Moonlight Bites

Last night was our annual "Moonlight Ride." This is a bike ride at Antelope Island that is held on the night of a full moon. It begins at 10PM so that you can enjoy the beauty of the full moon. Since Jeff worked at the county beginning in 1993, we have only missed this event twice. One was the night of his grandfather's viewing and the other was last year, when it was the only time we could squeeze in a 4-wheeling trip to the cabin before Josh left.

This year, with the release of the movie "Eclipse", the theme of the bike ride is "Moonlight Bites." The boys in our family serve as the mascots so this year, they got to dress up like Vampires. As you can imagine, we didn't have to twist any arms. Although they are not into the Twilight series, they all love vampire movies.

This shows a little of the preparation...

And the final product. Scary, huh?

Gotta love the purple hairspray to top it off. And man, that stuff stinks!

Here they are out at the Island. As you can see, the sun was pretty bright and it was hot!! We have to get there pretty early, like 6:30 PM, since we volunteer. It's hard to keep the make-up from melting off them when it's this hot. Luckily, that purple hairspray and some "special" gel of Josh's kept their hair slicked right back for the whole night. (More on that later)

Here is our family portrait- 1/2 vampires, 1/2 humans.

And here, we found Maddy a cape to go with her purple hair. She couldn't let her brothers use purple hairspray and not her!

She's too cute to be a vampire.

And last but not least, I had to show the bugs that Maddy and I endured to volunteer at Registration. I told her we were only going to there a couple of hours and we ended up staying until almost 11. And as you can see, it wasn't fun once we had to turn on the lights. There were bugs and mosquitoes everywhere! Maddy was a trooper, though. In the past, it has been our tradition to help out for a little while and then have a "Girl's Night." In the spirit of true volunteerism, Maddy got a little cheated this year. We still went home to watch a "chick flick" together but we both fell asleep before it was half way over. Oh well, we still had fun.

But the real story of the night didn't start until 2:00AM. As I mentioned above, we were worried about keeping the boys' hair slicked back all night. Josh offered his "special" gel. This is gel he found in Georgia that is made especially for African American hair. Josh's hair soaks up everything quickly (we used to call him "Grizzly Bear Hair") so this works really well for his gel. The key is that he only uses a teeny bit. Well they thought if a little bit worked, alot would be even better. Big mistake! After Jeff had washed his hair like 5 times to no avail, we realized we had a problem. Second, we tried Dawn dishsoap since it is supposed to "take grease out of the way." No go. Then Jeff had me bring in the GoJo out of the garage that is supposed to remove grease and oil off your hands. All it did for Jeff's hair was burn his scalp. Duh! I warned him. :)

Finally, after finding out that the ingredients consisted of petroleum jelly and fragrance, I started researching on the Internet. It was approximately 3AM at this point. They had several suggestions, including dishsoap, cornstarch, and olive oil. Jeff tried olive oil and dishsoap about 3 more times and it seemed to help. Luckily, that trick licked it for Jake. Jeff still had to go through that process about 3 more times the next morning but all is well now. Let's just say they shouldn't have to use conditioner for awhile. Funny side note: Josh said it came out of his hair in just a couple of washings. He must have used less than them. By the time that ordeal was over, we were so keyed up that Jake and I started a video at 4AM. I don't think my kids will forget this one for several years. Fun memories!