Halloween 2011

Today was pretty crazy. I spent the day frantically finishing cleaning, and doing LOTS of cooking and baking. My mom came over and spent her lunch break curling Paige's hair for me. (Just realized this sounds weird, since she has curly hair-but to look like Strawberry Shortcake-the modern version-I had to straighten her hair and then have my mom sort of curl the ends)
I got her ready the rest of the way.
Strawberry Shortcake, clearly. :)

Captain America, enjoying pumpkin pasta before trick-or-treating.
And our little owl, also enjoying the pasta, with Daddy and Grammy.
A bunch of our pictures turned out blurry, I guess the new camera's not great in low lighting. :(

So lots of other people were here but won't be featured because the pics didn't turn out. Tyra was a witch, Lily was a ladybug and Aivree was a duck. But no pics. :(

Alex and Faith were vampires, their mom was a gypsy.
People brought lots of good food and desserts, and we had fun.
Trick-or-treating was fun, as always. It was the first year Cason was actually excited to participate, IN costume. He was hilarious, as always, and FLIPPED HIS LID any time he saw another hero, like The Flash or Ironman. He also thinks he's pretty strong once he gets that costume on with all the muscles. The other day when he put it on he started bench pressing bins in the playroom and throwing stuff all over the room. Haha.

Neely LOVES Halloween, we carried her up the street watching the other kids, and she loved all the houses that had jack-o-lanterns or any kinds of lights. She'd point and kept going "OOOOO!", which made us laugh because she sounded like a little owl should. And then "WOW wow WOW!" and what sounds like "COOL!" She says "wow" and "cool" all the time, and usually uses them the way you'd think, so I think that's what she's really saying. She also had her first sucker, and was a big fan.
She was also really good about wearing her costume, she'd even reach up every so often and make sure the hat was still on. Ha.

I guess now that Halloween is over it's okay to post the pictures of them trick-or-treating at Jess's work the other day. So here are a billion:
And finally, my favorite:

Happy Halloween!

Yesterday Jess and I cleaned, prepared, and decorated for our Halloween dinner tonight.
We had breaks, for church and our kickball game (In which Jess and I were the heroes-mostly Jess though. Have I mentioned Jess is like the best kickball player ever?) I had a couple more built-in breaks when Neely got hungry. I never got around to carving Neely's pumpkin, I'll have to try today.

We had our coffee in our spooky mugs while we worked. They're in love.
The kids weren't much help.
But they were cute.

They were quite happy to wake up and find out it's Halloween, and especially to start the day with milk and a ghost-shaped pumpkin chocolate chip muffin.
Well, the older two. Neely's was shaped like a muffin that had been torn in to pieces to keep a baby from choking. Ha.

Can't wait to post pictures of them in costume tonight.

Pumpkin Carving

Normally we carve pumpkins the minute October is here, but for some reason this year we were extra busy. So we FINALLY did them today.

Paige was so happy, it was the first year we let her do some of the actual carving of her pumpkin. She drew the face, and did almost all of the eyes, and Jess finished the mouth for her.
It was the first year Cason drew his face himself, and I cut it for him. He drew 4 eyes and a little mouth. He was happy with it, and told me his pumpkin was "thinking", because of how his mouth was sort of pursed over to the side.
Neely cruised around, trying to invent new stunts to scare us with.
She also ended up with a pumpkin sticker on her bootie.
Paige impressed us with her memory yet again, reminding us of how we carved our pumpkins last year. She reminded Jess his had one star eye last year, so he kept up the tradition.
And here's the family, minus Neely, since she's not of carving age. Although I may have to pick up a little one tomorrow, because it feels wrong to leave her out.

Speaking of Funny...

I love that girl.

Paige and I have been working on stuff for her unicorn party. She wants SO bad to play with it all, but I told her we have to save them all for the party. So this morning we made a quick unicorn horn and tail for her to play in. Now I'm blogging with Neely in my lap asleep, while the older two play. Paige is, obviously, a unicorn, and Cason's her owner. I'm apparently running a Unicorn Feed Shop because Cason just came up and bought some food for her.

