All Things Halloween

This should probably be divided into four different posts, but since Halloween was 10 days ago. I'm good to combine and move on.

I love dressing my kids up in Halloween themed attire. Pass judgement if you will, but I thoroughly enjoy it.  My sister made, and my mother gifted, this candy corn bow to Grace. Despite it's size, I put it on Grace every opportunity I could throughout the month of October. I die over those Candy corns.

 Seriously, its a big bow. My mom is pretty attune to my love of halloween and sent a care package to the kiddos. In it was a pumpkin decorating kit that required zero carving. Grace was in heaven. She played with that pumpkin for days until she dropped it and we had to throw the pumpkin out...

Christian was also properly outfitted thanks to the care package. I had four festive onesies for him and he dirtied three of them on Halloween. Is he trying to tell me something?

We also made sure to jam out accordingly- although halloween music, however tame it may be, is still a little creepy for a 3 year old.

The Saturday before Halloween, our church did a trunk or treat. Grace was Cinderella. I did her hair in a Cinderella bun and I immediately wanted to cry. She looked so grown up with her hair all pulled back. Make time stop, but for reals.

I went as a woman who showers, gets dressed, and actually does her hair. Christian was a lumberjack who, at one point, had boots and a hat on (but you know how those things go when your baby is 4 months old).

This year Grace totally got it. Car to car, "trick-or-treat", and she even got frustrated with me when I would stop and chat with the candy hander-outers, "Come on Mom! Let's go." She really is growing up.

The day of Halloween was pumpkin carving time. I bought Grace another pumpkin since we had to throw her other one out. We set up shop on an old blanket in Grace's room. After a brief photo-op we got down to business.

 The design was thought up by Grace with precision sharpie marker skills

 Not too bad for her first time, eh?

Between the above picture and the below picture there was an incident.... but I'll get to that in a minute.

Grace's first pumpkin guts experience

 She did not seem to care at all. I thought for sure she would be totally grossed out.

Are you still curious about the incident. Okay, here is the explanation. We were all on the blanket together, Christian laying on the floor and Grace and I getting our carve on. I was taking ridiculous precautions with the knives that we were using, making sure that they were always a safe distance from any child and always out of reach. I was outnumbered 2 to 1 and figured I could never be too careful. When it came to safety my mind was on the knives. After I carved the hole in the top of the pumpkin I wanted to make sure that I had my camera ready for when Grace pulled the top off and saw what was inside. I wanted to capture her reaction. Grace reached down and started pulling the stem off the pumpkin. I quickly reached over Christian to grab my camera, in my hurry to get my camera ready to capture the moment I fumbled it and it fell. But it didn't hit the ground. It hit Christian. My camera hit my baby right on the forehead. I wanted to die. His cry was unbearable. I called Aaron and my Mom in hysterics (I'm kind of dramatic like that), asking all sorts of ridiculous questions about the amount of trauma I just caused my tiny infant. Head fracture? Concussion? Causing an inability to get an academic scholarship to Harvard (which wouldn't happen for Christian moreso due to his parents rather than a camera to the head)? I sent them pictures and pleaded with them to tell me how bad it was. The look on his face kills me. The pouty lip? Worst mother ever.

We bagged the pumpkin thing for the time being and I snuggled Christian with a cold compress and watched, like a hawk, for any sign of further trauma- vomiting, lethargy, etc.

After his nap I reassessed the situation. He seemed just fine, but with a nice big bump and bruise on his head.

With Christian comfortable and as far away from the camera as humanly possible we got back to the pumpkin, and I was able to properly capture the moment and all its underwhelming glory. Seriously, I thought she'd be more grossed out- or at least excited by the innards of the pumpkin. We carved out the design and Grace's very first pumpkin was born. I think he was a pretty rad little guy.

 On Halloween night Grace decided she wanted to be Aurora from Sleeping Beauty.

 We headed to a nearby neighbor hood to go trick or treating. Everyone sits outside to hand out candy. It was the most efficient way to Trick-or-treat. Grace loved this dog.

 I learned that Grace is quite afraid of Halloween decorations and people in scary costumes. If there was either of those things near the candy bowl she wanted nothing to do with that house. There was a man behind us who was wearing a mask and Grace begged me to hold her when he was near by. I tried to reassure her that everything was harmless and then I thought, "Why would I want to tell her that a bunch of really creepy stuff is totally normal when its not." So I just let her do her thing. She seemed okay with stuff if her friends were cool with it.

We missed having Aaron with us but it was a fun Halloween. I can't believe the season is already over.

Oak Fest

In October, just down the street from us, the city hosts an Oak Fest. When it happened Aaron was between quarters at school and had the weekend off so we were finally able to do some October-y festive stuff as a family. Our first adventure was a train ride around the lake.

We convinced the Taylor's to join us. They had an "in" with the Oak Fest knowing when and where to go. We were very grateful.

Grace and Addie, best little buddies.

We got there early enough that there weren't any lines for the rides. The kids walked right up to this one and got on. Suddenly the bounce house started to collapse and all the parents made a mad dash to the tiger to get the kids out. I guess those kids will think twice about climbing into the mouth of a tiger, am I right?

Andrea and I decided to wait in line so Addie and Grace could get their faces painted. It was the slowest moving line ever. We were in line so long that the boys came up to us, asked if we wanted something to drink, walked back to the car, drove to sonic, ordered drinks, re-parked the car, walked back to us, and we finished our drinks before it was our turn. I think on multiple occasions either Andrea or I were about to say "screw it" and bail, but the whole "we've already waited this long, we might as well stay" argument came up.

Finally it was our turn, and it might be bold, but the face-painting was worth the ridiculous wait. Aaron gave Grace the idea to be a Jaguar, since she loves Baby Jaguar from Diego. I was blown away with how skilled this woman was in such a brief period of time. Grace sat patiently and kept her head still, which was pretty impressive in and of itself.

 Our face-painted girls, the butterfly and the jaguar.

I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty excited for next year.

Christian's Newborn Photos

A girlfriend of mine asked if she could take some pictures of Christian in hopes for some extra practice with her camera. I was all over that.

Aaron's Mom took Grace out for the morning and we made a little set-up on the bed and got to shooting. It was a wonderfully quiet morning spent pouring over Christian and capturing him as a tiny 3 week old newborn.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from that morning.

It's crazy to remember him that little, he doesn't even look the same in my mind. Although I absolutely love the age that Christian is now and I love watching him take in the world and learn new skills, I do sometimes miss the earlier days when his tiny newborn body seemed to rest and relax perfectly in my arms. These pictures were perfect to capture those moments and I will cherish them forever.

Thank you Cheryl!

Pumpkin Patchin'

We headed to a pumpkin patch just down the road from us. In true Texas fashion we started our adventure by getting mercilessly attacked by fire ants. A friend of mine started swatting her feet as soon as she got out of her car and attempted to get her kids out, stating that she was having a "Fire ant moment," I responded sympathetically with "I'm so sorry," knowing all too well the cringe worthy sting that comes from a fire ant bite. Shortly thereafter Grace starts screaming and yelling "OW! Ow ow ow!" And then I feel them, those ridiculously small ants reeking havoc on my feet. I rushed to Grace trying my best to get them off, some catching hold on my hands and I do my best to get them off of myself. It was a few minutes later that I noticed that we had parked on a ginormous fire ant mound. We literally hit the mother-load. Are you noticing a trend here? Note to self: stop parking in the state of Texas-- or else fire ants will attack you. The picture doesn't do it justice, we both left with about 15 bites. We both had to sleep with socks on our feet for two weeks just to stop the scratching. I have the scars to prove that I seriously lacked will-power when it came to not scratching my feet. I felt so bad for Grace who truly didn't understand why her feet were so itchy. My poor baby.

After the attack, we put our minds elsewhere, and got to patchin' it up.

This pumpkin patch has a lot of different things to do and places to run around, which is fabulous for Grace, but not so fabulous for keeping an eye on Grace. I remember it feeling chaotic last year, and this year was no different. The plethora of people (even on a weekday during school), and those moments you stop to talk to someone and your child disappears almost instantaneously and suddenly you find yourself saying "Have you seen a giant candy corn bow with a little girl underneath it running around here?" Thankfully I have some pretty stellar friends who don't mind hanging with Grace too, so we never lost eyes on her.

But, most importantly, Sister-friend had fun. And thats all you can ask from a pumpkin patch right?

I didn't get the classic pumpkin patch picture (bail of hay, my kids on it, pumpkin in arms) but we did attempt a picture on the hayride. My kids look so happy, don't they?

Our other hay-riding members were also equally as happy.

 After our hay ride we headed out for some lunch, plastic bibs and all.

It truly was a Pumpkin Patch success.

Leading Up to Finals

The interesting thing about Aaron's MBA program is that it does quarters rather than semesters. So, for the length of a semester, he has two different quarters with two different sets of classes, midterms, and finals.

His first finals week started after the first weekend in October. On Saturday we grabbed breakfast with Aaron before he headed up to campus to study.

While Aaron studied his little heart out, the kiddos and I stayed home for a wonderful weekend of General Conference. So grateful that the sessions are broadcast via the internet.

For the rest of Saturday and Sunday we hung on the couch, in our pajamas, soaking in the wonderful messages shared by the leaders of the LDS church.

Grace made sure that all dolls, and humans, were kept in optimum health.

In the evenings we made dinner and met up with Aaron on campus to spend some time together as a family. I could tell he was really feeling the pressure of finals and wanted nothing more than to do his absolute best.

Sunday night, the night before finals, we went to bed early. Tackling his first final would be better with a good nights rest. So we laid down, said our prayers and 'I love yous' and got to bed.

At 3:40 in the morning my brain was ripped from sleepfulness to consciousness. It took a few seconds for my ears to adjust to the screeching sound of our severe weather alarms going off. The first thing Aaron said to me was, "Cover his ears!" Meaning for me to cover Christian's ears and protect him from the awful noise emitting from the tiny boxes installed in our walls. I rushed into the living room where Christian was sleeping in his bassinet and discovered that the noise wasn't as bad in the living room. When I knew his ears were safe I rushed to Grace's room. She was laying face down on her pillow covering her ears. I scooped her out of bed and shut her door, we shut the door to our room, and huddled in the living room. I rocked Grace in the recliner hoping that, by some miracle, she would fall back to sleep. Aaron stood a few feet away from me, we were all groggy and out of it, and the wailing of the alarms grated our sleep-addled brains like nails on a chalkboard. Aaron's voice cut through the noise. "This is my worst nightmare." On the eve of his first finals week, after countless hours spent studying, we sat there not knowing if the alarms would go off. We didn't evacuate since it wasn't the fire alarms going off, but rather the severe weather alarms which were in a different location. These are the same alarms that went off when our building was struck by lightening a year or so ago. Some of our neighbors congregated outside and started talking. We realized that the alarms throughout the whole building were going off. We saw a family that lives downstairs climb into their car and drive off. I turned to Aaron, "Why don't you go to a hotel? Just leave now." He replied, "Let's just see how it goes and if they turn off."

Then the firefighters arrived. They poured out of the truck in full gear and went throughout the building inspecting to see what was going on.

During their inspection the alarms finally turned off, at 4:01am. Twenty-one minutes after they went off initially.

I got Grace back to sleep and nursed Christian while Aaron did his best to get his brain out of panic mode and back into sleep mode. His alarm went off when it should and finals week began. The whole week Aaron was either taking a final or studying for one so we didn't see much of him. But we sent him a picture every morning wishing him good luck.

 I love this picture. I just die over their hand holding.

Apparently Christian wears these yellow ducky pajamas quite frequently.

Aaron did really well on his finals, even with the alarm incident, and then we got to spend all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with him. No school on the mind or anything, it was wonderful.