The tale of the purple/blue/teal hair...

So...remember when I got this hair cut at the beginning of October? I loved it. Fabulously cut by my good friend Megan. I've had the same boring brown hair for like 10 years now. Hardly ever coloring it, or cutting it. I was just lost as what to do with it, so I did nothing. And this is coming from a history of starting dying my hair at 12 years old. (which was young back then...) :) I've had every hair color and cut (for shorter hair) under the moon. Through high-school and College, every week brought a new color or new highlights, or something. I decided to grow out my natural hair on my mission. So, throughout all of my mission pictures, you can gradually see my roots growing out and out and out, and then they are gone completely. So, I was even boring myself with this same brown do for so long. I told Meg that I needed to spice things up. I had grown out my hair last year, and it was the longest it had ever been. So, I decided to try Ombre. That's what all the girls with long hair do, right? I loved the ombre, It was so beautiful, the problem was...was that I had to then learn how to do my hair. Which was nice. I finally got into the habit of curling it, and when you have Ombre hair, you almost always have to curl it. And that was where I encountered some problems. I learned something about myself, if my hair is long enough to put in a pony tail, it will go in a pony tail. Every. Single. Day. No joke! So, most of the time, the Ombre couldn't even be seen. And not only that, but my hair is super fine and super thin, so the longer it gets, the more scraggly it looks. So, I went in and got my typical, A-line cut, as you see here:

But...I wanted some spice, So I had her weave some purple into it. Just a bit, that would peek a boo out every now and then. She hadn't worked with vibrant colors like this before, so she bleached it first, and then put the color in, and it did nothing. But I had a nice carmely highlight throughout. I went back a few weeks later, she got a new product, talked to some of her hair lady friends, and figured it out. I left her house with this hair:

Which I didn't LOVE as much as I thought, but I thought it would be fun for a while. She got this special brand that isn't supposed to fade for 30 days, and I thought I would just go in again and have her color it back when it started to fade. 2 days later, my purple hair, had turned into this:

A beautiful blue, that was a lot more noticeable. And...I actually liked it a lot more!

{Sorry for the G's}

But she had done the weave throughout my whole head, and after a week or so, the blue was just way too much. Had it only been these front little whispy parts that were blue, that would have been fine. But there were some pretty big chunks in the back and as it was fading, it just started looking a little trashy. So...

Off I went for trip #3 to see Meg. Who covered up all the fading blue with a dark dark color, darker than my natural color, and then, just to see if we could get the purple right, she did just one little streak in the front, again with the purple.

It turned out PERFECT! I absolutely loved it:

It was exactly what I wanted, and we were hoping that since it was a second color on this particular strand, that maybe it would absorb, and it did last longer than the last time, but still, only a week or so, then it faded back into the beautiful blue, which I also loved, and now it is more like a teal color:

But it is just a little peek-a-boo strand that you don't always see. I like it. I don't hate it yet. :) I'm sure I'll go back eventually and just have her color over the whole thing again. I'll probably just wait until I need a cut and color again, though. I'm thinking for next fall, I'm going to do an all over plum-purple color. Not a vibrant color purple, like this one, but a reddish plummy one. :) And that is the story of a girl and her purple/blue/teal hair. Now that I've had this color in my hair, I've noticed ALL of the people who have color like this in their hair, and a lot of the time, it doesn't look good. :) A lot of the time it's at wal-mart and they are in their pajamas! :) And when I told my friend Laura I wanted to put a purple pop of color in my hair, her response was, 'girl, you've been in the Spanish branch a little too long!" :) HA HA! What do you think? Trashy or Fun?

The branch...

A few months ago they told us that they had put in a request to the first presidency to split the branch. That a Valley branch would be forming, but we just didn't know when exactly. They initially told us it would be April or May of this year. Then April and May came and went and no word. Then the summer came and went, still no word, but we knew it would be happening. Then in September or October they finally told us that at the beginning of November would be the split, but they were still working on boundaries and locations etc... So we waited and waited. We knew that our branch would be in the East Stake, and that it would include all members of the East Stake, Valley Stake, C'da Stake and Hayden, ID Stake. We just didn't know where we would meet. It kind of sucked for us in the primary because we were waiting to give out the program assignments to find out who would still be in the branch. I was so excited about the idea of going to church in the Valley again, and being so close that I forgot that it meant that we would be leaving half of our branch behind. I have grown to love these people so so so much over the last year and a half. We are so sad that this Indiana branch chapter is closing and there will be no more driving downtown for all meetings and activities. No more primary for me and no more Young men's for Ben. On November 3rd, President Mott and his counselors, for the East Stake, and President McCombie and his counselors from the West Stake all came to our branch and made it official, and released all of us, and called all of us. It was funny, President McCombie, our Stake president in the West Stake is awesome. I don't know him as well as I know the presidency of our East stake, that is one benefit of living in the same stake you grew up in, I feel like I know everyone! But I have gotten to know him over the past year and a half and he is so great! He came to our branch a lot. As he was reading all the names of people who would be members of this new Spokane 4th Branch out in the valley, of course, my name is the name he had the hardest time with. Out of all the Hispanic names, mine is the name he stumbled on the most. Luckily, between the East stake presidency, Pres. Mott, Pres. Niccols, and our branch Presidency, Pres. Condon, and Bro. Gonzales, all of which were sitting behind him, they corrected him and he got it right. He then looked at me in the congregation and said, Sorry Sister Pyper! :) I guess he never knew my fist name! :)

Anyway, Anibal Lopez is our new branch president, Juan Vazquez is the first counselor, and a bother from Idaho is our new second Counselor, Juan Martinez. Here is a group photo that they took of all the people who were there that day. We had lots and lots of visitors! The bishopric from the Pines ward, the East stake presidency, the West stake presidency, lots of high counsel-men from both stakes.

I'm going to miss this:

This is Taylor and her favorite nursery leader, Sis. Waites. :) We all love Sister Waites! :) This is who, everytime Tayor would wear my high heels, and jewelry, she would say she was sister Waites! :) Her and her husband live in Cheney, and are going to Eastern. Her husband served a Spanish speaking mission and believe it or not, Yvette is half Hispanic!

I will definitely miss my Primary ladies! This is all of us! All the presidency, Music AND teachers. Somehow we did it all every Sunday! :) I will miss these ladies very much!!!

And Sister Lopez, she is the only one missing from the above picture. I love their family and I will miss working with her in Primary. I love her boys, they were some of Ben's young men. They are awesome and we miss them!!!

Oh, and don't even get me started on Claudia and Marta, and Graciella...I love these ladies SO very much!

And the Gonzalez family, and the Womack family, and the Condons, and Antonia and the Dixons and the McCoys. All families we will miss so very much and love so much!

But, here is our new branch:

Our first Sunday we had 76 members! It was so cool, so many families from North Idaho that weren't coming to our branch downtown, have decided to come to the Valley branch! So, we meet in the Evergreen building, which is awesome because it is like 2 minutes from our house! I still feel bad for those people who still have to travel a half an hour to church! yuck! And there are some new families from our East Stake who were assigned, like us, to the branch. We meet in the Relief Society room at the same time that the Pines ward meets, then our kids and youth join up for Primary and Sunday school and Youth, and all of the adult classes are separate. I was kind of excited because I have a lot of friends in the Pines ward, I thought we'd be with them more, but all the adult classes are separate, so I just see them passing in the halls. But I'm glad my kids have so many friends in primary now! With our 18 kids from the branch, the Pines ward primary is up to 100 kids!!!  Ben is in the Elders Quorum presidency, and I am the bulletin/program lady. I'm really excited about this calling, because I get to kind of be the 'social' coordinator. I will be in charge of taking pictures at activities, and keeping the bulletin board updated with activities and photos, and I'm going to do a family spotlight each week so we can get to know each other. And I get to enjoy church every Sunday without any responsibilities! :) I'm excited for this new chapter, but so very sad that the last one has ended. When President Mott called us a few weeks before the new branch was formed he asked us if we would be willing to stay longer than our initial 2 year assignment to the Spanish branch, and we told him we most definitely would! He said they might need us a bit longer, so now who knows how long we'll be in the branch. Maybe forever. Now that they meet in the Valley, Ben and I have both said we wouldn't mind staying forever! :)

