Happy Halloween

 Hope everyone had a fun Halloween 2012. I know that we sure did. We decided to take the kiddos up to my parents neighborhood for trick-or-treating since our neighborhood has lacked Halloween spirit for the last couple of years, and it was pretty awesome. One neighbor set up a haunted woods, while another was passing out homemade root beer and cookies. Even though we could not enjoy the cookies (because of gluten), the root beer was nice, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the cute decorations on all the houses.

From youngest to oldest, here is what the kids were this year:

Thomas the Tank Engine. The gardening gloves are not part of the costume. He just likes them and would not take them off for pictures. 

 Merida (from the movie Brave)

 A gryphon

 Nike, Goddess of Victory

It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas

Tonight we decorated our Christmas tree. It was a lot of fun unpacking the ornaments and watching the kids decorate the tree while Brady played a variety of funny songs.

While me and Brady have never had the kind of perfectly decorated trees that you see in magazines or on display in stores, I have thought ours were wonderful year after year. The first year we were married, when Gizmo was only a few months old, we splurged on a lovely tree. Since we were pretty broke at that point, we didn't have much money left for ornaments, but our tree looked lovely with its' many candy canes. We still have the three icicle ornaments we bought that year to symbolize the three of us. Later on, during the years were we have had curious toddlers, our Christmas trees have only been decorated on the top half.  We have ornaments that the kids have painted, ornaments from the cruises we have been on together, and ornaments that we just thought were pretty at the store. Somehow it all works together, and every year I can't help but think about where our family is now and where we have been, and I love that.

Brady topped it off with the star.

After the decorating was through, we all enjoyed a glass of Rice Nog (dairy free egg nog) which was really quite good. I tried to get some nice pictures of the kids, but instead ended up temporarily blinding them since I had turned on the flash. Oops.

 I am starting to get really excited for Christmas now....just need to finish up the rest of my shopping.

Happy (late) Halloween!

I thoroughly enjoy Halloween each year. Getting costumes ready for all the kids can be  stressful, but worth it once I get to see them all dressed up. Gizmo helped out with her costume a lot this year, from coming up with the design to doing some of the sewing. She was very proud of how it turned out. But enough of my chatter, and onto the pictures. I had an awesome afternoon photographing the kids with my early Christmas present (thanks, Brady), a Nikon D3100.

Squirt the Mummy

Princess the Witch

Spike the Vampire

Gizmo the Demon

Easter Eggs!

Dying Easter eggs is an inexpensive and fun craft and you don't even have to worry about it adding clutter to your house, as the result is edible. This year we picked up three egg dying kits at the store, added our own stash of crayons, and created some marvelous egg masterpieces.

This year we had my mom and my younger sister along, as well as my brother, his wife (who is pregnant with twins!!), and their adorable little man, Lincoln. It was nice for the kids to spend some time with their Grandma, aunts, uncle, and cousin.

My favorite thing that we tried this year was taking some eggs that were still very hot from being hard boiled. While using a rag to hold onto the eggs, because they really are hot, draw on the egg with a crayon. The heat melts the crayon as draw, creating rich swaths of color. Afterward, we put the eggs into some of the egg dye. It was definitely an egg coloring technique that is best for older kids and adults, but a lot of fun. It ends up looking something like this...of course, your design would be different, but you get the idea.All in all, we colored and decorated roughly five dozen eggs this year. Good thing that my kids like to eat hard-boiled eggs.

Happy Easter!