Pumpkin Carving

After school today we decided it was about time to carve our pumpkins for Halloween tomorrow. The kids ALL enjoyed cleaning out the "guts" and I think it may have been some strange sort of therapy for Ellie! She sat and played with the pumpkin guts for a good hour. Luckily for me, I had to leave for school before they were done so Obee got stuck with the cleanup! Haha.

Here are the finished products. The first one, Hayden did all by himself and was VERY proud to display it!And here they are cleaning them out and getting ready for the carving....

Raspberries Anyone?

We bought some raspberries at Sam's Club last week and Ellie went through almost the entire pack of them in one day. This girl loves her raspberries, just like her mommy! It was too cute when she came up so proud to show me her "raspberry fingers" so I captured this moment for all to see.

Little Mommy

Ellie is such a sweet big sister to Jordyn. She's always taking care of her and wanting to do everything that I would do for her. Today she wanted to make Jordyn's before naptime bottle for her and feed it to her. It's funny because Jordyn is almost as big as SHE is! Also, as soon as I got the camera out, Jordyn began saying, "Cheeeese" (which actually sounds more like "Sheeeesh" by the way) while still trying to drink her milk. Ellie and I got a kick out of that!

Off To The Pumpkin Farm :)

I was just going through some old pictures and found this one of the girls at the pumpkin patch LAST YEAR. I expected Jordyn to have changed a lot, but was so surprised by how much ELLIE has grown! Wow! Yes, she did wear the same outfit to the pumpkin patch last year. :) Today we went to the Horton Iris and Pumpkin Farm with the girls and some friends. It was so nice going to a pumpkin farm that was just a laid back farm where the kids could run and play and everything wasn't so commercialized for once. We DO enjoy the other pumpkin farms, but were in the mood for something different this year!Hayden was away with Gramma and Haley at his cousin Haley's soccer tournament all day. We missed not having him there and it actually felt weird doing such a "family" day without our guy!Wandering through the Pumpkins...I got the best sequence photos of Obee throwing the girls up in the air. I just held my finger down on the shutter switch while they went up and it's so cool seeing how their expressions changed as they went higher and back down again. Obee is such a good Daddy! Checking out the wagon...The owner of the farm took the kids around the pumpkin patch for a fun tractor hay ride...Our Girls and their friends Rebecca, Isabella and Olivia....

More Soccer

Just wanted to post some pictures from Hayden's soccer game today. He's really turned into quite the little soccer player this year! He gets really into it and runs the whole field. He almost made a goal three different times today and was very proud of himself, even though they didn't win the game. Afterward, he told me - "Mommy, we didn't win today, but that's okay because we played so GRRRREAT!" It doesn't sound as cute on here, but it was when he said it!

And this is what the girls did to entertain themselves. Ellie was feeling her mischevious self and did try to throw a couple of extra balls onto the field during the game. Always keeping me on my toes, this girl!

Double Digits!

My favorite neice Haley Marie turned 10 today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY HALEY! WE LOVE YOU! The kids had fun going over to my parents for Dinner to celebrate her birthday with her. They were especially exicted to surprise her with her gift - a new kitten named Nikko (pronounced Neeco). Everyone has fallen in love with this little guy, and he is SUCH a sweetie pie!

Royal Star

Yep, we have a Royal Star in our house this week named Hayden! Each week in his class there is one student who is chosen as the "Royal Star" and this is Hayden's week. He got to bring Crunch the shark home with him this weekend, fill out a bunch of papers about himself including his favorite foods and what he wants to be when he grows up (a motorcycle policeman of course). We had such a busy weekend that we had to fill out all of his papers this morning before school, but that was okay. I find he is in a MUCH better mood for such things in the mornings and it makes it a lot less stressful getting it all done. My mom came over and watched the girls this morning so I could go into his class and watch him present all of his special things and be interviewed by his class.

Here he is sharing his monkey as his "special sharing item"And showing one of his many baby pictures....the kids got a big kick out of seeing them

Sitting in the chair being interviewed by everyone. The kids all take notes while the teacher fills out the page on the whiteboard, then the rest of the week they work on making a book about him or somethingAnd the best part of the week - HE Gets to be the line leader all week!Okay, I just had to include this one to show what a little guy my "big kid" is compared to the rest of the class!

Meet....

....the newest member of our extended family! I can't say much about it right now, but will soon be able to reveal more info about this little guy. I can't wait to get him here and take some better pictures of him. He's a cutie though, don't ya think!?

So WHO Said Weekends Are For Relaxing???

This has been SUCH an incredibly BUSY weekend for us, as most of them seem to be lately! Here's a quick run-down of what we did! On Friday we had Hayden's field trip to the Planetarium and the Harvest Festival for his school (which we had to help set up by the way). On Saturday, we started the day out early with a 9am soccer game (which they WON, Yay!), a trip to the mall, then we had to head over to a trail in Roseville to go on a nature hike with the cub scout troop which was followed by a birthday party at Burger King for one of the cub scouts. As if THAT wasn't enough, I still had my monthly scrapbooking all nighter to attend on Saturday night! The last few months we have had SUCH a great time scrapbooking. We seem to have a really great group these days that just fits together so well. :)

After a few hours of sleep, on Sunday we spent most of the day at the rollar skating rink for Haley's Birthday party! The kids had so much fun skating, and I was even brave enough to skate myself! Yes, after 15 years, I took the plunge and put on a pair of skates. I didn't do too badly either! With poor lighting, no flash and a lot of movement, my pictures turned out pretty blurry and awful, but I'll show them anyway just to get an idea of our day at the party!

Just Hangin' Out

This morning before Cousin Haley's Birthday party, Hayden, Jordyn and I were playing out in the driveway. We had fun just hanging out and I snapped a few pics of the kids looking so big and grown up lately! Jordyn is wearing the birthday overalls I had made for Ellie to wear on HER 1st bday in these.

Our Three Little Pumpkins....

....Well, actually our Pinkalicious, Pinkalicious Cupcake, and our Spiderman! The kids got all dressed up for Friday night's Halloween carnival put on by Hayden's school. My mom worked so had on Jordyn's cupcake costume and she turned out super cute! Thanks mom, love ya! Everyone at the carnival was commenting on how much they loved her costume. These pics are before we went, still at the house. Ellie didn't have her crown, wand or wings in these pictures though.