Halloween!!

Halloween day finally arrived after all the fanfare of parties, dress up occasions, and of course candy! I was definitely not on track with my diet during the month of October and I'm pretty sure I consumed my weight in candy corn! Thankfully all that candy is pretty much out of the house now and I wouldn't dare touch my kids' stash--they'd notice! Here are the pictures from our very fun Halloween weekend.
Bennett helped me to get ready for our Halloween festivities. Every year, I have my family over on the day of Trick or Treat for chili and dessert and they help us hand out candy. For reasons unknown to me, our town decided to do trick or treat on Saturday this year. I spent all day getting ready and the kids were SO excited about trick or treating. They couldn't wait to hurry into their costumes and set out on their candy gathering excursion. Of course Alex joined in too!

Brent heading out with a super cute dragon and monkey. Monkey is pretty appropriate for Alex these days! She's a climber and she's got a mind of her own!

Our neighborhood is "the" trick or treat neighborhood in our town and although you can't tell from the photo, there are hundreds of children trick or treating! My little trick or treaters got the hang of the system pretty quickly. They were amazed by what they received! Tristan could not stop looking at his candy!

I returned home to find this...my little lion sacked out with his Pappap, and my mother cleaning my kitchen. I can't complain! We headed outside to finish handing out candy and I truly think my kids liked it more than trick or treating! I KNOW Alex did--she ate way more candy than she handed out!

I had to wait til late that evening before I could photograph my sweet lion in his costume. He was so deliciously cuddly that I could have kissed those sweet cheeks off!The next day was really Halloween and we headed out to Mom and Dad's for a harvest dinner. I gave Alexandra a Halloween present of a baby stroller--that girl just needs to be able to push her babies around! Maura was pretty excited about her gift too!

Tristan, not so much. We had to wake him up to bring him to dinner. The kids had a great Halloween and we loved spending it with Grammy and Pappap. I wonder what they'll want to dress as next year???

ALMOST Halloween!

I'm still blogging our pre-Halloween festivities. One of my friends said that Halloween is the new Christmas. The activities last for a full month leading up to the actual day and things are crazy busy. I've tried really hard not to allow craziness to infect our lives when the kids are still little by limiting our activities, but some craziness is already starting to affect us. With the kids being in school, we have parties, field trips and other activities associated with school. I actually helped plan the Halloween party at their school this year, so it made for a busy week.


The party was held during the school day and the kids were SO excited about it. They knew that I was helping to plan and decorate, so they couldn't wait to see it. They were also excited that I'd be at their school that day. I wonder if they'll be so excited about that in 5 or so years?? Maura and Tristan were both pumped about wearing their costumes to school that day. When they came down to the party, they both had HUGE smiles on their faces. Here's Maura sitting with Addia and Gracie. Tristan hung out with his buddies Caleb and Campbell. I thought it was funny that the kids naturally sat down with their friends from church.

I think the highlight of the party for both kids was decorating their own cookie! Tristan took his decorating job seriously! Maura was just excited to eat hers!

The next day was the Halloween celebration at the library. We got there late(of course) and I was busy situating Bennett and when I looked around Maura and Tristan were gone! I went looking for them, only to figure out that they'd wound all through the audience to find two seat together with which to view the Halloween books. So independent! I took the opportunity to enjoy some snuggle time with my favorite lion.

Miss MaryAnn charmed us all with her books. They had such a cute little program for the kids. I LOVE LOVE LOVE our library. They truly enrich my children's' lives. We've been enjoying story times at the library since Maura was four months old! Our library buddies were all at the special story time. Maura, Lily, Sarah and Tristan loved checking out each other's costumes.

Maura, the proud Pegasus, kept up with her little cousin, Alex. She's taken on a big sister role toward Alex and Alexandra actually seems to like it. The other day, Alex got so excited to see Maura get off the elevator. She couldn't wait to run around with the big kids and she cried when we left. Love that baby girl! I'm glad that Maura has a close relationship with her baby cousin, because she will most likely not have any sisters to have that sort of relationship with. I pray that they can always be close and we'll always have as much fun as we had this Halloween.

