Happy Halloween

The forecast for tonight was terrible with an 80% chance of snow during trick-or-treat hours. The kids wore lots of layers under their costumes but still ended up in coats, mittens, and winter hats before the night was over.

Peter lasted less than an hour, and then Jonathan took him home in the stroller while I finished taking the big kids around. They got quite the haul... That means a decent amount of $$ after we take it to the dentist. David likes that idea.

Andi didn't last much longer than Peter, she really just wanted to get home and warm up. We'd finished the major streets so home we went. David and I drove to one house we've been looking at for weeks:

Quite the set up! Our favorite feature was the creepy movie playing in the windows.

And just as we were climbing into the car, declaring it a night and inspecting the loot, the first flakes of this winter began to fall.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr........,

Carving pumpkins

After days of promising the kids we would carve their pumpkins, and then running out of time every day, we finally got around to carving them.

David was a little hesitant to scoop out the pumpkin guts. But then Andrea refused help and said "Girls can do this." And David could not let her outdo him so he shuddered and grabbed the pumpkin stuff.

I carved Peter's pumpkin before the big kids worked on theirs. When he saw them scraping out their pumpkins he ran and grabbed a tiny spoon and scooped out his pumpkin. Such a goofball.

And then we had three, smiling pumpkins. And three happy kids. :)

Fall photos

We tried to take family photos last Saturday. Not entirely sure how well they turned out, but I gave it my best. We did have a friend come and snap some photos for us, I can't wait to see how those turn out. But for now I've got these:

So my kids are totally cute. And the leaves were gorgeous. Gotta love the great combo.

 Andi has turned into quite the little lady.

 Speaking of Andi, she's had some weird ear discharge the last few days. Word of the wise, when there's weird discharge, DO NOT wait until the ear is bleeding to get the kid into the doctor. It all started Friday, too late for me to call our doc, but by Monday when I went to call them her ear was bleeding. Not cool. The doctor looked at it, said the ear canal was red and bloody, and to get her into the ENT ASAP. Fun. We go tomorrow. I wish I'd taken her to urgent care on Saturday.

 Peter is getting huge. He turns 2 on Saturday. Jonathan and I completely forgot about that until a day ago. Yes, I'm that mother. Ugh. Whatever, someday I'll have a brain and I won't forget my children's birthdays when I've been repeating them multiple times a day to nurses and doctors asking to confirm their birthday.

 2 years old. That's crazy. I can't get over how big he is, nor how quickly it has gone by. Even the really bad times went by unbelievably quickly even when they felt like they were taking forever in the moment.

It is also a semi-sad moment as I realize that my baby is growing up... I was three months pregnant when Andi turned 2, and now there aren't any more babies. Boo-hoo. But I enjoy every moment with my baby even more. :)

 And Andrea was happy, I promise the picture before this one she was smiling but the other two were not and were blurry. But it is the one picture I have of all three of them right now. :)

 And then I have Barbie shoes:

So I finally got everything together and was able to go to the orientation for my daycare registration. WAHOO!!! I can't wait to get started. I couldn't sleep last night because I was so excited for this orientation today. So. EXCITED!!! Things are so looking up, and in a way that I've needed for such a long time. So I am looking forward to getting this ball rolling. Finally. :)

Faire

We finally used our free passes to the Ren faire a few weeks ago. Lucky for us all of the costumes I made last year still fit (YAY!!!!) and everyone was able to dress up. 

I tried really hard to get a good picture of all three kids in their faire wear....

 It is never going to happen...

For the first time we made it to the costume contest! Whoop!

My kids were definitely the best dressed, but at the faire all kids are winners. ;)

At some point we as we were wandering around one of the Queen's men stopped us and told us we needed to be at the knighting ceremony because the Queen would love seeing the kids. We made it, but only Andi would go up to be knighted.

 And I did indeed get lots of praise from the Queen. Before she knighted Andrea she asked for the parent who had made the costumes and said I'd done an amazing job. I blushed modestly. ;)

And then the day abruptly changed. Peter got stung by a bee on the lip RIGHT before the Queen came down to take a picture with all of the kids. I told Jonathan to run him off to the First Aid station, I'd get our picture with the big kids and then run up to meet him. But he didn't go. And the Queen ended up getting her picture with ALL the kids and a poorly dressed dad and then gave us directions to the First Aid station.

Poor boy got a FULL dose of Benadryl. FULL dose. He got really sleepy, but it stopped the swelling from getting any worse:

He slept the whole way home, and went to bed early that night. By the next evening the swelling was nearly gone:

So while the day ended on a rather frightening note, we actually had a lot of fun. I don't think their outfits will fit next year so I guess I better start finding more curtains and pillow shams. And we've already got a plan for next year's fairy house so we can get those free tickets. :)

Out to play

The last couple of weeks I've been trying extra hard to get the littles out of the house with me while David is at school. It makes the day less tiresome and we have had a lot of fun exploring. Today we went on a hike at Kensington's nature center.

I brought along a bag of bird seed because I'd heard that there was a trail where little birds liked to eat from your hands. We stumbled on it and had a blast hand feeding chickadees.

 She said, "I'm like a princess!"

 Peter tried and tried to feed them, but he was yelling "Birrrrrrrrrrrd!" too loudly and scaring them off from him. That trail is definitely something we'll check out in the future.

Last week we went to Kensington's farm center (Kensington is a pretty happenin' place).

 So hard to get a decent picture of these two... We stayed for about an hour checking out all of the animals. We didn't stay much by the pigs, they were giving off an ungodly stench and we were gagging. But the goats were fun, all except the one that gave a low, guttural bleat that about scared the pants off of Peter. He was patting her side when she turned and grumbled at him, and he was so startled he started crying. We got away quickly, especially as Peter's cries prompted the donkey to start braying, the two sounds were awfully similar... Thank goodness for blasé cows.

We spent the rest of the afternoon refilling the flower bed in front of the house. The peas and melons were done for the season, the gardens needed a face lift. We hit up WalMart for clearance flowers that needed a little dirt and TLC and we came out with a pretty flower garden:

We've got a couple more beds to do before we're done.