Halloween Pumpkins & Costumes

My parents have made somewhat of a tradition of coming to visit in October.  Because of that timing, we always wait to carve pumpkins until they arrive and while we carve Boppa makes caramel popcorn and Diyah makes wassal.  As of late, we've added roasting the pumpkin seeds to grandma's duties because she is the only one patient enough to comb through the muck for the seeds.

This year T chose to dress up as Carl from the Disney movie "UP".  

J chose to dress up as Waldo.

I literally begged J to be the boy scout from "UP" (I miss the days when my kids would have a matching theme to their costumes) but I wasn't able to convince him.  

This was the boys prior to going to the BFPS Fall Festival.

The following night was our ward Trunk or Treat

This is K's modern interpretation of "Dora the Explorer" - ha!

{K} XC Season wrapped up

And just like that K's final Cross Country season is over.

K ran Varsity all season and was her team's solid, reliable 5th runner. Her best season time for the 5,000m was 20:14:02, never quite as fast as she has been in years past but after fighting so many injuries she ran in her "safe" zone and it worked to keep her injury free.  

Wilsonville's girls took 1st place at their NWOC League championship.  This was K's 3rd year running XC and the team's 3rd year in a row to win 1st place.  

Nice to wrap up her senior year with a perfect record.

{J} Middle School XC Season

I think we may have another runner in our household.

J decided to join his middle school Cross Country team and when J decides to do something he is all in.  I loved watching his commitment that showed each race day as he would line up, get out of the blocks and pound through all 2,000m without letting up until the race was finished.  He just ran with a look of determination and focus that I didn't see on a lot of the other faces.

His hard work paid off.  J started the season with a 8:41:72 time and by the season's end he was down to 8:25:11.  In every meet that he ran in (he missed one) he was the 2nd finisher for his school's 6th grade team.  

Well done J!!!

{K} thrifting fun

Goodwill + Monday Night + KK = Non-stop entertainment & Fun

Collin Kartchner comes to Oregon

About six months ago I became aware of a speaker, Collin Kartchner, that was vocally speaking out about social media and smart phones and ultimately trying to educate parents and kids alike to make better choices.  His message resonated with my beliefs and I wanted to figure out a way to get him to come to Oregon to present in our community.  I reached out to him in July and the response I got put me in touch with a handful of other women that lived in Oregon that had also reached out.  The recommendation was to work together and coordinate getting him to come.  The email sat in my inbox for a number of weeks, hoping that somebody would take the lead but nobody did.  So I took the reins to coordinate the women into two groups based on where they lived and I reserved Collin (and Katey McPherson) to be in Oregon for two days in October.  That didn't give us much time to pull together sponsors and venues and get the word out, but if we didn't take those dates we were looking at next year.  I felt like we needed to book Collin and get him to Oregon.  

I arranged a meeting at my house and, of the 10 or so moms invited, only three women showed up, but luckily they were all women who lived in my "area" so we had a team!!!  I didn't really want to take the lead, but it kind of fell in my lap and ultimately the other group of women never had someone step up so they fizzled out.  I kept the second night that we had Collin booked and we created two middle school assemblies and a Community Parent Education night for 10/17 and a Youth/Parent Fireside for 10/18.

Two events and two months to pull it off.  Luckily I was working with a dream team:

Kari Kleinke

Tiffany Gray

Shelly Brown

Courtney Hardy

We pulled off raising over $3,500 from sponsors, coordinated two assemblies, secured a venue with seating for 2,500 for the parent night, arranged for speakers for a question panel, printed t-shirts, printed a program, made gift baskets, planned a dinner for our panel and our speakers and we promoted the heck out of the event.

(the youth fireside was another undertaking done by just Shelly, Courtney and I and it involved three stakes...Courntey was our fearless leader on that one)

Collin's middle school assemblies were a huge hit with the kids.

He spoke at Wood Middle School in Wilsonville and at Rosemont Middle School in West Linn.

The parent meeting had over 1,200 in attendance which we felt was a huge success.

The next night was our tri-stake Fireside.  When I originally coordinated that I tried telling our leadership that we would need over 1,000 seats and I encouraged that the entire gym be set up with overflow in the RS and Primary room.  The leadership did not believe that the turnout would justify that amount of seating.  We blew it out of the water!!!  We packed the place and when it was over I was drained but thrilled with what we'd accomplished.

These past two months were an amazing journey and these women that I worked with became fast friends.  We were the pieces of the puzzle and God put us together in a way we couldn't have imagined or orchestrated on our own.  

THANK YOU to the dream team, to Collin and Katye and to our community that showed up and let us know that all of our work was worth it!