Grandpa Moss' 87th Birthday Party!

Grandpa Don Moss turned 87 and I decided to have the whole Moss family over for dinner. It was fun seeing everybody and hanging out together. He is a great man and just recently finished his book of his life story. We all got a hardbound copy. He rocks!

Here Don is with his newest Great-Grandson, Dylan Tremayne (Tiffany and Gary's son and my only grandson!)

Here is Merlene and Don with just some of their great-grandkids! He's got a lot of great-granddaughters! Tiffany's 2 girls, Casey's 3 girls, Heather's 1 girl, Nick's 2 girls, Jeff's 2 girls, Devin's 1 girl. That makes 11 great granddaughters!!!  Then he's got a bunch of great grandsons too! Tiff's 1 boy, Casey's 2 boys, Nick's 2 boys, Dustin's 2 boys. That makes 7 great grandsons!! That's a whopping 18 great grands!  How cool is that?! 

 Tiffany and Gary and their family came and Tiff helped me with the food. Everybody brought a dish and we had some marvelous side dishes. I forgot to take a pic of all my pork chops. Oh well.

 Grandpa's cake .....John picked out the "over the hill" but that's his humor. I thought it was cute when Don turned the 8 and 7 around  to 7 and 8. lol.

His birthday is the end of September so I had all of my Halloween decorations out. Here is the drinks station we had. We decorated the kiddie tables with Halloween pumpkins and napkins. I think the girls liked eating next to the lit up Jack-o-lanterns.

Here were the 2 kiddie tables I put together for the 9 little ones who came. 

My granddaughters loved sitting together with all their girl cousins. 

We had pork chops, cheesy potatoes, lots of different veggie and fruit salads, homemade rolls by Robin, and cake. 

It was really yummy. Everybody chowed down. 

Tiffany's spinach salad....

Heather's spinach salad. Both were so different and so delicious!  Don'tcha love my skeleton tongs? They add so much...snicker....

Everybody getting ready to grab a plate and go dig in. These were  the 2 adult tables. 

I think I snapped this pic just before the prayer. How rude am I? Yes I am kind of rude now that I see it in living color. :( 

 We had chips and salsa too, fruit salad, pasta salad, it was a yummy feast.

 Jeff and Tiff's families sat with Casey and Heather's families. They all have little kids. It's funny how all the old people sat together, all the young people sat together, and all the young couples sat together.

Megan was always willing to pose for me. :D I love her so much!

The adults dinner table...here are all of us old people. John always has his glasses halfway down his nose like that. snicker....

Here was the before picture of the young adults table. We have a lot of college aged kids in our family. 

This was the young adults table with everybody sitting around it. All the college kids ate together. They are the good looking ones of the bunch. Yup. 

And here we are singing Happy Birthday to Grandpa. I wish all my pics weren't so dark. I'm still a sucky photog. 

 To me the funnest part of the night was Dennis Moss (top right) getting out his ipad and connecting with Nick Moss in Washington D.C. and John Moss (my hubs) connecting his iphone with Devin Moss in Chicago, and both of them looking at each other through the i technology and then at Grandpa and talking to him and to each other and all of us listening in. It was just a JETSON'S MOMENT! Those of you too young to have watched the Jetson's as kids won't get it, but we don't get a lot of your technology so we are even!

Grandpa Don Moss has been the most wonderful grandpa I could ever ask for. My kids all love him dearly. Here he is with Grandma Merlene holding the latest grandbaby. I think this is Heather's baby girl.. 

Happy Birthday to you....we recorded all of us singing too. 

He is a sweetheart and we love him. 

Wendy and Jeff Moss and family with Grandma and Grandpa Moss. We all took turns sitting with them and taking individual family pictures. I wish I had pics of everybody. 

Here's Gary and Tiff's Family with Grandma and Grandpa Moss. 

 Robin and Tiff and I all brought jars filled with Candy and did a guessing game for the little kids. Whomever was closest to the correct candy estimate got to take the jar of candy or gum home. We spread the winnings out so each little kid's family got to take a jar home. In essence, we cheated the college kids out of their candy. lol. Nobody complained. Too bad I forgot to take a pic. It's a fun family reunion game I found on the web.

It was a lot of fun to hang out with family on a great occasion such as our patriarch's birthday. We all love our Grandpa Moss. I hope we get many more fun birthday celebrations with him and Merlene too.

Halloween Cupcakes and Skeleton Brownies

Halloween Cupcakes; pumpkin cupcakes and vampire cupcakes too! 

