November: Fall Fun, Grandparents Day, Thanksgiving Feast, Tree Decorating

 Loving on little sis...

 Ahh...the simple pleasures of childhood!

 Roar!!  Still loving the dinosaur costume. 

 Getting Baby Girl snuggled up in Bubs sleeping bag.  Our kids drag their pup tents and sleeping bags all over the house and set up camp.  :)

 Grandparent's Day

 Making a craft for the grandparents

 Grandparent's Day program

 Silly Bean all ready for her Thanksgiving Feast

 Guess the braids were bugging her...:) 

 Feasting...

With one of her BFF's at school...

 Our Thankful Tree

 Decorating for Christmas...it always looks worse before it looks better...

 How the kids like to disperse ornaments...

 Snackage...

The Bean's little tree for her room, which she decorated.  :)

We didn't have too much going on in November, but there were a few things to take pictures of!  First up, good old Fall fun: raking up leaves and jumping in them!  We do that a least a couple of times each Fall with the kids.  It's so fun!  And we have the added advantage of a sloped yard so they can jump in the leaves and roll down the hill.  I don't know how much actual raking ends up getting done, but we all have fun and make some memories.  :)

Next, Grandparent's Day at the Bean's school.  They usually have Grandparent's Day around Veteran's Day and do a little program in the auditorium.  The Bean was super excited that Mimi and Grandpaw got to come to her class and visit with her. 

Toward the end of the month the Bean had her Thanksgiving Feast at school.  They were supposed to dress like either Pilgrims or Indians, and thankfully the Bean's Halloween Indian costume from when she was 3 still fit!  (I really lucked out on the costume front this year!)  They had turkey, popcorn, grapes and cupcakes for their feast at school.  (That's what the original pilgrims ate, right?!?  With Caprisuns??) And they made placemats to eat on.  Also for Thanksgiving this year, we did a "thankful" tree.  I cut out leaf shapes on the die-cut machine at our church, and we each wrote down things we were thankful for on the leaves and hung them on our thankful tree.  (The "tree" was branches I found in our yard.) :)  It was fun hearing things Bubs and the Bean were thankful for...the Bean's list included lipgloss, God, and school.  Bubs list included peanut butter crackers, Daddy, and playing outside. 

And of course, most years after Thanksgiving Day, we start getting ready for Christmas, and this year was no exception!  We pulled all the decorations out and had fun getting in the Christmas spirit.  I always make hot chocolate and a snack...I can't really remember what the snack was, but judging from the pictures I'm guessing chocolate oatmeal cookies???  I do the "prep" while the kiddos eat and then they help me put on the ornaments.  Some re-distributing is usually necessary.  :) 

Now, on to December!

October: Pumpkin Patch 1 & 2, Fall Festival, Halloween

 Baby Girl not loving the costume...

 They loved trick-or-treating and acted like old pros this year...

 Bubs decided he was pictured out...

 Isn't the Bean striking a perfect little princess pose here?  They were picking leaves before we left for trick-or-treating.

 Picking out a pumpkin...hmmm, which one?

 The pumpkin patch had this cool see-saw thingie...

 Roasting his stick, I guess... :)

 Proof that Baby Girl and I were in attendance. :)

Loving the birds...

 At at the school Fall Festival.  It was chaotic, so this is the only pic I got.

 Attending a friend's birthday party at Oak Mountain stables.

 Group pic at Faith Pres

 This was hard!  Even I couldn't hit it hard enough to ring the bell at the top!

 Just waking up...

 Face paint...it's always a toss up between butterfly, crown, and rainbow.

I think these pics are in reverse order, but hey, they are here and that's what matters!  I know it's almost June 2012, but today we're blogging about October 2011.  I'm persevering, people.  :)

In October, we went to not one, but two pumpkin patches!  The first one was at Faith Presbyterian near our house.  It wasn't so much of a pumpkin patch as it was inflatables meets farmer's market meets fall festival with a small handful of pumpkins thrown in the mix.  :)  But the kids had fun.  And it was free.  :)  They jumped on the inflatables, the Bean got her face painted, Bubs tried the "test your strength" carnival game thingie, and we got some of the best apples I've ever had.  Baby Girl slept through the majority of it and woke up just as we were leaving to go to McDonald's afterward.  

The second pumpkin patch was the real deal.  We went to a pumpkin patch down Hwy. 280 (I forget the name.) with some other families from our Sunday School class.  They had a little playground while you were waiting for the hayride, then a hayride to the fields where there was a tee-pee, a petting zoo, and a firepit to roast hot dogs and such. The kids loved it all, but they both especially liked holding the birds and petting all the animals.  They both enjoyed their hotdogs as well.  Baby Girl took a nap, ate, took in the sites, and napped again before we got home. 

We also went to the Bean's school Fall Festival.  It is always fun but very crowded.  We made the rounds and did most of the games, inflatables, and had dinner.  We all had a ball.  Baby Girl was a trooper. 

Lastly was Halloween.  The Bean wanted to be Sleeping Beauty...the exact same thing she was last year.  Perfect!  We already had the costume.  I bought Bubs a dinosaur costume at Babies R Us, and he proceeded to live in that costume the entire Fall.  He loved "scaring" people and roaring at them.  He even slept in that costume frequently.  Baby Girl was a pumpkin.  I borrowed her costume from a friend, but she ended up napping through the whole trick-or-treating process, so when we got home I put her in costume and took a few pics (which she was not happy about) just for the memories.  :)

Not a whole lot new going on with Baby Girl this month...not rolling over yet, no teeth, still smiling a lot, still sweet and content, still sleeping like a champ.  We had such a fun month, and I am so thankful for my little family!

August 2: the Bean's birthday

The Bean's birthday was also in August. Since we had a 6 week old at the time, we wanted to have the party at home, and basically have someone else besides myself run the show. :) I was super excited when someone told me about a girl at our church who does character parties. She does Snow White, Cinderella, Pinkalicious, Fancy Nancy, and others. The Bean is still super into princesses, and so we chose Cinderella. "Cinderella" did an INCREDIBLE job! I highly recommend her. The Bean and all her buddies had a blast. "Cinderella" arrives in her rags and goes through the whole storyline of Cinderella. She talks about how her stepmother and stepsisters mistreat her and make her clean, and she gets the girls to help her dust using dustrags. Then she gets an invitation to the royal ball, and the girls help her get ready for the ball. Then they learn a dance for the ballroom, and rush "home" by the stroke of midnight where they fall asleep. And of course at the end they all get to try on the glass slipper. She really involved the Bean as the birthday girl, and they sang several songs from the the Cinderella movie. It was absolutely precious. And all I had to do was get a cake, and "Cinderella" did the rest - she even cut the cake for us!

My friend Sara N. let me borrow this adorable carriage. I'm terrible with flowers, but I think it turned out ok!

Cinderella arriving in her rags costume.

Getting ready for the ball...

Falling asleep at the stroke of midnight...

Making a wish!

I took a picture of each girl with Cinderella and mailed it off with the thank you notes.

All the girls had to hug Cinderella before she left...

A magicial time was had by all...and they lived happily ever after. :)

The End.