Author: Rebecca

Since Jeff has finished his training for the army, he has received orders to transfer to Fort Hood, Texas. So he has been home on leave to pack up his family and take them with.

Debby and Jeff spent today cleaning up their condo, and after we put the kids to bed they swung by to return our vacuums. They had borrowed ours so the movers could put theirs on the truck, but I didn’t actually get the vacuums to them until the movers were done packing up their stuff. My camera already made a trip to California without me, I did NOT want my vacuums taking a trip to Texas! 😛

Debby and Jeff had planned on leaving earlier in the week, but the movers postponed packing up their condo a couple of times, but they finally came, and got everything loaded up. Debby and Jeff postponed their departure so they could clean up the condo, and now it’s all done. They had a management company come in to take pictures so they can advertize that it’s for rent, and now they are ready to head East. 🙁

They will actually be spending the night with a friend tonight, and they plan on hitting the road first thing in the morning. But I didn’t let them go away without sending them with a case of jam, and a huge chunk of fudge and some other things. 🙂 Now I’m back to not having any of my family live anywhere nearby.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, and we decided that if we were going to do anything to the pumpkins it was tonight or never!

Lydia wanted to make a Minnie Mouse pumpkin, of course. I LOVE these decorations that you just poke into the pumpkin. Kyle and I can use a skewer to poke the holes and then even the little kids can just push the pieces into the holes and feel like THEY made their pumpkin.

Chloe made a pumpkin princess:

Tyra picked out a blue pumpkin and thought it would be fun to use the pieces to make it a witch.

Adam couldn’t decided between the Mickey Mouse pieces or the Yoda pieces. He played with all of the pieces, but eventually decided on Yoda.

Ethan, Jeremy and Dinah all wanted to actually carve their pumpkins, which means they had to gut them out.

I had bought some carving kits on clearance last year, and Dinah wanted to use one of the patterns that came with the Hello Kitty set. I am very glad that I bought the kits on clearance. They seemed easier to use than the big Cutco knives and kitchen spoons for cutting into and scraping out the pumpkin. BUT they are cheap quality. Kyle was using one of the carving kit knives to help the kids carve their pumpkins and I guess he was going too fast or something but the blade just snapped right off! We ended up having two of the carving kit knives snap before we were done with carving for the night. So we will be looking for more of these kits on clearance, because they work well, but I would never pay full price for them because they break way too easily!

In case you can’t tell, Ethan’s pumpkin is a Pokemon Poke-ball. 🙂

Kyle has made some progress on the laundry room shelves:

We also decided to add one more shelf with a rod for hanging hangers:

Debby and Jeff decided to have an early birthday party for Rexton. With Jeff being in the army now, and he is done with his training, he is being sent to Fort Hood, Texas and they wanted to have a party for Rexton before they move. So after church, I made a big pan of banana pudding and we went to their place for dinner. Here’s the birthday boy!

The little ones had a good time playing with the other kids that were there. Actually I think they liked playing with the balloons the most.

After awhile we all headed outside to have pictures taken with Debby and Jeff, since they will be moving soon.

Then we came back in for cake and ice cream, but Rexton fell asleep, so we had to eat cake and ice cream without him.

After cake, most of the party guests cleared out pretty quickly. We stayed behind to discuss the plans for the week, then Debby sent us home with the rest of the ice cream and a bunch of other leftovers from the party since they are going to need to clear out their fridge in the next couple of days so it can be empty when the movers come to move their stuff. Rexton did wake up before we left, but that was after most everyone else had gone. 😉