Decisions Decisions..

One of these years we'll head up the mountain and cut our own.  I think at this point in our children's lives they would hate us for traipsing out into the cold and doing the Griswald nature thing.  The local booster club does such a good job of making the process convenient.   Luckily it doesn't take us long.   We wound up with a good one.  Should have taken a picture of the final product.  Oh well.  

babies and boogers

Bridget made these incredible diaper cakes!

yeah! the mommy's to be

That woman loves her some chips

poor Mr Tony, he was a good sport

Well it was a wild weekend, months in the making that....I think went ok in the end.  We have two babies coming into the world in 2012 that are very near and dear to our hearts.  So I hosted a double baby shower weekend for Deana and Mandy with all of our friends into to celebrate.  We had a great time reconnecting with folks who practically are family to us.  Unfortunately I didn't get hardly any pictures (for what I usually do).  I was hardly at my best for the weekend.   Friday morning in the wee hours of the kick off day I woke up with a upper respiratory from you know where.  What ever I had it hit hard and with a fever of 102 I knew it was going to be tough to be the happy hostess all weekend.  The Meadows were planning on staying with us and the Willigs had flown up from Birmingham the day before so there was no stopping the party.  God was good,  I prayed hard and got through the events just fine.   I would have enjoyed it so much more had I not felt so crappy but we made some good memories just the same.  Even if some of them I was curled up in the corner under a blanket sipping tea and honey.    Mostly we enjoyed sweet Darcy Jean and just loved to see a second generation of  a special friendship w/ the Meadows showing up in our kids.   We can't wait to see little baby King and Willig next time we all get together.   Life is fun to watch expand and change.  

Looking beyond the leaf piles

Me and these 2 girls spend hours in this little back yard of ours all year long. Fall is a particular favorite though with the crisp air, blue sky and red leaves. I wonder if all parents think their children are just lit with life when the sun lights up their hair from behind. Don't misunderstand, they are far from angelic but I love to see them outdoors in the elements. It's just where kids should be in my opinion.  I love that we haven't invested in expensive yard toys and that the kids just love nature and each other for entertainment.   There are plenty of games we play, bugs we find and adventures they explore together.  These times are precious to me.  They play so sweet together up and down that dirt hill and under our beautiful Japanese Maple.   It's a great climbing tree for the Bit and the height of her ability leaves me minimally stressed about her scaling into it.   We are excited for the holidays to be around the corner.   Hopefully another good season of memories to be made.  Today was a good start.  I can't thank God enough for these simple small days of joy around here.

the race is on

I know kids go through a lot of phases.  One of Abigail's is event planning.  She may end up being a social event planner for the White House one day the way this girl loves to bring people together.  She has been obsessing for a week about having a race.   She worked on making invitations and carefully addressing each of them to her friends.  She got a red ribbon at school for something and decided it would be the grand prize.   We opted for just our buddies the Coles would make enough little girls to qualify as an event.   We had picked up some silly green tee shirts in Maine for a buck a piece and they made the perfect uniform for the short run.  Natalie took her position as officiator at the finish line and Abigail gracefully supervised while holding the red ribbon prize to hand out when the winner crossed the line.  Well Katie smoked all the girls and little lightning McQueen proved to be her parents child and took the red ribbon.  It was adorable.  The girls all played on the playground for the next hour.  It was a great time,  such good friends they all are to us.  And the kids just looked crazy cute all matching!

Happy Halloween

 the Halloween carnival at church

 Chloe was facinated with this horrible singing head  :)

 waiting on the trick or treaters to show up

 Emma donned a new costume too by the actual holiday

 Abigail loved getting a chance to hand out the candy this year

 A nice spooky moon shown through the trees for us

 Little sleepy lady had about enough of the festivities....so sweet

We had a good Halloween this year.   Abigail's school hosted a trunk or treat so we did that first on Friday night.  Abigail was allowed to wear her costume to school and she looked just adorable waddling out to the bus in her mermaid tail.  It was an odd day in that it sleeted by the time she was coming back home that afternoon.  A record snow storm slammed into the east coast dumping up to 30 inches of snow in some states.   So I embraced the onset of winter turning up the heat and meeting her on the curb w/ an umbrella to help her back inside.   I warmed her up with some hot chocolate and she told me all about her day.   That night we tried out the flaming red dye hair spray to make her transformation into Ariel complete.  It was so insanely messy but she was so proud of her new do when we were through.   We headed to school for a spaghetti dinner and some candy.  Brian met up with us by the end and even though it was moved in doors we still had fun amidst all the kids in costume by the school load. 
  Sunday night we headed back out, minus the hair dye this time, to our church trunk or treat/carnival.  It too was in doors but they put on a good show w/ the sanctuary full of games and candy and bouncy castle.   By Monday night, the actual holiday we were a bit tired of dressing up.  Luckily we gave the option up to Abigail to spend the evening any way she wanted.  She opted to try to just stay home and hand out the candy from her own front porch which we haven't done before.  We didn't even dress her or Chloe up again.  Just let them scoot around the front yard and play in the crisp fall air with one another waiting on trick or treaters.  It wound up being a special albeit different holiday evening but we had plenty of treaters come by and the girls loved getting to give out candy.  Brian put a fire in the fireplace and by 8 we called it a night and brought the fun back inside to get the girls to bed.   Now all we have to do is suffer through all the leftovers.  :)