I played around decorating some cute Halloween Cupcakes for a party I was going to. 

I had about 7 different designs on my Halloween Cupcake treats. 

        It was fun to make the "Purple People Eater" cupcakes with little eyeball superballs.

Halloween brownies made to look like skeletons were made from pretzels 

 My favorite Halloween treats were these brownie skeletons made from white chocolate disks for the heads and yogurt covered pretzels for the bodies. I had to put chocolate icing on the walnut brownies too.I added pretzels and white chocolate candy melts for the faces. The rest of the body I used just white buttercream icing and made the legs and hands with a pastry bag and a decorator icing tip.

Halloween Cupcakes...the spiderweb cupcakes and pumpkin cupcakes were super easy! 

Here is a plate of my finished cupcakes. Love the chocolate vampire cupcakes with M & M eyes and candy corn teeth. The bloody smiles are made from red fruit snacks cut into strips.

I had some spider rings at school I added to the spiderweb cupcakes but forgot to take pics afterwards. The mummy cupcake was super easy with M & M eyes

 I added a small box of vanilla pudding, 3/4 cup of sour cream and some butterscotch chips to the batter of the cupcakes. I also added half melted butter, instead of 1/2 the oil. It just tastes better. I hate cupcakes where I can taste the oil! Yuck!

 Finished Halloween cupcakes and treats on top. They were very colorful and very yummy too.

Cute Pumpkin Halloween Cupcakes

 The easiest Halloween cupcakes were the spiderwebs and pumpkins. Just chocolate chips for the jack-o-lantern faces. I  just added chocolate chips for the face and some pretty sprinkles over the orange and green icing.

Creepy Vampire Cupcakes for Halloween....super CUTE! 

This vampire cupcake was so cute. I thought it turned out cute with the brown sprinkles for the chocolate iced hair, and the M & M eyes. I made some eyes brown chocolate chip eyes  too. I couldn't decide which one looked better.

Halloween Cupcakes! Lots of mummies, ghouls and spiderwebs! 

Notice the 2 colors of spiderweb cupcakes too. I think they both look really pretty. It would be a cute plate to just have the 2 flavors of spiderweb cupcakes for a party.

Gotta love a purple people eater cupcakes! 

 I also made a pan of brownies too. They were skeleton brownies. I added candy corn to the square brownies.

Skeleton Brownies were my favorite, and super easy too! 

 Check out all the sweet treat fun! I got a lot of inspiration from looking on Pinterest at cute treat ideas I could try. I love peanut butter cookies. I'd do the pumpkin kisses with peanut butter cookies instead of brownies.

Pumpkin Kiss Brownies at Daily Food Buzz are cute. 

At Food.Daily Buzz is the recipe for these cute yummy things. 

These Halloween Brownies are super cute. And they were super easy.  I love a mint flavoring for the icing and then I would tint the icing mint green. It looks so fun  like cute little Frankenstein and jack-o-lantern faces!

Here at Tidymom.net is a bunch of really sweet cookies to decorate for Halloween. I love the Spiderwebs and Candy corn coothe best! But it is the assortment that really makes the white serving plate look special!  

Here are my 2 little pirates at the Halloween Party. Argh! Matey! Have a Happy Halloween!

Why I like James Altucher and Oddballs in General

I have always been different. Call me an oddball if you want. I choose to call myself creative. I'm messy sometimes, passionate about things, opinionated, I gravitate to beauty in its many forms. I hate camping but I love roasting marshmallows over a campfire. I abhor hiking with a 25 pound pack on my back but love walking around a lake (just don't call it hiking or I may stab you with my hot dog skewer used for aforementioned marshmallow cooking). I love decorating my entire house and classroom for holidays but most actual holidays stress me out. I think I like the idea of the beautiful holiday home, but planning the events holidays require can be stressful for the party planner person. And I love a good party. I have a love/hate relationship with holidays. I sometimes love being the life of the party and lately I want to stay home from the party. I don't know why. Maybe it's too much effort to get all dressed up anymore.  I am odd. I love to be creative. But I don't like the details. I love to teach school, I hate dealing with the report cards. I love getting new stuff, but I hate seeing the bill. I hate laundry but I'm always bringing home too many new clothes. I am not logical. I am odd. I know this.

I want one of these wild hogs someday. In the meantime maybe I'll just get a hot pink Vespa. :D 

I love fellow oddballs like myself. I love creative people who are a little bit like Monk; Weird but smart and a little OCD at the same time. I have a prejudice against people who are slow talkers, slow processors, and slow drivers. I absolutely couldn't be friends with a slow talker. (or the person who voted for Obama because that person is a big dummy).  I like the person who can finish my sentences and who thinks quick. I love shows like Gilmore Girls, Suits, White Collar, where the dialogue is so fast paced you missed stuff if you were not paying attention. (although it almost killed me when I heard the star of White Collar, Matt Bomer was gay. BUT WHY OH WHY did you have to tell us that U.S. Weekly, WHY!?#%  http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/white-collar-star-matt-bomer-im-gay-2012132

One of the TRULY finger-licking, good-looking men.....why are you going to the dark side, WHY?? 

I loathe getting stuck behind a slow old grandma driver especially when I'm in a hurry. Is there anything worse on this green earth? I don't think there is. I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out with pliers! I'd want to scratch my eyeballs out! I'd want to jump out of my skin. The other day there was one of these grannies at the gas station deciding how and which pump she was going to. She backed forward a little then backed up then changed her mind going 5 miles an hour. By the time she had decided what the "bleep" she was doing I almost yelled swear words out the window. Then I saw who it was. It was the wife of a pastor/leader at church. Good thing I kept the swearing to inside of my head, right? I also like people who swear inside their heads. I just like you. You are part of my posse.

Here is a little part of my posse too.   :D 

More of my posse....

And since tomorrow is my birthday I decided to give everybody a little gift. Here it is. I sent one of this guy's posts to my hubs like 6 months ago and he's gotten a kick out of him too. So here is your little gift for the day.  I highly recommend this guy's blog. He is funny most of the time, quick witted, tells it like it is bluntly.

I love those kind of people because I relate to them. I'm not diplomatic. I'm blunt. I like my kind I guess. Sometimes he is an ignorant boob but aren't we all at times? He is never apologetic about it either. But he is always refreshing, NOT politically correct, and he has some good advice....all except the part about not ever buying a house. He's dead wrong there. I'm buying a 3rd house as soon as I pay off house #1 which is within the year. But I still like him. But not as much as I like the Pottery Barn Catalog that comes to my house every few months. I really love that.

Who wouldn't like sitting at this Halloween dinner table? My grandkids would! Yup! 

His name is James Altucher. He gets like 5 billion hits on his blog a month and I get about 25,000 on all my blogs combined, so of course he's one of my idols. He has been everything from a fake Psychic to thrown out of graduate school. He is odd. But he is entertaining. He sometimes writes things that tickle my funnybone. He's a fellow oddball with a creative bent. I like him. Check him out.
http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2013/09/three-stories-about-hate/

Meet Chelsea!

Introducing Miss Chelsea Anne Moss, our newest family member! She is a little doll!

She was born last week and she weighed in at 8 pounds 3 ounces. I think her daddy was just one ounce off of that. What a coincidence!

We had Josie swimming with us and the girls at Cowabunga Bay the day she was born. So when visiting hours arrived we got to see her seeing her sister for the first time. It sure was cute.  

 She was funny when she kept finding little bugs on the ground. Here she found a tiny little caterpillar.

 She found another bug a minute later. It was BUG MANIA! But really good weather. lol.

She found a Grasshopper too. It was pretty funny because it was all in like a 5 minute stretch of time!

She had a good time with her cousins at the last day of the season at Cowabunga Bay. It's a really fun place we have enjoyed so much this year as a family. I love this picture.  

Grandma Robin got there the same time we got there. So we snapped pictures of each other holding our new grandbaby Chelsea. She is a lot more photogenic than I am. She is a teacher too. We always have loads to talk about whenever we get together. Wendy used to be a teacher too before she had kids. We love to talk teacher stuff. 

Uncles and Aunts came too! Here is Wendy's sister Amy and her husband Robert. He teaches school too. We are a family of elementary school teachers.  

I love this picture I snapped at the pretty mom and the cute big sista.  

Here is my handsome son holding his daughter's hand while she holds her sister in her arms......sweetness overload! 

Jeff gave Josie some sparkling cider to celebrate the new baby sister she has!! 

Grandpa Michelson holding Chelsea for the first time. 

I love this picture of her. She is saying, "Okay you guys, I'm kind of tired now, let me go back to sleep already!" 

 Josie meeting Chelsea. "We will have some good times together!" she is thinking.....

 It is such a miracle having a baby. It is an exciting thing for any family. I am so happy for my oldest son and his cute and healthy new little one. We are very blessed. Yes we are.

I got to hold her the longest. I already love her. (sounds of kisses)....