Relief

Relief. That's what I feel now that football season is officially over. I felt as though I was hanging by a thin thread during football season as I tried to be a single parent to my children. Brent's schedule was such that he would only see the children for 45 minutes to an hour a night before it was bedtime. My two active preschoolers and needy newborn were almost more than I could handle some days. I am SO glad to have him back. So glad. He gets home every day before 5 o'clock and enjoys having dinner with us. It has been wonderful. We can even do activities in the afternoon before or after dinner. One sunny fall day, we all decided to go out and rake leaves so the kids could enjoy some leaf jumping. The kids had a blast running through, throwing and kicking the leaves.
Yet another reason I'm glad he's home and was able to come with us--I didn't want to rake up that big pile of leaves! He had to keep on raking too as the kids scattered the pile. So much fun! I remember doing a lot of leaf pile jumping as a kid. I just don't remember the ground under the leaves being so hard!

Tristan had a ball. Maura kept wanting to bury him in the leaves and he kept letting her, but I knew that he was getting leaves in his hair, eyes and mouth. Maura posed for me in her pile--in between throwing handfuls of leaves in the air. I thank God for these strong, healthy kids and for the fact that we had this gorgeous fall day to enjoy.

Maura and Tristan are playing together very well these days. We do have the occasional spat, generally when Maura is getting too bossy, but for the most part they love each other so much and love playing together. They tend to get really crazy when they play together, so I often have to intervene and direct them towards less rambunctious games!

Below: Three little sweeties, or two sweeties and one sourpuss. Can you guess which one is which? I'll give you a clue...he's not holding Bennett, which was why he was mad.

Sometimes he just has to wait his turn, something he's not great at!

Below: He's great at borrowing his sister's dress up clothes, though, much to his father's dismay! That's a hefty little princess...er, prince!

Bennett Boo is getting so big these days! At four months, he's just the sweetest thing. He's super smiley and will smile at anyone who speaks to him. He's found his voice and loves singing and he'll talk back when you talk to him. The other day, I looked over at him on the changing table and realized that he'd found his feet. So cute!

Not a great photo because of the lighting, but he was SO excited about those feet! Four months is my favorite age. They love everyone, are interactive, are on some type of schedule and they can't move around! Love it! I could eat this little chubbo up!

Trunk or Treat

That's right, folks! We've got to go ALL the way back to mid October so I can get caught back up. Nothing like premiering the kids' Halloween Costumes in mid November!! Our first costume activity for the season was our church's Fall Festival. We had it at a farm this year and I thought it was one of the nicest ever--but maybe that's because they offered free babysitting for the kids while the adults went and listened to a comedian! It was AWESOME to not have to run after the kids all day. Our fabulous children's ministry took care of all the fun events for the kids and therefore made it even more fun for the adults!
I LOVE fall and the fantastic photos ops that come along with it. Unfortunately, Tristan is in his two-year-old camera boycott stage. Oh, well, that's a cute profile. You would think that he couldn't wait to get away from the camera, but a second later when we were trying to get a shot of just Brent and I, you couldn't get him OUT of the photo.

My big kids enjoyed crawling all over the tractor. Tractors are still Tristan's best(most favorite). Whenever I need Brent to take him out of my hair for a while, I always suggest that they head up to the tractor dealership. Brent lets him climb all over the tractors and some even have keys in them that Tristan likes to "pretend" to turn. They haven't been chased by any mean guard dogs yet!

I couldn't wait to get the kid's Halloween costumes on them for the first time. Unfortunately, it was 80 degrees. In October. We have fleece costumes. The kids were a bit warm. We still dressed up and got super cute photos with Rachel and Audrey. Bennett is only six months younger than Audrey. I loved posing with all three of my cuties: Pegasus Maura, Dragon Tristan and Aslan Bennett. My three magical creatures charmed my heart!

Our Praise Parade of costumes. So much fun to see all the kids in their costumes. My favorite costumes of the day had to be our triplet friends who were dressed as a banana split!

The kids were inspired to do some fall activities when we arrived at home. Despite the fact that Halloween was more than a week away, we decided to go ahead and carve pumpkins. The kids were really excited and Maura got right to work scooping the goop. We sang "The Pumpkin on the Vine." Right now, my kids think I'm funny when I sing songs like that to them. Someday soon, though, they're going to start rolling their eyes at me!

Tristan and Maura were both super proud of their finished product despite the fact that they did none of the carving. Tristan's jack-o-lantern was supposed to look like the one on his shirt and Maura's was an original design.

We couldn't wait to display our Jack-o-lanterns. Unfortunately, the warm fall weather took it's toll on our Jack-o-lanterns and they were truly scary by Halloween night!