Claire's Trick-or-Treat @ Grandma's House 2012

 We had about 10 trick-or-treaters at our house tonight

But the fairest of all was little Claire-the-Fairy-Princess-Ballerina.

 I gave her the same treat bag that I gave the other grandkids on our last

Sunday dinner night.  She was very interested in the bag of candy and

she stuck her hand in the bag right away and pulled out this

banana flavored Tootsie Roll Pop.

Needless to say, she LOVED it!!!

(Daddy told me that she had prior experience with lolly-pops

from G. & G Palmer's recent visit.....)

I think I'll invent a vegetable tootsie pop.....

It would make a million dollars.

She licked it right down to the chewy center in no time!

 

 Never, never, never take candy from a baby
for any reason....

This is what will happen

Daddy took her tootsie roll pop to rinse it off when it dropped on the floor.

 Okay, all's well.....she got it back!

This is what a fairy-princess-ballerina looks like

from the back.

Happy Halloween!

Day Three -- Shopping Day

 Shelly & I went to Jack in the Box this morning for breakfast.

Shelly got a breakfast croissant and I got a sausage & egg biscuit.

Of course, we had a buy one get one free coupon.
Then, we went to Melissa's house.
Shelly stayed there to visit with Melissa and Claire
while I went to work.

 My little sis, a professional pre-school aide, won Claire over

 by the time I got back from work ....
By the time we left, I think she even loved her Great Aunt Shelly!

Day three was our shopping day.  We went to Grapevine Mills Mall,
which is a large mall and a little different than run-of-the-mill malls.
This is Shelly in anticipation of a great dinner at  Rainforest Cafe.
Sorry sis....our coupon wasn't good enough....
We looked at the menu and it was so expensive
that we decided to go to Spring Creek BBQ with a

buy one get one free coupon instead.

We got to the BBQ place only 10 minutes before they closed,
but they said  "Come on in," so we did.

We ate dinner after 9 p.m. and here is Shelly,
now as happy as can be....
As we ate the staff were cleaning the tables and asked our permission
to go ahead and stack them. (We were sitting in a booth)
They were very friendly and nice to us, though.
No one was around by the time we finished.
I had to peep my head into the kitchen to ask them to unlock the door!

After dinner we went for our nightly soft-serve ice cream

at Micky-D's.  I got a chocolate sundae and Shelly got a cone.
We ate in the car and talked non-stop the whole while.
We are having a great time together! 

Day One and Day Two

 Driving, driving, driving.....we've done a lot of driving.

 Visitng with Clairie Bell.....

 We dressed like twins again for the symphony.....

 This is a picture taken of the Carrollton Wind Symphony at

the St Andrews United Methodist Church.

We didn't know it but the kids old high school band teacher was one of the conductors!

The music was beautiful.

 More twinness.....Shelly borrowed some of my shoes.....

 Laughing at ourselves because we were looking at our shoes!

 Here is the program from the Wind Symphony....

 Twin picture taken at the back of the church after the performance.

The performance was only about 45 minutes long....

They also had a small reception afterwards.
I ate a small cookie and had a cup of water while Sister Sue

had a cup of water and talked to one of the band members....

 We have been lost a number of times while we were traveling to our destinations!

This is the little book I keep with all the mapquest driving directions I print out.

Shelly thought it was funny so she took a picture of it.

 After the symphony we went to McDonald's and Shelly treated us to icecream.

Shelly made me put this one in because I keep posting silly pictures of her....

We went to Chili's tonight for a free-dinner (I used my birthday gift card!)
It was super yummy.
We both ordered Chicken Crispers
with mashed potatoes and corn on the cob.
(I call them Chicken Poppers)
We drank water. We talked the whole hour and a half that we were there.

Shelly kept laughing and I kept snapping her picture!

Isn't she cute?

Our waitress, Danielle, took our picture and we took hers....

 We had a free coupon for appetizers so we got string cheese and we ordered
Two for Twenty, so chips and salsa were included with our dinner, too. 
Shelly was full before the dinner arrived!

