I always try to do one boy and one girl for Operation Christmas Child, but have never done a box for the older group.  I've read that this group is the least group that boxes are made for.  I guess it's because it's a little harder to find stuff that will fit in the box.  To learn more about our other boxes and packing them, click here.  As with Michael's box, I wasn't able to fit everything in.

Last year we started to do an Operation Christmas Child box for a boy in the age group that Michael is in.  To read more about us packing our boxes this year, click here.  I try to have Michael as involved as possible in picking out items for this box.  Unfortunately, I was not able to fit everything that we purchased.

Since we have a tree in our front yard, we wanted to try and have some of our Halloween decorations hanging from it.  One of our neighbors down the street had these awesome ghosts that also lit up at night hanging from their tree.  I looked everywhere for them, but had no luck in finding them.  I decided that I would have to forget about our ghosts lighting up and just make some on my own.

It's that time of year again, but if you're like me you've been planning throughout the year.  Michael and I have been doing some of our last minute shopping to finalize our three boxes.  Not too late to start one.  The national collection week for the Operation Christmas Child boxes is November 17th - 24th.

Growing up I only remember one time having a carved pumpkin for Halloween.  For Jon, it was something his family did every year.  Since it was something that Jon loved to do with his family, we've been carving pumpkins for the past six years.

With last Friday being Halloween, we ended up starting our grocery trip on Sunday and Michael & I finished it on Monday.  I came up with the meal plan on Sunday morning while Jon was working on his car.  Here's the plan that I came up with:

Even though the week of Halloween is long gone, I still wanted to write about our meals we had planned for that week and what our grocery trip was like.  Here's what was planned:

I know this is late and I had all intentions of writing about this weeks ago.  How about something fun to plan to do with the family next October.  We bought these 3D foam structure kits at Michaels and had so much fun putting them together.  I actually went to Michaels today and all Halloween items are on sale 80% off!  I bought two more kits for less than half the cost of one!  I'm set for next year.