&t The Taylor Family: October 2013

Thursday, October 31

Happy Halloween!!

Tonight's the night! I have been working hard on all the costumes and now I finally get to show them off. The only costume I didn't make was Javan's, grandma bought the costume and "light saver" for him while he was at her house a couple weekends ago.
Since Abbi has the long hair it was decided she would make a great Princess Leia. I made her entire costume right down to the boot covers. Peter made her belt and spray painted a nerf gun for her carry. Of course, we had to get
the hair just right and that probably took longer than everything else combined when we were getting ready tonight. Bresa, after some long thought, opted to be Padme. Her costume wasn't near as hard to put together since all I had to make for it was her utility belt, boot covers and her shawl. Daddy spray painted a gun for her too and I made a
holster for her to carry it in. I was really excited to see everyone all dressed up tonight. I don't have a costume but I did borrow an R2D2 backpack from my aunt so I carried him around. We met Joe and Jana and our Pastor James and Shana in Debary and went trick or treating in Joe's neighborhood. Everyone loved the costumes and Peter and Abbi got a ton of compliments which made my heart happy. I love it when hard work pays off.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 9:26 PM   0 comments

Sunday, October 27

Sneak Peak

I have been working on all the Halloween costumes for a couple weeks now. Javan decided he wanted to be Darth Vader and from there we all decided this year would be a Star Wars Halloween. We borrowed a really cool light saber from my uncle and so of course Peter needed a Jedi cloak to go with it. I am not much of a sewer
though and I have never made anything from a pattern so this was a whole new experience from me. The most I have really down is sew some buttons back on pants and then a couple stuffed animal stitch ups. It took me several days just to figure out the pattern and there needed to be quite a few alterations made to it since it was a wizard's cape and not a hooded cloak. Yesterday I finally cut out all the pieces
I needed and then for 12 straight hours today I set to work sewing it all together and adjusting as needed. Overall, I am extremely pleased and proud of myself. I worked really hard and was worried for a good bit over the last few days but it all came together very nicely.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 9:12 PM   0 comments

Saturday, October 26

Pumpkin Time

It's getting awfully close to Halloween and I have been so busy with the costumes I hadn't stopped to get pumpkins. My mom told
me she would be coming over today so I took the kids to the farmer's market but they didn't have any pumpkins. I also had to go to the grocery store and while I was there I ran into my friend Cindy. She told me about a patch in Debary where the prices seemed reasonable but after talking with her and
then seeing the pumpkins they had at the store I decided to just save some time and get them there. They were all very pretty with carve worthy fronts so we loaded up the cart as best we could and somehow fit our groceries around them. We carefully made our way home and then ate some lunch before mom and Rachel came over. When we
figured it was time we got all our tools out and started making our masterpieces. This year our Halloween is Star Wars themed. Javan wanted Yoda so grandma helped him out with that while I made a storm trooper and Peter made Darth Maul. The girls made classic jack-o-lanterns which turned out really cute. Once the pumpkins were finished we cleaned everything up and got ready for church. Peter had to play so he went to
church early. We picked up some dinner and then headed to church later. After service we came home and had our traditional fall Apple Cider and donuts snack. Only a few days left until Halloween and I still need to get the costumes done.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 9:48 PM   0 comments

Sunday, October 13

Grandpa

My dad came into town for a few days
to see his mom and us kids. He just flew in today and is staying in Orange City so he came over to see our new house. I showed him around and asked his thoughts on a few repair things and then he showed us a bunch of cool Texas pictures. The girls liked all the cowboy stuff and horses. After that Dad took us dinner at Sonny's with my aunt and uncle. We had a great time catching up. Hopefully we will get to see him again on Wednesday before he leaves to go back home.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 5:30 PM   0 comments

Saturday, October 12

Shake for a Shake

Javan went to Grandma's house and Daddy was at church it was just us girls at home. I got a text from our Chick-fil-a that said to come by and dance with the cow and you could get a free milkshake. Sounded good to me. We drove over and the girls got
their shakes on and then got to go behind the counter and make their shakes too. While we were there we ran into about 4 other families that we knew so we talked awhile and then headed out. I had a couple errands to run and needed to look at some materials so I could start putting Halloween costumes together.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 6:38 PM   0 comments

