Happy Halloween!!!!

I would like to introduce to you: Jessie and Buzz Lightyear. As you see in the picture below, Jessie is just the cutest southern cowgirl in the south. She can swoon your socks right off your feet with that precious little face of hers. Not leaving out Buzz, oh no. His southern charm will make your head spin. All though here lately, there must be to much space litter clouding his thoughts because he hasn't been the charmiest boy there is! :) (You like my made up word don't you?)

Buzz and Jessie had a "social" event to attend. Yes, they are popular! Their parents Sunday school class got together to celebrate Halloween they good ol' hospitable way they knew how. Below is a group pictures of all the cute little people in their costumes. Jessie, of course, is not present in the picture because her mom took away Buzz's wings from her. Buzz should know that he can't fly without his wings! And Jessie should know that the wings only work on Buzz. Mom should know better than to take something away from a 2 year old Jessie! (Especially right before a picture!!!)

At this social event, there were pumpkin paintings!!!! Since some of the smaller kids couldn't handle paint then the parents (this time, I assuming after some lessons learned) decided to give the kids markers and stickers to "paint" their pumpkins! :)

Who wants candy???? (of course Jessie raises her hand. She has an addiction to sugar like it's a drug!! Funny story coming up soon!)

Patiently waiting for the Piniata!

So then there was this thing at school. The school wasn't allowing the children to dress up this year for whatever reason. But we made the best of it. It was Red Ribbon week and Friday was designated for Tie-Dye or Peace sign day. After deciding there was not a Tye-Die shirt to be found, I made him one. The teachers loved it and wants me to make them one as well! HA! Okay back to Halloween. The room teacher decided with the teacher that Halloween was going to be full of candy anyway so we did a practical life lessons instead. The students were given a sugar cookie. They were to spread their icing onto the cookie and then were allowed to pour sprinkles on top. The children loved it! Of course Christian didn't want his sugar cookie. He is definitely not my child who enjoys sweets!!!

So that just covers up to Friday. Friday evening the children were invited to a Halloween Bash that a friend of theirs were throwing. There were swings..........

Face painting..........................

And hayrides!..................

Not to mention, the enormous amount of food, the bouncy house (which my children refused) and the trampoline! FUN times!!!!

Saturday brought us another Halloween "party" with another pinata, candy making, pin the tail on the donkey and just good ol' fashion play time! I took my camera but, gasp!, didn't use it. I did however get some video of the pinata action and a few still shots with my iphone camera.

Now, I bring you Halloween day/night. God is so gracious to us. Have I mentioned that lately? It started raining here around 10:30am. Suppose to stop around 3, but it never did. Actually it was raining pretty hard around that time. So we started making alternate plans. We were going to meet up at a friends house around 5:30 and head over to the mall to trick or treat. I didn't like the idea, thinking how crowded it was going to be!!!! I know of kids all over that was praying for the rain to stop. I know some big kids who were doing the same (me.). We got in our car to go over to our friends house. No rain. I could actually see the sun for the first time that entire day. Makes me want to cry to think about how God knows our deepest wishes. And cares enough about us to give it to us occasionally. Jesus loves the little children, my how that song is so true. He loves them so much that He did not want to disappoint them by raining on their parade. SO.....we decide to go to a nearby neighborhood. WOW! When we pulled in the cars had already lined the streets and there were children and parents EVERYWHERE!!!! Kids running from house to house, parents running after them, some on foot, others in golf carts. I mean, it was JUST like when I was a kid going trick or treating!!!! How AWESOME that my children were experiencing that!!!! I was so scared that the trick or treating I had done as a kid was fast becoming obsolete.
Once again, God is good. Gives us our hearts desires. Wow.

Ok, again, meet Buzz and Jessie.






















Jessie kept wanting to "YEE-HAWW!!!!" for my camera.

Our first house. Buzz thought it was like a store where you can say "oh I don't want that one, I want this one". Thankfully the man thought it was funny and cute and just gave in to Buzz's demands. Maybe he was scared of getting lasered.

Took some time to get the children to understand they had to say trick or treat to get candy. Then of course to remember to say thank you after they got it. Yes, I want well mannered trick or treater children. :)














So, I promised a funny story a while back. Remember I spoke about Jessie's addiction to sugar? Ok well. After we left the very first house (which was a friend of Mandy's, who we went trick or treating with) we had a short drive to get to the neighborhood which we stayed the rest of the night. Of course the children had to be buckled and in doing so dad took Grace's bucket of candy and put it on the floor. You would have thought we were beating her to death. She screamed to the top of her lungs, "I WANT MY CANDY BACK!!!! I WANT MY CANDY BACK!!!! I WANT MY CANDY BACK!!!!!" And they were not full crying yells. Oh no. They were full of anger too. Looks like we need not only rehab for her sugar addiction but we may need to see about anger management classes too. Hmmm, I wonder if they take them that young? :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goodbye Summer! Hello Fall!!

As I sit here and write this I think back to just how FAST our summer went by!!! Splash pad, pool, hot sun, and ice cream quickly turns into coats and sweaters, heater, cloudy days and pumpkin pies!! But hey, who am I kidding? We live in the good ol' South. The only place you can wake up to 50 degree weather and have to wear winter gear just to shed it off by noon because the 50 degrees has climbed to 75! Oh I love it. And wouldn't have it any other way.

So, just because the official "fall weather" hasn't really begun does not mean fall activities cease to start! Soccer, dance, socials, festivals, fair, pumpkin patches, halloween, oh I am getting so excited!

We began our soccer season with some not so high expectations. We (Jason and I) really thought that Christian was going to display his "old man run" (which isn't a run by the way) the way he did in baseball. Boy were we ever wrong. Christian has taken to soccer like nobody's business. That boy is tearing that field UP!!! I am so proud of him. I do believe we have found our "sport of choice".

We are having some difficulties in explaining to Christian that he has to "get mean" on the field. I sometimes want to get out there and "get mean" myself but hey they are just kids right?! HA! Let me tell you. There sometimes are kids out there that are like a foot taller than the rest and they are good. Makes me think they are a year older than the rest of the children. Well when one of those kids get out there they dominate the ball. This past Saturday as a matter of fact was such kid. He dominated the ball. No one else ever had a chance at the ball. Well the moral of the team was falling because of that. Both of the teams. Once that kid went and sat out a quarter, the rest of the team (again both sides) had a chance at the ball and they started playing good! Said kid kept jumping in front of Christian and stealing the ball away from my baby. And what makes it worse is the fact that he was elbowing everybody out his way to get to the ball, even knocking Christian down one time! OH!!! Ask my mother how her arm feels by the way. I grabbed my mothers arm and squeezed hard!! That kid made me so MAD!! (did I mention I have anger issues?) I wanted to go snatch that kid up! OHOHOH!

But on a lighter note, I can tell a BIG difference in Christian's play on the field since the beginning. We are 4 games in and my baby is good. :) I am going to post a video from his first game in another post.

I have no pictures of Grace dancing yet. We aren't allowed to watch. Her dance company has something called Parent Watch Night which is self explanatory. But that doesn't start until November. I will be switching Grace to another dance company next year I believe. I haven't been impressed with the customer service at this company and several other reasons.

Grace has grown SO MUCH lately. I can't believe she will be 3 soon. Where did my baby go? I do not remember Christian flying up to the age of 3 this quickly! Not to mention he will be 5 in a couple of months!!!! WHAT!?!?
Grace is a mess. Plain and simple. A mess. She is talking so much now and can say just about what she wants. Oh and that attitude comes out. I wonder sometimes if she takes after me with that. I'm trying hard to tame my attitude and having trouble doing so, so how in the world am I going to tame hers too?!?!?! God help me.

So that leaves me with just one question: Diva or Devil? You decide.

The "firsts" of the summer

Well, I'm sure this isn't all the firsts of this summer but it's a few. The first couple of pictures are of Grace at her first dance lesson. She takes 15 minutes of ballet and 15 minutes of tap. They do not allow the parents in the room but like once a month for Parent Watch night. All the other nights you have to sit in the lobby so I didn't get any pictures of her actually in the class.

Christian's first "big big boy bed" His race car bed was his "big" boy bed. Now this is his "big big" boy bed. Twin. :) He loves it. We tried to sell the race car bed but Grace claimed it. So now we have the twin which Christian sleeps in and the race car bed pushed up against twin bed and Grace sleeps in that right beside her "bubba". They watch TV together until the sleep timer goes off. We have had many successful nights with this strategy of them sleeping in their room all night and not coming to mom and dad's room. :)

First day of 4K

Isn't he handsome? Of course he is! First day of 4K. He was so excited to get back to see all his friends and teachers. I was a little nervous since he was going full days this year instead of the 2 hours that he went last year. But he is doing fantastic. He was sent home the 3rd day b/c he pooped his pants. But they sent him home because they thought he was sick with diarrhea. Nah, he was just nervous about using the toilet. He was fine and returned the next day.

Dad is SO silly. Love the look on both Dad's and Christian's face here. I think dad was going for the "tough guy" look. That's more of the "I gotta take a poop" look. Sorry dad. Epic fail! LOL Oh well. it made Christian smile. :)

I have several memories that I want to record from his first day of school. First is when I dropped him off, I walked him into the gym where all the teachers meet with their children every morning. He got a little separation anxiety and wouldn't let me go. So I got done on my knees to speak to him. While his little arm was wrapped around my neck, we talked about the children sitting against the wall that would be in his class. He saw a little girl that he knew from last year but said he didn't want to talk to her because "she doesn't listen to the teacher". (poor girl is going to be remembered as the girl who didn't listen!) lol so we started talking about the little boys and how he should go introduce himself. So he saw a little guy sitting there and said he wanted to go talk to him. As soon as he sat down beside him they started chatting and smiling immediately. That is the picture that I have in my head as I left my baby for his first day.

When I went to pick him up from school I asked him how his first day was. His response? "It was the coolest day EVER!" Success!!

AWANA Awards

We had the AWANA awards night for the kids not to long ago. They make the kids feel like they are movie stars that night. It's awesome. This first picture is not the best. The lighting was horrible in there. But any ways, Pastor Bill is giving Christian his award and saying something to him.

Walking the Red Carpet. :) You can tell he is a happy boy!

Parents got a special award that night too. For being so diligent in getting our kids to AWANA every week and helping them with their verses week after week. I am amazed at what Christian has learned so far!!!
My babies being silly of course! They are such hams.