Our 2009 Christmas Card!

Loves it!

House Guests

This past weekend we had our first official house guests! Our newly married friends Jon and Joanna came up from Houston for a visit. They drove up Friday evening and we enjoyed yummy food, wine, and just relaxing.

*Disclaimer: If you are anti-gun, skip this paragraph.

Saturday we went to the gun range so the boys could play and Joanna could shoot a gun for the first time. We first practiced with handguns and I got 7 bullets in the inside area, yay me! Will's the only one that got a bullseye. Then we moved on to clay pigeons which I was terrible at, but Joanna rocked and shot 5! It was fun but we had sore shoulders from the heavy shotguns. Joanna liked shooting the guns; we both agreed that while some guns make us nervous, we like knowing we can protect ourselves and our families if we have to. I never want to have to shoot at anything other than a paper target, but I like feeling comfortable enough to do it if I have to. Watch out, bad guys!

AFTER the gun range, we went to Henks for their annual Oktoberfest. Saturday is my favorite Henks day because they have homemade cheese soup. It is soooo good. Probably a good thing they only make it once a week though, it's very cheesy :)

Joanna and I spent the evening doing what we do best - shopping :) This is her first married Christmas and both of our first Christmases in our new homes so we both want to do it up right! We capped off the night with dinner and a movie.

Sunday they left and Will and I got ready for our Christmas card photo shoot! More to come on that!

The only group shot I got all weekend.

Will giving me useless pointers. *Useless* because I was so miserable.

Jon and Jo - can't wait to see y'all again soon!

50's Day for the 50th Day!

Today was 50's day in honor of the 50th day of school. I'd never heard of it either, but it was fun AND we got to wear jeans for the second day ever! That alone is something to get excited about.



Don't you just want to roll up a box of crayons in their sleeves?! So cute.



We also had our fall shower after school today, and we had two babies to celebrate and one wedding! It was fun watching them open gifts, and it made me want to open little monogrammed onsies and bloomers! Someday, someday.... :)

Martha Stewart Wannabe

I am, it's true. Minus that little insider trading debacle.

So I used her site as inspiration for my Halloween decor and actually scored a "Wow, those pumpkins look so Martha Stewarty!" Saturday night. It was my shining moment :)

This is what Will and I came up with....

Spider web everywhere - not really Martha-ey, just traditional. Will did all that. The pumpkins have holes ramdonly punched in them easily accomplished with a drill bit (MS inspiration).

View from the inside - I took a couple MS bat templates, traced them onto cardstock, cut, hung with fishing line, and voila - spooky bats hovering over little trick-or-treaters heads!

Add some fog, a strobe light and some scary costumes and you might just hear someone exclaim, "This is the scariest house we've been to!" At least we did :)

Counting down to Christmas!

Happy Halloween From the Lofland's!

Happy Halloween from...

Rowdy the Jester!

Toula the Hot Dog!

William the Werewolf!



& Lyndsey the not-so-wicked witch!

We hope everyone had a safe and spoOoOoky night!

MUAHAHAHAHA!

Happy Halloween Eve!

I am happy to report my kids LOVED the Halloween bags I put together for them!





We have been going through some "attitude adjustments" lately, so they knew that if they did not earn all the letters to the word HALLOWEEN by today, they would not be getting their special prize. And considering today was the Friday before Halloween as well as crazy hair day for Drug Awareness Week, they were very well behaved!


Many of them also brought me some yummy Halloween treats - the perks of being a teacher I guess :)



(I may have had a Twix and some Bubble Yum for breakfast.)

I couldn't help myself, I had to share a couple of the kid's stories from today. I gave them a few "story starters" and they took it from there. These are incomplete but they're so darn cute I couldn't resist!




Can you tell we talked about trick-or-treating safety today??





Okay, I'm off to put my Martha Stewart skills to work and make some decorations for tomorrow! Oh wait, I'm just tracing some templates I printed off her website. Silly me :)

Bring on the ghosts and goblins....

I think we're ready!