For my mom

These are some videos of Gracie opening the presents that my mom mailed to her yesterday. It's difficult to keep clothes on her anymore so that's why she's naked. She was so excited to open presents that I don't think she really cared what was in them! But she loved everything!

Halloween 09

I love Halloween and I'm just a little bit sad that it's already over. (Emphasis on the "just a little bit." Walking all over the place all day can wear a pregnant lady out!) So here are some pics of our Halloween festivities!

First, we made cookies!

Then, we carved pumpkins.

You can see that Gracie was more interested in coloring on herself than decorating the pumpkins!

The finished product. Rylee drew a bat and a ghost on the smaller one that she wanted me to cut out. You can see the bat in the picture and a little bit of the ghost on the far right of the small pumpkin.

Then, it was time to play dress up and off to trick-or-treating. We first went to downtown Chico, then to the church trunk-or-treat, then off to a Halloween Party at a friends house to finish the night. I decided to not go with themes this year and the kids picked out their own costumes (although, I did help Gracie with hers.)

I tried to get Gracie to wear the hat, but she just kept being funny with it and covering her face, and then wouldn't wear it at all! So, we decided to stick with the pony and a pretty. But we love the cape!

We had tons of fun and accumulated a whole lot of candy, including chocolates! Woo-hoo!

A Giveaway

Okay, I don't usually post about these kind of things. But since the giveaway is from my good friend Becki, and I really, really, really want to win, I figured I'd do it this time! Anyway, Becki is super creative and talented. I've purchased many an item from her Whippycake store. If you want to learn more about it, you can click on the pink Whippycake button to the right. She has super cute things for mom and baby. You can read about her latest give-away there too!

Pumpkin Patch

One thing I miss about living in Mesa was the fun pumpkin patch we went to every year for Halloween. But Gridley did not disappoint! We found one that had the cutest little train, some bounce houses/slides, petting zoo where the kids got to pick up fallen apples and feed to the animals, a little playground, and a picnic area for lunch. The kids had just as much fun as they always do and I was very impressed with it! Plus, all the money we spent goes to a foundation for sick children and their families. I love knowing that some of my money will go to help someone else, it's a win-win! We got a few cute pics, but I didn't think to take a pic of the entire train, just the caboose that the kids were in. But it was pretty neat!

New Photos

I finally got around to finishing the photo shoot for Rylee and took Gracie out last night to get hers done. I love living on a farm because there are so many fun places and old junk to use for photos! Rylee was quite creative with hers. She wanted to be sure to have some silly ones, you'll know her creations when you see them. I was pretty impressed with her ability to look around her and see what she wanted to use for her shoot! That's the creative genes in her (inherited probably by her aunt Taryn, not so much myself). You can view photos HERE

One of My FAVORITE Things

Rylee has 3 or 4 books that she is assigned to read everyday for homework, taking up at least 20 minutes. She loves to read to her siblings and they love to listen. Gracie will usually sit the entire time, but seeing the camera was too much to resist and she had to do something to impress (usually copying one or both siblings). But you get the idea! Rylee is a really good reader and we are so proud of how much and how fast she is learning at school. Her teacher tells me how much her previous school prepared her for reading and writing and is impressed with her handwriting and creative talents (although she has had to have her crayons taken away because her creativeness was distracting her from her school work). So now we try to make more of an effort to enrich her creative abilities a little more at home. I noticed today that as she was doing her math homework she was singing a song. I thought for sure she couldn't possibly be getting her additions right when she's singing a song about the names of the months. But after checking both sheets, she got every one correct! I guess she's more of a multi-taker than I thought! Keep it up, Rylee!

Our first October Craft

What do you get when you take $3 to the dollar store, purchase a pack of foam stickers and two plastic bowls?

New Halloween popcorn/chips/candy bowls!!!

Dress up and a Dance Party

When Justin was a kid, his mom had a dance studio in thier house and I often hear about thier memories of the kids spending hours in there during the day playing dress up, coming up with skits, dancing, skating, whatever. It was those memories that created the few pics I've seen of my husband in a tu-tu!

So, since today seems to be pretty low key with most everyone working at the ranch during the season, we pulled all the dress up clothes into the big front room, found some fun music, and had a dress up-dance party! Cole wasn't interested in getting his picture taken or being in the video so it mostly the girls who participated.

Shrine Circus

My mother-in-law and I decided last minute to take the kids to the Shrine Circus this last thursday. It was pretty fun and entertaining, although warm outside. We, of course, got to have cotton candy and snow cones and Grandma treated the kids to a pony ride. Gracie couldn't stop smiling at what she calls the "he-ha's"!!! It was so fun to watch their little faces. I think they had a little too much fun with the cotton candy.

Beware. . .

. . . the following posts are completely out of order, but I was in a hurry to get this done.