Halloween

I love going to the pumpkin patch with the kids. It's such a good excuse to take cute pictures too.

 Logan was teething and so drooly! He loved the hay maze, though.

 Everyone loves the corn box.

 Look at my cute babies.

 Getting so big!

 They love to take turns pulling each other in the wagon.

On Halloween my parents came up to go trick-or-treating with us. Of course we didn't get a picture with them, but we got some of the kids in their cute costumes.

 Logan didn't really get trick-or-treating, but Paige and Lucas got enough candy for a small army so I think the night was a success!

Happy Halloween

We got all dressed up in our costumes and went out to take pictures before our ward trunk or treat on Saturday.  Lucas is the fiercest Spider-man I've ever seen.  Here he is shooting his webs.

He has been running around the house in his costume for the last two weeks, shooting webs and beating things up.  And now he thinks if he smiles really big, we'll let him get hopped up on candy.

Paige is going to be a pumpkin.

We got the hat as a baby present, and I made the tutu and onesie to go with it.  I'm pretty sure every one of her Halloween costumes for the foreseeable future is going to involve a tutu.  They are just so dang cute.

Now we just have to wait for tomorrow night so we can load up on candy.  Lucas can't wait!

Thanksgiving and the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Ryan and I have been wanting to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with my parents ever since we moved to California 4 months ago, and this last week we finally got to go.  My brother and sister in law were in town so they got to come along too.  It was so much fun.  We started out the day with lunch at the Fish Hopper, which is fast becoming a family tradition for my parents.  It was delicious!  I rarely get to eat seafood since Ryan doesn't like it, so this was an extra special treat for me.  I ordered a crab and lobster ravioli dish with shrimp and scallops.  Yum!  Ryan got a turkey sandwich.  Boring!  While we were waiting for people to finish their food, my mom and I took the kids down to the beach to look at star fish.

Then we headed to the aquarium.  It was a really cool aquarium and Lucas had a lot of fun.  He LOVES fish so he just ran from tank to tank looking at everything.  They had this little kid area with fun stuff to climb on, and a tunnel to climb through.  Lucas loved playing with his cousins.

I loved playing with Charlotte.

Lucas loved playing with Charlotte too.  He was quite taken with her and followed her around watching out for her and trying to keep her out of trouble.  It was really cute.  Here he is taking her down the slide.

Lucas's other favorite was Sadie.  They were inseparable for the last half of the visit.

There was this cool waterfall room where the water would fill up and then splash onto the walls and roof of the room.  Lucas loved it in there and would have stayed in there all day if we had let him.

 After the aquarium we went to Ghirardelli and got some ice cream sundaes... and did some more Charlotte admiring.

Charlotte really was a such a cute little girl and Lucas was so good with her.  It was fun to watch him interact with her.  I just wish we had a little baby for him to play with all the time.  I almost took Charlotte home with us, but I decided I might get in trouble for that so I left her.  Too bad, look how darling she is!

 I didn't really get many pictures on Thanksgiving, but we'll pretend the dinner looked something like this.

Okay... it didn't look quite like that in real life, but it still tasted amazing.  Lucas enjoyed another day of running around and playing with his cousins.  Here they are hiding under the bed. 

 After dinner and pie, we packed up in the car and drove down to San Diego for an anniversary / family vacation, but I'll post more on that tomorrow.

We really did have a good Thanksgiving.  It was fun to spend time with family, and watch Lucas play with his cousins.  I was singing to Lucas the other day while I was putting him to bed and I decided to sing Count your Blessings to get in the Thanksgiving mood.  I love that song and I think its message is wonderful.  It was a good opportunity to reflect on the blessings we've been given this year.  I especially like the part where it says, "... count your many blessings; every doubt will fly..."  Sometimes it's easy to get discouraged and think that maybe you've gotten the short end of the stick in life; but when you take the time to be grateful for what you do have, you realize that you really are blessed and that Heavenly Father is looking out for you.

Thankful Banner

There's so many different Christmas decorations out there that I've been seeing and kinda wanting to try, but I felt like I should do some Thanksgiving things first so the holiday doesn't get skipped.  All my fall decorations work for both Halloween and Thanksgiving, but I decided to make a Thanksgiving banner for the fire place so that I had something special to add for this upcoming holiday.  It's pretty simple, but it was fun and easy to make and I like how it turned out.

While my friend and I were out on a walk the other day, I found some fun berries and seed things that I just decided to take home and see what I could make with them.  I might have to start decorating the table for dinner more often.

And finally after like two months of being jealous of everyone else's fall colors, we're finally getting some fall colors of our own in California.  I can't wait for Thanksgiving and family to come visit and all the yummy food.

Trick-or-Treating

We had a lot of fun with Halloween this year.  Last year we didn't even bother going trick or treating with Lucas cause he didn't really understand what was going on.  But this year, he really got into it.  Lucas dressed up as a puppy.  I had a lot of fun ideas for this costume, and none of them really worked out.  And then to top it all off, Lucas lost his ears before we were able to get a picture of him wearing them.  I still have no idea where they are.  But honestly, I think he's so cute with his nose and freckles that it doesn't matter that no one really knew what he was.

 We stopped off at a neighbor's party before heading out to trick or treat.  They had the coolest play room for the kids to play in - complete with a ball pit, a motorized car for the kids to ride around on, and a snack table with juice boxes and pretzels.

 We headed out to trick or treat with the neighbors, but we had such a big group of kids we decided to branch off on our own so the trick or treating didn't take too long.

Lucas was a little nervous at first but when he realized they were giving him candy he decided it was fun after all.

You can just barely see his little tail in this picture - proof that he was a puppy.

He got pretty good at saying trick or treat, and he got fistfuls of candy cause everyone thought he was so cute and little.

Here he is running back from one of the doors.  He was having so much fun!  And Ryan and I had fun running around with him and reliving our childhood.

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch here in Livermore today.  On a completely unrelated note, Lucas likes to put daddy's deodorant on in the morning.  He's not very good at getting on the actual arm pit.

 Lucas liked getting pumpkins a lot more than I thought he would.  He was running all over the place grabbing as many pumpkins as he could to stick in our wagon.

The "pumpkin patch" part was not quite as cool as I thought it would be.  You could tell the pumpkins had been harvested and relocated from the actual patch, and put in rows out front to make it easier to go through.  Oh well, Lucas still had fun.

 Taking a snack break from all that running around.

They also had a fun area for the kids to play.  They had farm animals, pony rides, face painting, a playground, and this hay bale maze.

 Lucas's favorite part besides the pumpkins was probably the corn box.  Like a sand box but with corn.  He would have played all day if we had let him.