Learning about Veteran’s Day

From the school’s Facebook page:

Halley 2nd Graders are buzzing this morning, thanks to some very special visitors at school today. Our students are learning about Veterans Day, and today, several Hornet staff and family members shared their experiences with us about what it means to serve in the military. We learned so much, and we are looking forward to commemorating all of our nation’s currently serving military and veterans in our ceremony tomorrow! Thank you, Ms. Demers, for these pictures!

Can you find Owen?

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How about now? 🙂

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2016 trick or treating with friends!

Our two Pokemon: Squirtle and Pikachu!

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Our yard and porch! This was the first year we’ve left the lights on and just left treats out for kids to grab. I kind of miss carving a pumpkin, but honestly it’s a lot of work and I don’t miss the stress about needing to get it done. Plus, I have this light-up pumpkin that I can use.

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Starting at our neighbor’s house…

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We weren’t planning on going with them, but she was ready when we got to their house, so we all went together!

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Maddie, a neighbor friend.

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Then, on another street, we ran into more friends, so our group grew!

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Trick or treating hours were from 6:30-8 and we used every last minute! We were walking back into our yard at 8:00!

The kids got entirely too much candy…and were super excited!

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Pokemoning with friends!

Since the Marine Corps marathon is this weekend our normal hunting spots were closed…so we headed to Old Town Alexandria!

Fighting a gym! We kept getting errors so we just moved on.

A birch!

Success fighting another gym!

This was a Japanese maple—so absolutely gorgeous I had to get a picture! (We saw about 15 different photographers and families out this morning!)

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These two were best buddies all day.

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These bullet points are great.

Relaxing with a delicious lunch at TJ Stone’s Pub in Alexandria.

Family Costume Party!

Friends (the Brownes) invited us to a costume party and we hadn’t been to one in ages—and I’ve never been this thin—so I eagerly bought myself an awesome costume! I mean, I figured why not?!

So, you saw the sneak peek:

And Tom had a few costume options from previous years…but I had seen a friend do Cousin Eddie (from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) and thought it was brilliant…so I picked up the pieces for that. And of course we had the two Pokémon kidlets.

On our way…

Ta da! Thankfully we had an unseasonably warm day and we were actually comfortable in these.

Who wore it better?! 🙂 The consensus was Tom, though Randy showed more nipple. 😀

I loved all our costumes but I really want to have a theme one year. We briefly tossed around being Team Rocket or Ash and Misty from Pókemon but the costumes were too expensive for what they were and I didn’t feel like creating them myself. Maybe next year will be the themed year.

Our themed hosts:

Even Squirtles need to eat.

And Pikachus need to potty. 🙂

I really lit up well in the black light…but I don’t think it even looks like me.

The kids had a blast—we barely saw them the whole time. They were playing in the yard and going on a treasure hunt with 20 other kids.

Black light paint!

The funny thing was that we were all thinking it was like 9-9:30 (it was dark and we were tired) and we looked at the time…and it was only like 6:45! Are we old or what? 🙂

Once the sun went down it quickly got chilly so they started a fire and we hung out there for a bit but then we called it a night and were home by 7:30. ARE WE OLD OR WHAT?! 🙂

Soccer game day!

Today was photo day! I honestly didn’t want to pay the outrageous prices for photos, so I planned to sneak some of Owen and his team and Tom snagged one of Katie’s session (it was at 8am and me and Owen didn’t make it for that). Also, I knew Katie would have half her team missing (due to pics being an hour before the game) and we never really got to know any of the kids (like we did with T-ball and baseball) outside the two kids we already knew.

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Dancing across the field…

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It really wasn’t until after the game when I was looking at all the pics I took that I realized Owen was really handling the ball well. He has improved SO much it’s unbelievable!

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