 This is what she was doing in the car after dinner.

 We drove to North Lake College to watch a free play.....
This is the free treat we got by looking up into the sky....

 What a wonderful free-sky delight!

We had fun laughing and being silly.
The play was "over the top,"
In other words, we loved it....
in a silly, crazy, laugh yourself silly sort of way.
We went through the drive through at McDonald's for another ice cream cone
at 11 o'clock p.m.
We ate them in the car
We are having a lot of  fun!

Day One

 This morning started early for me and there was no night for Shelly.

I got up at 4:45 a.m., took my shower, got ready for the day,
and headed out to the airport at 6:00 a.m.

Shelly left the house around midnight, her flight was delayed,
so she wound up getting in at 7:25 a.m., our time.
I got lost going to the airport (because of construction and my crazy GPS),

but I got to the terminal just as her plane was landing.

We were surprised that we looked like twins...
we were wearing the same color clothes....!
Here we are at the airport.

 We dropped by the house long enough to say

hello and goodbye to our trio of Sister Missionaries.
Then we drove over to IHOP for breakfast.

We thought about ordering from the Senior menu,

but decided we were too hungry for such a small meal.
We both wanted hash browns and eggs.
I got pancakes, too.

We laughed and talked and had a great time together....
(Thanks Mom.... for having a sister for me..)

 We both cleaned up our plates.

 It was a bright and sunny morning.
On a lark, we decided to drive by Melissa's house,

just to see where she lived.

Shelly said, why don't we stop in?

I called her from my cell phone and she said....sure, come on in!

So here we are.....

 Melissa gave Shelly a tour of her "new" house.
Great Aunt Shelly tried to get Claire to warm up to her
But no can do.......Claire would have no part of it!

We took a few pictures, then

DEPARTED

 

Do you think Spirit Airlines would like to use this picture

to advertise their RED EYE flights?

(Shelly is now comfortably sleeping in bed and does not know about this post)

y.e.t
I put a roast in the oven before heading out to work.
We are planning to go to a free wind symphony concert this evening.
I will blog about that later.

A Halloween Sandwich Sunday

Amanda brought the dessert again tonight.

She made these cute Halloween treats for us.

Ghosties and Witches Hats......Yum!  They were tasty. 

 Pierce told us about his Run-a-Thon. He ran 53 laps in all and had a lot of fun.



 Steven finally remembered to bring his passport to show me how neat it looked
with his India stamp .....

 I loved looking through it, but for privacy sake,
I'm only showing this page.

 Michael showed up with this beard.
Oh my....gone are the days of a straggley beard for him.

 Not only did he have a beard....but it is dark now, with patches of white.
I'd rather see him clean shaven, but I was impressed.

 Hailey brought her jewelry box to show me.
She painted it from a kit she got for her birthday.

She did a super job! 

 We ate our very unexciting dinner of sandwiches,
then the kids jumped up and ran to the playroom.
With paper, pens and a few blankets/sheets,
they made some very creative costumes and a very fun haunted house.
Ansley was a ghost standing outside the playroom door to greet us.

 During the haunted house Pierce took us around the room.
He is some kind of Ninja.

 Emberly is looking pretty sweet in this pre-haunted house picture,

but she was actually very scary and rode on a brookstick.

 I'm pretty sure Hailey was a vampire.

The kids are so creative. I love it!

 I was told, "This is the person who used to live in this house."

 And this was supposed to be a scratch and sniff poster.

(Smile Face)

 This spider poster was taped to the television set.

Opps....I see my picture of Liam did not pop up here. I will post it later.

He was a very scary "minion."

 Pierce told me he is going to be a ninja on Halloween.
Emberly said she was going to be a peacock.
Hailey told me she will be a zebra.
Ansley said she wanted to be a goldfish,
but the costume wouldn't fit... so she is going to be a princess instead.
Liam said he was going to be JoJo Fet (from Star Wars). 

 I made up a little Halloween treat bag for the kids to take home.

Time to go.....

Another climb in the tree.....

That's how memories are made.