Halloween Happenings

Hannah's school is the last one in the district that still has a Halloween parade. This year it felt a lot more chaotic because the entire school was on track, unlike years past when it's only been 3/4 of the school. Hannah was a Jedi, and fit in well with all the other Star Wars themed costumes. Rachel got to parade around the black top with Hannah and all the big kids and that made her happy.

Talking with Hannah's teacher.
Look at the cute loving expression Hannah has on her face. It's also a school tradition to do a pumpkin walk. Kids in the class donate pumpkins and then walk about to see who wins. This is the first year I've come to watch and it was simple and fun. We aren't suppose to have Halloween parties at the school, due to it taking away from instruction time, but I saw an awful lot of classes having parties yesterday. Our class has been working on a project all week with pumpkins and incorporating it into math lessons - weighing the pumpkins, measuring, determining it's geometrical shape, and then ultimately today, they divided up into teams and carved them. Together, the teams had to come up with a design, draw it, and then trace it onto the pumpkin and then carve it out. At the end of the day, the carved pumpkins were auctioned off within the class using the money the kids earn.After dinner this evening, we joined with our good friends and headed out to the church we went to last year for Trunk or Treating. One of the kids were assigned the task of counting all the cars and I think the final count of cars was 60. There were a lot of people there, a lot of cute costumes, and even some adults dressed up. Again, Hannah was a Jedi, and when I saw this speeder bike Storm Trooper from Return of the Jedi, I HAD to get a picture! This is my most favorite picture of this years Halloween Happenings!What event wouldn't be complete without dumping out and sorting the fruits of their labor.

A Sneak Peek!

Today we got to attend a special sneak peek at the new Tinkerbell movie that's being released to DVD on Tuesday. The special event was only open to annual passholders who'd won, and lucky for us, our friend won and took us with her!!! The new movie was great! Definitely a must buy. After the movie, we tried to get a peek of the new Pixie Hollow that opens this week. There is a new meet and greet area for Tinkerbell and her fairy friends. They are still working out the kinks and after standing in a line that did not move for twenty minutes, we got out of line and decided to try another day. So we went the remainder of our time hanging out at Woody's Roundup and enjoying the fall decorations and crafts available to do in this area. As well as taking advantage of the great backdrops for pictures!We had a great day and we're sooo grateful for having to have gotten to see a preview of the movie.

Our Jedi

Hannah went to a birthday party today, the theme was a Halloween party and costumes were required. Hannah chose to be a Jedi this year, and made a beautiful Jedi! You can't see it in any of these pictures, but we even gave her a Padawan braid. Yes, siree, we're a Star Wars family.

Camping at San Elijo State Beach Campground

We spent the weekend with church family, camping at San Elijo. We had a wonderful time and have really been blessed by having such great friends at church to spend the weekend with. There were seven families spread out over four sites, there was one couple that stayed Friday night in a hotel and all of Saturday with us, and then our friends Keith, Amy, and Bethany came down Saturday afternoon and stayed into the evening. For dinner Saturday night, there were 26 people! It was awesome! We had a great time and look forward to when we can go again.

As if we don't already bring enough when we camp, this time we borrowed a friends bike rack and took the girls' bikes. They LOVED having their bikes, especially Hannah when she went riding with the boys. Watching the girls ride their bikes while camping brought back the memories of the times we went camping at San Clemente as kids and our Dad would take our bikes to ride about the campground.

A deep hole was dug on Saturday, and in went Hannah.
After playing hard in the sand all afternoon, and tag and riding bikes into the evening, these two girlies were tired!Sunday morning, Hannah surprised us by trying Menudo for breakfast. She ate some of it, but complained it was too spicy. We didn't tell her what was in it until dinner that night. LOL. The friends' site we were on, they weren't leaving until Monday afternoon, so we didn't need to pack up and be out by the noon check out time, which was really nice. It gave everyone a chance to go to the beach for a few hours and take their time in packing up. Once we were all packed and headed out, we met Uncle Bart for dinner and spent some time with him before heading home. A great weekend indeed!

Miramar Airshow 2008

This weekend is the Miramar Airshow, located just outside of San Diego. We haven't been able to hit this air show the last couple of years because our church's Mens Retreat always fell on the same weekend, but this year, due to building a building soon, we didn't have a retreat, therefore the air show event has literally been on our calendar since the beginning of the year.

We arrived midday and had a long wait from getting off the freeway to where it was they directed us to park. And then there was a bit of a walk, then a security checkpoint, and then a bus ride to the front line. Once inside the gate to the flight deck, we got the girls some ear plugs (they give them free to kids at this air show!) and off we went in search of the perfect spot. It took a while to find that spot. This air show offers a lot of the front flight deck to corporate sponsors, etc. Hannah had fun. She cracked me up when the time came for The Blue Angels to fly. She made her way through a crowd of about seven or eight people thick to the very front and had a front row spot against the railing. Of course, it's become air show tradition to get the girls a little plane toy, and Hannah chose a Blue Angel, and Daddy chose a really cool F-22 Raptor that actually lights up and makes noise for Rachel. Both very cool!

Not only does he have Rachel on his shoulders, but he's holding Hannah up with one arm too! She thought that was pretty cool.

After the afternoon flight show was over, we toured some of the grounded planes. This particular plane, a B52 bomber, was the type of plane that Grandpa Steven loaded bombs onto during the Vietnam War. You were able to walk underneath the bomber and actually see where the bombs go! Pretty interesting.Grandpa Steve loaded bombs on this plane during Vietnam.Sitting inside a very large cargo plane.Soon, we were done exploring and it was time to head back to the buses back to where we'd parked. However, the lines for the buses were extremely long and Steven thought we could walk back to our car faster than standing in line for a bus. So we walked. We walked about a mile and a half I think. For the most part, Hannah was a trooper and did relatively well with walking that far after having stood on her feet for a few hours. However, once in the car, we all breathed a sigh of relief. LOL. After making our way off the military base, we had a nice dinner and put the girls into their jammies and they both soon fell asleep!

Our Little Pirate

Tonight was a friends' annual pirate party and this year, we let Hannah dress up and come along. Her friend Emma was going to be there so we knew she'd have a great time paling around with her and not be any trouble, Rachel on the other hand stayed with Gramma and Papa for the evening.