Halloween RS Activity

Update: just added pics!

Photos from the night - 1. the LOOT I came home with 2. just a piece of the fun halloween decor display 3. one of the napkin folding shapes we made - can you guess what this one is supposed to be?

a 2 colored flower

Is that what it's called now? An RS Activity? Anyway...

I just got home from a really fun one tonight! Each woman was asked to bring 40 of something to share. We were just told that we would be trick-or-treating from each other. I took TINY bags of 'autumn mix' (candy corns, candy pumpkin, and a carmel bite) and tied halloween colored ribbons through a hole in the top.

At the church, we gathered in the gym where tables were placed in a U-shape with 3 sisters to a table, sitting on the outside facing in. At the top of the "U" was a short table where our Enrichment(?) leader stood facing everyone. She started out with her treat to everyone: a paper bag, some ribbons, a flower and some cute stickers - turned into our trick or treating sack.
She then demonstrated some fun napkin folding techniques to us. We made a bat with a black napkin, a big flower using 2 napkins layered, and an elf. I *think* I might be able to replicate the bat. They were hard, but really fun!
Then we sat in our chairs and a few ladies at a time walked around the inside of the tables - trick-or-treating to all the ladies in the room. Some of the fun treats: decorating a halloween lunch sack, brownies, rice krispy treats, individual candies, a poem, a piece of fruit in a cup, a glow stick, a ghost sucker, quite a few mix type things with candy corn and popcorn or nuts. The RS president's treat was a RS list of names/phone numbers. Just fun and simple. Everyone was very gracious and had a fun time. The funniest one was a stash of fast food condiment packets: ketchup, hot sauce, etc.

We then moved into another room where the Enrichment(?) leader showed us how to make some fun holiday foods. She made a yummy dill/garlic chex mix, candied popcorn, jello "finger" molds - CREEPY!, and cornucopias made out of a waffle cone! She also talked about some fun holiday traditions - one was that each person in her family made individual pumpkin pies on Thanksgiving Eve and then ate them for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. I'm sure there were a few fun others.

It was a great evening and EVERYONE really enjoyed it!

Oh and it was also optional to dress up - of course I didn't... but I was *I think* only one of 3 or 4 who didn't! Amazing!

Night of Fame & Fortune

was the theme of our Enrichment night last night. I know people are always looking for fun enrichment ideas, so I thought I'd post a bit about it.

Everyone received an invitation to a "Night of Fame & Fortune". On the invitation they were also told to bring a lawn chair and that dinner would be served. It was an assigned potluck with pretty easy assignments. We made chicken & rice bowls - I made the chicken and white rice. The Enrichment leader made the brown rice and a yummy soy based sauce. Another leader made a yummy orange sauce and it was held in her backyard. The assignments were given out about 2 weeks before - a chinese take-out box with a fortune cookie inside telling what the assignment was. Then they were to bring their assigned item to the dinner in the take out boxes. There were things like shredded carrots, peas, peanuts, pineapple, chow mein noodles, etc. Pretty simple and mostly low-cost.

The decorations were easy and cute! There were paper lanterns hanging from white string around the backyard. Black plastic tablecloths and black bowls to hold all the rice. Black napkins and gold forks. The bowls were like these. There were also some asian fans setting on some of the tables. We served ice water in my glass jar.

When each person arrived, they were given 1 chopstick with a "famous" name written on it and then they were instructed that the names were couples and that they should go find their other half. I was BARBIE! and so went to find KEN. We got to sit by that person during dinner (we had all the lawn chairs in a big circle) and learn about them. After dinner we went around the circle and shared a thing or two that we learned about our dinner partner.

A few people were also asked to bring a dessert that they were "famous" for, so we also had dessert and then chatted a bit more and talked about upcoming Enrichment activities.

This was a lot of fun and relatively easy clean up!

Phew!

I survived the food portion of tonight's Visiting Teaching Conference and I think it went pretty well. The theme of the evening was "Ant", so there was an overall picnic theme for the decorations. They asked me to come up with a light meal for the evening. I chose to go with a sort-of sack lunch. We had potato rolls (from Costco) with ham and cheddar cheese, carrots, strawberries, olives, little bags of chips, cookies and water bottles. I prepared for about 50 people, but figured there were about 35-40 that came.
We were also going to serve one of the (3!) trifles that was left over from our last Enrichment activity, but that didn't work out (of course) so I was sent home with it. Yum... Bob's gonna take it to work with him tomorrow.

4 Months! & an update

Mylie turned 4 months old yesterday! She did great at her checkup today. She weighs 12lbs and 12ozs and is 24 inches long. About the 30th percentile for both, but her head is big like her brothers and is in the 60th percentile! She got 2 shots and one oral vaccine. She was happy for about 5 hours and then seemed to be in a bit of pain. I gave her some tylenol and she went right to sleep. She is still struggling to get rid of the thrush in her mouth. We are on the 4th round of medicine for it and will be trying another kind if this latest one doesn't do the trick.

Braden showing off his Flu Mist vaccine sticker he got at the drs office last week.

Mylie has become very vocal and is always cooing or blowing raspberries. She has started giggling and is especially ticklish when I am putting clothes over her head or undoing the tabs on her diaper. She still absolutely adores her big brother and gives daddy the biggest smiles. She has only rolled over once from her tummy to her back, but does great at lifting her head up and grabbing toys.

Most everyone knows, but Bob and I now have callings in our new ward. Bob is a Ward Missionary and he seems to love it and is excited to get some things going with families in the ward. We even had the missionaries over for dinner 2 weeks ago so that Bob could ask them what he can do to help them. My new calling is the Relief Society Luncheon Coordinator. Yup, it's a made-up calling, but I'm enjoying it. It's basically helping out the lady who is over the Enrichment activities. My first Enrichment is tomorrow and our "light refreshment" is going to be 5 different kinds of Chex mixes. I hope they like it as I don't know what this ward is used to.