Halloween Weekend 2011

Friday night we had planned to go to our wards annual "just for adults" Halloween party.  By the time I got home from work though, it was evident my body was worn out and it was just not going to happen.  By 7 pm, I was asleep on the couch.  What can I say?  You win some, you loose some. 
I woke up Saturday morning ready to hit the ground running and did.  My craft room/library now looks really good!  I have a few more little things to do in there, but otherwise it is completely organized!  Considering it was a junk room in it's former life, this is a great accomplishment. 
Saturday afternoon we had our ward Halloween carnival.  I have never been to anything like it.  Insane doesn't even come close to describing it well.  I was in charge of monitoring the bounce house and basically had to become a nazi to have any type of order.  People let their kids run wild and free which was very unfortunate for the rest of us.  I somehow survived the night, but I don't know that I want to be involved in another Halloween carnival anytime soon.  It was exhausting and afterward there was more crashing on the couch.
Cory and I had originally planned to go as kissing cousins but he had to work in the haunted house so I switched.  Not the most flattering costume ever, but it was comfy!

Me as a basketball player.  Lydia Jane as a basketball. :)

 Me and Cory in his "costume" he put on for the last 10 minutes.  Someone asked him if he was Billy Ray Cyrus! haha. 

 Jenn with a not cooperating Carson.  He was a monkey and looked super cute walking around the carnival.  I still can't get used to him walking!

This is a little too close to tell what Trevor was, but he was a banana!  It was so cute!  I wanted a picture of him and Carson together but I waited until the end to take pictures and that boy was not in the picture taking mood.

Sunday was wonderful, as I have already said.  All of our meetings were centered on missionary work and I felt the spirit so strongly all morning.  One of the talks that really hit me was by one of the members of the ward mission whose conversion story I already knew but the way he presented it was wonderful.  He talked about the friend he had who had to go to seminary and invited him to wait outside.  It was hot outside so he waited inside instead and really enjoyed the lesson.  Another boy in the class invited him to come back the next week.  And that was it.  Two simple invitations were all it took for his conversion to the gospel to begin.  He also talked about other times in his life when he was struggling with things and similar experiences happened to him.  One person issued one invitation and it had a huge impact on his life.  It really made me think about how simple it is to share the gospel with people the Lord has prepared to recieve it.  All we have to do is issue one invitation and He will take it from there.  In Sunday school, we have two great teachers.  They switch off Sundays and I just love them both.  They make the scriptures feel so relevant, which they definitely are but sometimes I think it is easy to get bogged down.  Anyway, they are fun and class is fun.  The ward mission leader spoke to the youth during our 3rd hour and I was pretty jealous of how many answers he got to his questions.  When I teach, I feel like I'm pulling teeth getting answers from these kids.  He did a great job though and the kids really liked him and seemed to pay attention which deserves some type of award in my opinion. 
On Monday we finished up Halloween weekend by passing out candy at our house for the first time.  Last year we went out with Mike, Jenn and the boys, which was way fun.  I also loved passing out candy at our house too.  Cory was super excited about it and you would have thought he just won a prize when the doorbell rang for the first time.  We had some super cute kids and they were all so polite.  I am pretty sure they all said "thank you" which is amazing these days.  We ended up having about 20 or 30, which isn't a ton but we don't have many young families in our neighborhood so I thought that was pretty good.  We still have more left over candy than I would have liked though!  I have avoided all stores the past few days.  Me and 50% off candy is definitely not a good mix!