They light up my life!

Church, Jose's (and it was only $15 something this week!  Kids eat free on Sundays, and I got water, Clay didn't get Root Beer and Ethan didn't get juice (soda is free, if you can imagine!), and we got only the chicken and steak fajitas instead of the trio (we usually get shrimp too), so I was so shocked!  I gave her three times her tip-I don't want the wait staff to suffer for free food!), a birthday party for Ethan to go to, Girl Scouts, and a patch ceremony-busy days!
This is Mary Claire at her ceremony-today it was her turn to hold the flag : )

All the girls were dressed up in their Halloween costumes, and they said the pledge, and the Girl Scout Promise and Law.  They were super cute:

Here she is after receiving her patches-I think she likes to pull her arms up lately in pictures (why?):

Then we checked out Sandra's construction-we are so jealous!  They are adding three new rooms, opened up their bonus room, converted an existing room to a beautiful office-it's all amazing!  Mary Claire could only beg for a new room..all the way home!  It is awesome, and we'll check into it.  We found a good house (9000 sq. ft) for pretty cheap, but it had some damage that had to be repaired, and we were going to look at it Saturday, but it got an offer on Friday, so it was just as well.  The taxes would have been $1000 a month!  I should clarify: I have NO desire to have this many square feet (I can barely clean what I have!), but it would be more bedrooms-that's why it showed up on the automated search we get.  It was just a good deal in a big neighborhood in Rogers (which I also have no desire to live in!).  It'd be a good investment, and we could've moved again in a few years.  So, we are still here! : )

Anyway, my husband has decided he needs a dessert every weekend again!  He wanted to take us all to Chili's for dessert tonight, but Clay had a killer headache (I think it's hereditary), and I had changed into jammies already! (new-well, I've had them a while, but first time I wore them!-super cute shoes and I wanted to change!)  So.. I had to think of something.  I had a new package of chocolate Almond Bark, so magic: Chocolate Pretzels!

I used almost an entire bag to use up the chocolate!

It made sooo many!  Here is a close-up.  I don't do them the way my best friend taught me when I was in eighth grade.  She would dip them in completely, and pull them out with a fork.  It was too messy to me.  I hold one side of the pretzel, dip, and lay out to cool-it goes so fast!  Then you can pick it up with the dry side, so you don't get your fingers all chocolate-y (not that that is a bad thing!)

As you could probably tell, it made way too many-and it's dangerous to leave these laying around my house.  I'll eat them all.  Too tempting.  So..I bagged some up to send to school tomorrow!  I used a stamp, stapled them onto some cellophane baggies, and stapled a bow on-pretty darn easy!

Then.  I'm still working on Clay's Halloween party.  I wanted to make some luminaries with the kids for them to take home.  My plan was to use a paper bag (I got nice thick white ones, but not enough light showed through.), so I tried two tonight as my trial run.  I wanted to know if they'd catch fire (!), if you could see a design on them (and from how far away), and which was better.  I tried the plain old brown paper bag, and a super thick white bag (slick, coated paper-I thought it'd be more fireproof).  Here is the picture (please appreciate how hard it was to take a night-time picture with no flash!):

The left one is the brown paper bag, and the right is the thick white one (with some cut-outs on it).  Ches went to Wal-Mart again (I'd already been this afternoon!), and got some white ones that were thin.  I'll have to do test trials again tomorrow night, and hopefully hear from the teacher about whether or not she's okay with us doing them!

You just use a bag, a tealight candle (with a metal holder), some sand from the bottom, and then cut out designs to put on it.  (Actually you are supposed to cut out designs, but I don't want the fourth graders using X-acto knives!)  My idea originated from this article-so cute!