Halloween Fun

In order to try and stay a little more current I am going to blog about Halloween and then I will blog about September and other fun things later on.

I have decided that our family really loves holidays. We love to decorate the house and do all the fun holiday stuff and this Halloween was no different. Our Halloween fun started when I took the little ones to Disneyland at the beginning of October. It was a really perfect day not to crowded and the kids and I had a blast.Our next fun activity was Grandma's Office Halloween party. We love getting to go and have pizza and do a little office trick or treating. This year Ryan dressed up at Darth Mal from Star Wars, Christian was a Clone trooper from Star Wars and Megan was Dorthy from the Wizard of Oz. It was the first year we didn't have the kids dress similarly and I think it will most likely be like that for a while since they all have such strong opinions of what they want to be. :)

Ryan getting his makeup and hair done for his costume. 10 out of 13 grand kids with GrandmaThe night after the Office party we had a party at our place. We had some people from church come over and we decorated pumpkins, had dinner and decorated cookies. We weren't sure how many people were going to show up but we ended up having 20 kids and 20 adults. It was a big group but we all had a blast.Megan started carving her pumpkin but once she realized how gross it was to touch she quickly moved on to other things.Dan's lego pumpkinChristian's guts pumpkinMegan took the lid off the sprinkles and dumped them all on her cookie. You can't tell by her face but she did really love it and ended up eating almost all of them off her plate.Then on Halloween night we had the Gibson family come up and join us for dinner and trick or treating. This year the kids were the perfect ages for trick or treating. They all had so much fun. When Dan got off work he joined us for the last couple of houses. There were a few houses that had decorated their garages to be a Halloween maze so luckily Dan was there to take the kids through because that is not my thing!

Running

So the last couple of months I have run some pretty amazing races. The first was a 5k that I ran with Christian. The second was another Ragnar Relay Race and the third was a mud run. Each were so amazing and I loved them all for different reasons. I will not include Ragner in this post just because it will take me a while to get it all up but I will talk about the other two races.

I got an email the end of August for a 5k at the Great Park of Orange County and the sign up fee was half off. So I signed Christian and I up for the 5k (Dan was working so he couldn't do it with us). Here is Christian Finishing the 5k, his time was 30.30 which is really great especially since he ran by himself. I finished in 41 mins which was just ok!The day of the race my Mom brought Megan and Ryan down to watch us and so I signed Ryan up for the 1k kids run he was so excited. Well after he had taken off (Christian ran with him) the announcer told us that the course was marked wrong so the kids were actually running a whole mile instead of the 1k which is about .6 of a mile. Ryan finished in 12 mins and was so tired!I was so proud of Christian and Ryan for running so well. It was such a fun day, I really love watching the kids run and they love being involved in the race. We all got these cool medals and then they opened some of the rides at the Park for the kids to do so we went on the Carousal which Megan loved.For the Mud Run it was Johnny and Jessica, a friend of mine Brittney and then myself. We were a four member team and our team name was Anna's Warriors. We had such a great time. I absolutely loved the obstacles and running through the mud. I would recommend everyone run a mud run at least once in your life. All clean and ready to beginHere is Jessica and Brittney finishing the race.Johnny at the rope swing with me right behind him.Doing the rope swing.At the end of the race all muddy and gross. I look a little cleaner than the rest because a huge fire hose sprayed me toward the end of the race.

Starting School

At the end of August Christian started school. He is now if the 5th grade I can't believe it! His teacher this year has been amazing so far and he is doing great which is a huge relief after the struggle we had last year.A couple of weeks later Ryan started preschool. He loves it so much he goes to preschool Tuesdays and Thursdays and goes with his two buddies. Also he started taking a speech class at the elementary school on Wednesdays to help with pronouniation of words. He doesn't love being gone 3 days a week he wants to just stay home (like his Dad :) ) but it is really good for him and he has grown so much since he started.While the boys are away the girls will play. I have loved having alone time with Megan it is so nice to only have one for a couple hours a week. She had a really hard time adjusting at first. For the first week she cried and screamed while we dropped Ryan off but she quickly got over that and now enjoys hanging out with her Momma!

WOW

Well Life took a drastic turn in August when we found out that My Sister Anna was diagnosed with Stage 3 Breast Cancer. She is only 34 years old this was not suppose to happen to someone so young. My Grandmother Garthe had breast cancer so we all knew that we could get it but I don't think any of us thought it would happen so soon and we were not expecting it to happen to Anna. She has a very aggressive type of cancer and luckily at the time they were doing a clinical trial so within 3 weeks of diagnosing her she was starting chemo and taking the additional clinical drug. She has to have 6 treatments of chemo every three weeks. It completely wipes her out it is so intense I don't know how she does it. As a family we have been able to ban together to be there through it all. We have made dinners, done grocery shopping, cleaned her apartment and been at all her doctor appointments. Through our faith in the Lord's plan and our prayers we have been able to cope with this life altering situation.
She is so amazing, she is fighting and smiling the whole way. She has responded really well to the drugs and the mass has shrunk so much that the Doctors have a hard time finding it when they examine her. She is half way through the treatments and I am so proud of her. I love her so much and am so grateful to be able to call her My Sister!Ryan was messing around and decided to try on Anna's Wig.

San Diego

The first part of August Dan took Christian with him on a scout adventure down to San Diego. They went to battleship row and went on the USS Midway. They also went to the Mormon Battalion visitor center. Christian had so much fun being with Dan and the older boys. They got to pan for gold, Christian came home with a bag full of pyrite.Afterwards they went to a burger joint called Ho Dad's that serves monster burgers. Christian said it was so cool!