Comedians

I love how young they start to figure out how to be funny. Neely puts stuff in her mouth and just hangs out like this, trying not to smile like she knows she's hilarious.

Sleeping Boy and a Unicorno

This girl has had a runny nose and is waking up a lot at night, all fussy and warm and sweaty. Then when she wakes up she's happy as ever.
That picture is from yesterday, she's a LITTLE cranky today.

Still proudly practicing her newest trick, and taking more and more steps at a time.

THIS boy:
Slept through the night in his own bed for the first time EVER last night. That's right, EVER. Of course he's slept all night on nights we watch movies in bed and let them sleep with US. But any time he's in his own bed he sneaks in in the middle of the night and climbs in with us. Sometimes I don't even hear him come in, I just wake up with him cuddling me. But lately he's been making it longer in his bed, and this morning he came out at 8:30! Woohoo! Only took 3 years. Haha.

This picture makes me laugh:
We're busy planning parties. Paige, a girl after my own heart, wants a unicorn party. She's like me in a lot of ways, which makes it fun when I get to plan parties I wish I'd had when I was little. I LOVED(still love) unicorns, and I have so many ideas for her party. I wish I hadn't procrastinated and that I had a zillion dollars, because there are so many fun things we could do. But oh well, she'll like what I CAN do.

Also, while searching for unicorn ideas I discovered Tokidoki and now I have a new obsession. Unicornos? YES!
It might make me about 6 years old, but I'm obsessed and will now be collecting them all. And anything related to them that I can find. There are definitely 2 of them on the way to Paige and I. I also really want this for Neely:
I love ridiculous things like the little girl wearing a costume with donuts for ears. Haha.

Paige is getting a bike for her birthday, and since that's a big gift her little unicorn will be the only other one from us. Good thing she doesn't read my blog, eh? Her bike is the CUTEST, it's Hello Kitty which she loves, but we got the bike a little on the bigger side so she'll be able to ride it for longer. So I found this beach cruiser with Hello Kitty on it, but it's purple, black, and grey so it looks a little more grown up and she won't be embarrassed to ride it later since it doesn't look like it's for "little kids". Ha. I can't wait for it to get here.

Cross-Eyed Caso

Neely had her first bike ride today! She liked it.
Paige drew this picture of Great Grama the other day, it's the two of them holding hands. She even put the flower on her shirt. So cute. Her drawings are getting so good lately.
Cason came up to me and said "Mama, watch me cross!" and crossed his eyes for me. So I grabbed the camera to get him to do it again, and he had a way harder time, but eventually managed. It's funny, sometimes he can cross them no problem. Other times he tries SO hard, moving his head around and making funny faces while he tries, and it takes him a couple minutes to figure it out again. Ha.

Have a Looksie...

Don't mind Paige dragging poor Cason backwards by his shirt collar. Ha.

Walkin Woman

The new camera has arrived, and I now wish our rebel had fallen on the freeway sooner. Haha, just kidding. Kinda. But this does take nice pictures and takes decent video, which our video camera does NOT. Speaking of which, Skye, remember the houndstooth camera I told you about? Never buy it.

Anyhoo, here's one of Gia sniffing the air like she loves to do.
And the pumpkins the kids painted.
Neely's been taking walking kind of slow, she was perfectly content to get around more quickly by crawling. Until yesterday, when she decided she's a walker. She practiced all day long, and has taken around 10 steps at a time before falling now. She's SO proud of herself. She stands up in the middle of the room and gives us her happy, slightly cocky smile, and starts walking to us, laughing as she goes. We got some video, still working on figuring out how to put it on the blog though.

I also went for a run with Jenni and her sister Jessi last night, and when I got home Neely gave me one of her sweet greetings. Came right over to me and cuddled up with her head on my shoulder, then leaned back to gaze into my eyes for a second like she's making sure it's really me, and she's SO happy I'm finally back(I was gone maybe a whole hour, ha) and then cuddles against my shoulder again.

Flag

A couple weeks ago we went to Flagstaff and stayed the night. We got to eat Olive Garden once. Mmm.
Cason did what he says is his new mad face, in the car.
And we explored. Flagstaff is so nice.
I love this picture: