Holidays!

Things have been pretty crazy the last couple of months. We had Halloween, my birthday and Thanksgiving all in what seemed like one week! Since my birthday is on Halloween, we celebrated my birthday the Saturday before Halloween. My sister in law Annette watched our kids and Cameron and I went out to eat and we got some Christmas shopping done. After we were done we headed to Annettes and we went with her to a Harvest Festival. It was a ton of fun. They had hay slides, corn mazes, bouncy houses, a Giant slide made out of a pipe, a "corn pit", a petting zoo and instruments made out of farm equipment that the kids could play with. The corn pit was like a sand pit, but with corn kernels instead of sand. Zander thought it was pretty cool to use his shoe as a shovel to move the kernels around. There was also a "train" made out of barrels that were pulled behind a tractor. Keith is into trains right now, so he LOVED that. The Giant slide was a ribbed pipe that was about 4 feet wide and 30 feet tall. Cameron and Annette took turns taking the kids down, but I wasn't interested in going down. Especially after they said it hurt your bum because of the ribbing on the pipe. When we were done with the Festival they had a hay ride and they would take you to a pumpkin field and you could pick out your own pumpkins. We had grown our own pumpkins, but we thought the hay ride would be fun. Our driver kept stopping and talking about the farm, so by the time we got to the field and back to the festival it was cold and dark and Keith had wet his pants. :\ I wish I had thought to take my camera. The Harvest Festival was a lot of fun and the kids loved it.
At the beginning of October I had every intention of making Halloween shaped sugar cookies and taking them around to the neighbors. Too bad we ate them as fast as I made them. We had a FHE night were we carved pumpkins and frosted cookies.




But by the next day we, Eliza, Keith and I, had eaten the majority of the cookies. We grew our own pumpkins this year for baking and for carving. Our carving pumpkins didn't get huge, but Cameron was good about rotating them every couple of days so that they would be perfect for carving. :)

Another thing that happened at the beginning of October is that Keith decided he was ready to be potty trained. :) The first couple of weeks were rough, but he has it down pretty good now. Every now and again he'll have a bad day, but most of the time he never messes. :) When we started potty training we would give him stickers to put on a potty chart so he could see his progress. But after awhile he just started to put the stickers on his face.

Keith was a football player and Rosie was a ladybug for Halloween.

My sister Eliza and I were Twins and Cameron was a "cool" Vampire. I never got a picture of Cameron all dressed up, but he did indeed look "cool".

While Eliza and Cameron were at work and school I took Keith and Rosie trick-o'-treating with my sister in law Annette and her two boys, Zander and Gage.

We went to Neal, Annette's husbands work first. The kids buckets were almost full by the time we were done there! Who knew you could get so much candy trick-o'-treating at an office. The kids were trying to eat the candy as fast as people were giving it to them. After Neal's, we went to lunch with Cameron and then back to Annette's to try to get the kids to take naps. Thanks to all of the sugar, no body really slept. Keith and Rosie and I went to Cameron's work next for a costume judging and then we met back up with Annette at my brother in law Karl's work. He works at the VA nursing home. We got even more candy trick-o'-treating at the nursing home! Keith seemed to have a thing for suckers and if they were an option he took those instead of the candy bars.

I would have preferred the chocolate, but it looks bad to pick out your kids candy FOR them. ;) All in all it was a busy, crazy, sweet day. My kids ate candy for a week before I "saved" them from all of that sugar by finishing the rest off myself.

We had Thanksgiving with some of Cameron's family this year. Annette had offered to host, so Cameron, Eliza, the kids and I along with Cameron's Dad, Karl and his wife Kiersten, and their Uncle Wally all came to Annette's for Thanksgiving. The morning of Thanksgiving Annette woke up sick, but being the amazing person that she is, she still had everyone come over to eat. I made 11 pies this year, but I never took any pictures of them all. They were beautiful though and they tasted amazing. :)
When we got home from Annette's Cameron and I were talking in the kitchen when Cameron realized that Eliza's goldfish, Judy #4, wasn't moving. We had Eliza come and see and sure enough, Judy was dead. Eliza had forgotten to feed Judy before we left for Annette's. Eliza put Judy in a Ziploc box, we all wrote a note to Judy to put into the box with her and Cameron helped Eliza bury Judy #4 in the back yard.