Sunday, October 6

Last Day at Camp

We had a long night last night so we slept a little late this morning. When we got up we went for breakfast and then came back to the cabin to get dressed and pack up all our stuff. We were allowed to stay at the camp until noon but Peter and I had a meeting at church at 2 and we wanted to get home and clean before then. They were doing water activities again this morning and since we missed out on them yesterday I wanted to make sure we got to have
some fun before we left. The girls went off to swim and Peter and I got a canoe to take Javan out on the water. We wanted to keep an eye on him and we knew he would enjoy a nice boat ride. On the canoe we got a great view of the swim areas and the big
inflatable "blob" that people jumped onto from a higher platform and caused other people to be shot off from the impact. We rowed a ways out where it was calm and quiet and then headed back in. Javan went to swim with Eddie for little bit and Peter got a kayak and picked up the girls. We had a great time but we had lots to do still so we had to call it quits so we could get home.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 11:29 AM   0 comments

Saturday, October 5

Some fun in the wilderness

This morning we woke up and had to stretch out some tight muscles. We always miss our bed when we go away but sleeping on a thin cot left much to be desired. We headed to the dining hall where we had breakfast and talked with our group. Then we went back to the cabin and got ready for the day. We headed off with our friends, Kim and Eddie and
found the archery course. Bresa gets to practice archery at school but the rest of us had never tried it before. We had a great time and though it wasn't very easy we all took several turns and got better as the time passed. The instructors have good pointers and helped us with our grips and aiming. I asked if the first rule in archery was that the bow was always loaded. They just
stared at me. I guess they only shot bows and never guns, I thought it was funny though. After we had our fill of quills we let the children go to the craft building where they were able to make a bunch of pictures for Halloween and Thanksgiving. While they were doing that Peter and I went with Kim and Eddie to play badminton. Peter and I had never played before but quickly got into it. We had a great time and got quite the work out. We played two games before the kids came back and then we went into a play hall where we found ping pong and pool tables.
next it was time for lunch and then there were going to be water activities after that. We ate and were heading back to the cabin when Javan started wheezing and coughing really bad. We had him lie down while we decided what to do and then ultimately decided to take him to the Emergency Room. The hospital in Deland had a huge wait when we got there so we decided to drive a bit farther and take Javan
to an urgent care center in Orange City. We had left the girls with our group so they could continue to have fun so it was just the three of us. When we got to the urgent care center they took us right in and we were out of there in less than 20 minutes. They gave us 5 prescriptions for allergies, cough, antibiotics, etc. Pretty much to cover all the bases. We took the scripts over to Publix and while we were waiting for them to fill them we went home to take showers and get all cleaned up. We picked up the meds and then some dinner as we knew we would miss the cook out and headed back to camp. We got there in time for some more badminton and then wandered over to the camp fire for stories and smores. I was exhausted tonight so Peter and I checked in early which was good since had to get up several times in the night to help Javan take medicine.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 10:59 PM   0 comments

Friday, October 4

Camping with a Life Group

One of the Life Groups we oversee was going on a camping trip and invited to join them since we are their coaches. I haven't been camping in forever and the leader of the life group got a great
deal so I couldn't turn it down. Plus we were going to be sleeping in air conditioned cabins so there was no hot tents to deal with which Peter was happy about. I
tried to get off work a bit early and picked up a few things on the way home. We hadn't told the kids about it so they were super excited when we told them what to start packing. We arrived at the camp and were directed to our cabin. We had free time tonight to get settled before dinner. At dinner we met at a big camp
fire and cooked our hot dogs over the flame. Later we had roasted marshmallows. When we had all enjoyed our dinner we wandered over to an air conditioned building where we found pool noodles that were cut to sword size. We had a blast beating each other up with them and then the kids ran around and danced
for a long time. Eventually it was time to get the kids cleaned up from all the outside fun and sweaty inside fun they had. Once they were clean we put them to bed in the cabin and then went to the other cabin to talk to some friends. We must have been gone a long time because when we got back
to our cabin the lights were all out and we had to sneak in quietly and find our bunk. There were enough beds for everyone to have their own but Peter and I don't sleep well apart so we shared a little twin bunk because that's how we roll.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 8:42 PM   0 comments