes early enough that a) I was able to afford what they wanted b) I found their sizes and accessories.
All their costumes have been tried on and are now hanging in the closet ready for the big night.
We have started soccer practice for Kelly and games will start on the 8th, we have cub scout events and girl scout events, we are probably going to be visiting every pumpkin patch in Tucson this fall.
There are plans to take the kids to see Disney on Ice, Toy Story 3.
I mean it, October is looking crazy.
I'm off to get the house ready for my Pampered Chef Party tomorrow night.

*Carrie*

You know I don't actually plan on posting only on Wednesday's but it seems to be a recurring theme. In my mind I'm posting daily if not every other day. I should really try to make that a reality.
As I was looking at what photos to upload I also realized that I haven't taken any in days. Life has just been that crazy busy.

So starting today I will be picking up my camera because A) I need to take more pictures and B) Kelly has a cloud report to do and we need to take cloud pictures.

This is a bad shot but this is a basket that I spray painted a sun yellow the other day. The Kleenex box fits in there perfectly.
Happy Hump day!

*Carrie*

Where in the world has Carrie been?
Well this past Labor Day weekend we joined the cub scouts for a family camp out up in Winkleman, AZ.
It's a nice setting for a camp out when the temps are NOT over 100 degrees.
Lordy be was it HOT!!
Each night got progressively better but mid day was horrible.
There was one benefit though... the campground had outdoor showers with awesome water pressure!

Every evening and morning we cleaned up and cooled off in those showers with the vultures overhead and the cows milling around.
Yes, I said cows.
When we pulled in Friday night there were cows walking around the camp grounds, later that night, cause you know you never sleep well the first night, I heard the cows lowing, a couple of owls hooting and a couple of raccoons fighting, oh and a rooster crowing.
Yep, I really didn't sleep well that night.
We came home Sunday night and unloaded and relaxed Monday. I like to camp but man do I love my own bed, who doesn't right?
Getting back to normal leads me back to my fascination with Pinterest. I had seen this idea someone posted and repinned hundreds of times and since I love color and crayola crayons I thought I would give it a try and then add it to my scrap room wall.
I used two 24 packs of crayons and weeded out the ones I didn't want to use like apricot, brown, gray, black and white. The last three I have plans for. Anyway I super glued the crayons down on a 12x16 canvas I purchased at Joann's for 50% off.

I first tried to use my heat gun to melt them but i highly suggest you don't. The crayon tends to splatter everywhere.
Now who knows maybe I'll try again to see what cool concoction I can come up with in crayon splatter.
Back to the instructions. I ran to get my hairdryer and that works so much better. One of the things I really liked when doing this was that if I felt I needed more color here or there or I wanted the color to reach the end I just had to heat the crayon up again. It was fast fun and easy to do and I'm going to try a few more. One with the black, white and gray crayons and one with 48 crayons to achieve more color.

So yesterday I'm taking off my current polish when Chelsea asks me to put on purple. I let her know that mommy didn't want to wear purple that I wanted to try a new lime green color I had just purchased.
Now normally when I paint my toes I paint hers. Well she didn't like what I was going to use. Nope, Chelsea decided to go into my bathroom and find another color. She sat on the bathroom floor and proceeded to paint her own toes.
After taking my polish off I realized that little miss was not in the room and it was quiet so I took off calling her name and knowing what I was going to find.
I'm still having trouble getting the pink off her toes and there is still the blue which we hadn't taken off yet either.
Now get this, when she saw my lime green toes she got upset and asked me to paint her toes green too! Maybe I should leave the pink on and just try painting over it in green. Who knows could start a trend :)
Our family is headed for another busy weekend but there is a silver lining.... FOOTBALL!!!
Sunday afternoons snuggled on the couch watching the boys beat up on each other.
Yep, I'm happy
*Carrie*

Time to play catch up again..
Last Saturday the cub scouts had their rain gutter regatta. Unfortunately Wyatt lost early in the competition, that boy could not keep his eyes on his own sail so every time he blew it was everywhere but into the sail.
Wyatt's buddy Dominic took 1st place for the 4th year in a row. pretty awesome
Kelly's friend Madi spent the night Saturday and went with us to church on Sunday.

We came home from church, had lunch and then went to Chuck E Cheese for a birthday party. Pure craziness. No way will I ever do that to myself.

Sunday evening Rob surprised me by taking me out to dinner with some family and friends. We ate at the new Sushi Garden restaurant. Now, we have been going to the old location for years and really liked the ambiance. The new venue, while stylish and modern, with quick service, was way too loud. We could barely hear each other and we were seated in corner.

We probably won't be back unless it is just the two of us.
Monday night was girls scouts and the leader made 10 giant cupcakes and I made 10 different colors of frosting. The girls decorated their hearts out and the results were pretty cool and yummy.
They were also sweet enough to sing happy birthday to me because...it was my birthday!!!

 Anyway, Rob had asked me what is something fun I wanted for my birthday. When my suggestions of a weekend alone in a hotel room to scrapbook and someone to clean the house were met with a shake of the head and an "I don't think so" I had to think some more.
After cruising around Pinterest for a few days, my creative mojo has been jumping so I asked for some spray paint in bright colors.

Boy did my family and friends deliver.
By the end of Monday night I ended up with 24 cans of spray paint! (and with some birthday money bought 4 more)

Monday afternoon I received my happy gift. One that is guaranteed to make me smile. My friend LaDonna and her little man Bryson got me
30 balloons attached to a birthday bag full of spray paint! It was my UP moment
I LOVE balloons. I really love balloons.
Then they took me out to lunch,  very yummy.
This has been a great birthday this year. Busy but really good.
Now I have already painted a pot for my new plant an ocean blue and painted a basket a happy sun yellow. Now I'm starting to look at changing some of my photo frames to some happy colors. That kiwi lime is calling my name.
More adventures coming this weekend, I'll be seeing you soon
*Carrie*