Day 3

And now for this cutie. I'm so thankful for my sweet little girl. We waited a long time for her to join our family and she was so worth the wait.

Day 2

I'm thankful for this boy who was the best surprise of all time. He can be very challenging, but he is also so smart and sweet. I can't believe how fast he is growing up.

Day 1

I thought I'd give this 30 days of thankfulness a phone bloggin' spin. So every day in November I'm going to take a picture of something I'm thankful for and blog it using my phone. Hopefully by the end I'll be a phone blogging' expert.

So day 1 - I'm thankful for Jeremy. My best friend, partner, teammate. I'm so lucky I found this guy that treats me with love and respect, challenges me, and makes me laugh.

Halloween decor

A quick post to share our Halloween decor before it has to come down. All of these are things we put out every year. I made the garlands back in 2009 and posted about them here. Everything else has just been collected here and there throughout the years. Signs and lanterns from the dollar tree, hat from Jeremy's wizard costume, owl lamp from walmart YEARS ago. I love having Halloween decorations up, and I'm always sad when they have to be packed away.

This post is the decor for my GABI Autumn (Photo) Bucket List, one of our October challenges.

Halloween - pumpkin carving

We spent last night working on some pumpkin carving! It's one of our favorite Halloween traditions, and it's fun to see the kids get into it.  Oscar was not grossed out by slimy innards this year.

And surprisingly, neither was Alice. It seems like most kids are put off by it at first, but she just dug right in!

She was also very focused on mapping out her pumpkin design.. She would pause every now and then to take it in and declare it "pretty!"

Jeremy helped with the actual carving part

While I helped Oscar with his

And then, as is tradition, we turned off all the lights so that we could sit and enjoy our work while sipping apple cider. Left to right- Alice, Oscar, Jeremy, Missy

Luke and Leia

Last Wednesday I pulled an all-nighter to get these costumes finished up in time for treat street at the high school.  Oscar was thrilled with his costume, and Alice kept her Leia hat on for the whole thing, so I'd call it a success!

My fierce children

A heart-melting daddy-daughter moment. 

I actually did get around to making them trick-or-treat bags... unfortunately is was the last 30 minutes before we had to leave! eek! The boot covers could use some work, but I ran out of time. They may get fixed at some point.... they may not. I'm thinking about doing a post on costume details, as that would have been nice to find when I was researching.

Class Favorite

A few weeks ago Oscar came home with a note that said he was voted as the favorite boy in the class and that we needed to help make the parade float that he would be riding on in the homecoming parade. We were a bit surprised, Oscar can be a bit.......odd (just look at his parents... they're crazy people...), but we were proud and excited for him! Here he is on the float - they all were dressed as police officers and had the other team's mascot in jail.

Here they are getting ready to go. somewhere between here and where we saw him in the parade he manage to eat TONS of candy and had chocolate smeared all over his face.

Alice had lots of fun picking up candy and putting it in her purse.  When Daddy or Nana didn't go get the candy out of the street fast enough I had to hold her back so she wouldn't get run over. She also ended up with 6 necklaces.

Here they come - class favorites!

Can you see the smarties he threw us?

Since we planned on taking Oscar to a football game, we figured we should go to the homecoming game since he had been in the parade.  It was a perfect crisp fall evening and the kids had lots of fun and Oscar even tried to watch the game.  The girl from his class that was voted class favorite was also at the game, and Oscar was heartbroken when he realized she left and he didn't get to say goodbye. He was crushed. We tried to mend his broken heart with funnel cake, but ended up leaving the game a few minutes early. Hopefully it was just because he was worn out from all this fall fun, I don't think I'm ready to worry about girlfriends.

Things checked off the list:

• Wear scarves
• Go to a football game with Oscar