thankful for thanksgiving

i LOVE thanksgiving.

matt's family does it right. it starts on wednesday night and the fun goes through saturday morning.

it's jam-packed with family, friends, food, football, cookies, kids of all ages, card games, the abilene zoo,  more cookies and the annual the talent show filled with singing, dancing, playing of instruments, magic tricks and a frozen sing-a-long.

 ^^^McLain sang his 'ABCs' for his talent^^^

she was in heaven with all her cousins and all their toys

trying to get to the flamingos

happy thanksgiving~m, s, mc, a & baby 

p.s. i took some time off from social media during our thanksgiving break, and i'm so glad i did. i was soaking up every moment.  i really need to do that more often.

halloween 2014

peter pan, tinkbell, captain james hook & wendy girl.

***disclaimer***
next year, i'll make sure i have my big girl camera. 

this year, the iphone pictures are sub-par. 

if i'm going to invest in costumes, you better believe, we are going to get plenty of use out of them. 

i drag the troops to as many fall festivals as possible. the kids love it! as for matt, well...he pretends.

train rides and suckers

and bounce houses for days.

our school has a tricycle parade. with balloons and popcorn and all the kids riding their bikes. the most adorable thing is to see all the kiddos in their costumes.

i got to play captain hook to aplin's tinkerbell at school.

(because if i walked around school as wendy girl, no one would know who i was supposed to be.)

trick-or-treating as a family

^^^ if you look close, there is a baby bump in this pic ^^^

18 weeks :)

we stopped at uncle ben's to end the night

full size candy bars and piano playing

i'm already brainstorming about next year's costumes. 

pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins

i love sharing my enthusiasm of pumpkins with my little ones.

^^^that scrunched nose^^^ 

 every time we went to store, we had to see/touch/hold/climb on top of all the pumpkins.
i guess my enthusiasm rubbed off on them.

the pumpkin patch at school. they each got to pick out their very own pumpkin

^^^she found her pumpkin!^^^

 once he found his pumpkin, all he wanted to do was play on the golf-cart

this year, instead of carving our pumpkins, we painted them.
well, mclain painted the pumpkins and aplin ate the paint.

"look at me, aplin. i'm doing really good."

"all the way up the bottom" 

^^^our painted pumpkins^^^

park time with martin

there is something so special about spending time with old friends and seeing your children play with each other. wish we lived in the same town and our play dates happened on a weekly basis.

^^^mclain was not at all interested in clapping^^^

martin, we love every minute we get to spend with you and watching you grow.  we look forward to seeing all the shenanigans you crazy kids will get into together.