The week of the split, our good friends, Juan and Maria Vazquez got sealed. Juan is the guy who has worked for Ben this past year. They are awesome! We love them so much. After their sealing, we all got together for a big dinner at the Stake Center. It was a nice ending to our Indiana Branch and a great beginning to our Valley branch. As all people were there, the old members and the new ones.

 I'm really excited to be a part of all of this. When President Mott spoke at our branch during the split, he told us that we will look back on this day as a big day for the church in Spokane, and more especially the Hispanic members of the church. Our next goal is become big enough that we become a ward and get to combine with our Indiana branch again. :) I feel like Ben and I have had some pretty cool callings and experiences together and this is definitely where we are supposed to be right now and maybe forever!
Oh, and remind me to never give my husband my camera again while we are waiting for the ordinations and setting aparts to happen, which we did as a new branch which was pretty cool! :) This is what you'll get:

Halloween...FINALLY!

Yes, I know that I spent entirely WAY too much time and money on these cute little mummy fruit boxes. But look how cute they are!!! Curse you, pinterest!

I was in charge of Tucker's class Halloween party. I know, I know. He's my first, this is his first first grade class party. I may have been a little eager, but I jumped right in! It actually wasn't too bad. I chose to do the Halloween party because I have SO MUCH Halloween stuff.  And I had a lot of moms to help.

I had one of the mom's bring these cute ghost bananas and apple smiles. Her daughter has a peanut allergy so she wanted to be in charge of food to make sure that everything was allergen free. And we had decided together to do 'healthier' snacks since they would be getting a ton of candy. Oh, and there is also a kid in Tuckers class who is vegan!!! Seriously??? So, we totally had to make sure that we used the right brands of things.What first grader is Vegan?

I had another mom make these cute little clementine pumpkins with celery stems...

I made these cute little candy guess jars...

We had 4 stations, one for snacks, one for sugar cooking decorating, one for a craft and one for a game, and we just broke them up into 4 groups and rotated. They all had a great time! The game was a relay race where they had to wrap up their teammate like a mummy, run over to where there were little Halloween shapes, suck them up through a straw and put them in a witches cauldron; then run over and toss a bean bag into a pumpkins mouth.

Two of Tucker's BFF's, Carson and Ezra:

The craft station:

Some of Tucker's other's great friends, Amy, Noah, Tucker and Brayden:

Me and my ninja turtle. Yes, I was a pirate, I really went all out! :)

Ben got home from Las Vegas that afternoon, so he was able to stay home with the babe while I went out with the kids. Tara and I were just going to let her husband, Dave take out all the kids, but we felt bad doing that to him! :) So, we took the little's, and he took the big boys.

The future Mr. & Mrs.? I think so! These two are such cute little friends. Notice Taylors #4 costume, a Lion costume she found at the McLaughlin's house! :) 

Tara got these awesome glasses for her boys, and they wouldn't wear them ( I don't know why) :) So she got to sport them all night.

Taylor had a great time! And I was so happy that after just about 3-4 streets, her and Chase were all tuckered out. 

So we went back to their house to check out the goods:

And my little monsters all ready for bed in their Halloween jammies! :) Tucker was so happy to be going out with the big boys that I didn't even get a picture of him before he took off! Bummer! When we got home, the candy was all gone! Ben said we had about 150 trick or treaters! :) I love living in such a family friendly neighborhood!

Good bye October & Halloween, Hello November and Thanksgiving! :) woo-hoo!

The Halloween decor came down the very next day! :)

Trunk or TreatS...

So, the week of Halloween came and I knew that we were in for a few trick or treating experiences. I really wanted to limit the number of activities this year, just because I was lazy and didn't want to run around crazy like last year. And...even though I made a conscience effort, we still had 2 trunk or treats, and the U-high classroom trick or treating.

This first one I'm still a little bitter about. :) We had had the primary program practice that Saturday before Halloween, and one of the moms told me that we had been invited to the English ward Trunk or treat this year, since our branch wasn't doing anything. I couldn't remember what time, so I texted her and she told me 6pm at the stake center on the south hill. That's weird, I thought. That building isn't even in our stake. But whatever...Ben was watching a scary movie that night with his workers, so I thought it would be good for us to get out of the house anyway, so off we went. We showed up to a South hill wards Halloween party. Totally uninvited. No one I know is there. Well, except Julia Seldon, a girl I grew up with and her family, which was totally awesome, but other than that, it was a little awkward! Finally this other family shows up and I asked her about it and she told me that they had just decided to come to this wards party since this building was the closest to them!!! I was a bit annoyed. But whatever...the kids had fun.

I think my kids are the only kids on the planet who don't really care about what they go as for Halloween and just dress up in whatever they can find at our house. Tucker had been telling me he wanted to be a dinosaur, so my mom had actually gotten him a dinosaur costume, but it was too small, so then we went up to my dads house and he found my brothers old Teenage Mutant ninja turtle cosutme, so we grabbed that and he wanted to be that, but when it came down to it, he put on his ninja costume from last year. Fine by me. Taylor, told everyone that she wanted to be a doggy. Then we found this witch costume at my dads house, so she grabbed that, and that is what she was.

Ready to go, my little witch and ninja:

Getting ready to take flight on her broom while trying on the costume:

{This is the costume that my sister wore when she was three years old and got hit by a car in! This costume has a history! My mom made it!}

The random south hill trunk or treat that we crashed, with our friends. This is Arthur, Tuckers good friend from our branch. Their family went as the Scooby doo gang, and he was Fred. :)

Not only was it a trunk or treat, it was a chili feed and a costume parade and face painting and crafts type of celebration. You can tell how I felt walking in empty handed (well, except candy to give out).

Even though she was dressed like a witch, she had a dog face painted on her:

My friend, Tara's sister does face and body painting for a living in Utah, and she came up to visit for a week this month. Tucker went over to their house to play and came home with this on his face! Pretty cool!!!

Next up was the morning trick or treating at U-high. My sweet little spider all ready to go. We went with our pre-school friends. Tucker was  bit bummed not to be able to go this year. Dumb school, always getting in the way! :) And we have costume #2 for the little lady. The spider costume that she wore last year, and that Tucker wore when he was 2! She is easy to please! :)

And of course, insisted on wearing flip-flops...

I dressed this guy up in his basketball warm up suit. He's ready for the big game!

Taylor and her friend, Abbey:

We had been invited by a few friends to the Evergreen ward's Trunk or treat, and I initially only wanted to go to that one since it was so close. And I had invited a few of our branch families that live out in the Valley already, so I figured I'd better go. :)

Tara and her boyfriend, Jackson!!! :) I love having good neighbors!

This is Tara's little guy, Chase. They came as the Duck Dynasty gang. Tara, of course, was one of the hot wives! :) Chase is Si, ya know, with the cup. :)

They also had face painting here, too. Notice, Taylor is in costume #3, her Dora Mermaid costume. Along with her new long johns (that I got her to go under her witch costume) that she wore ALL week! :)

Another dog face, because she was going to be a dog for Halloween! That is still what she was telling people! :)

One of the activities for the kids was to roll around in these tubes. Tucker had fun doing it. He was a Ninja Turtle this night.

Tucker & Collin: