Halloween

We had a halloween party last weekend and got to dress up :)  Here is snow white and peter pan 

We also had to make a "spooky" dessert.  We chose eyeball cookie balls :)  Dave was really good at making red veins on the eyes.  He said it's from practicing in his youth
Right now there is about 2 feet of snow outside, and it's still snowing.  I'm not sure trick-or-treating will be happening...maybe just to grandparents :)

"Hi HOO!" It's home from work we go...

All our work was at home lately, but we are done! Yipee!!!!  Here are some hard to see before and after shots.  And the most work you can't even see, which was the roof.  But Dave and I have successfully re-roofed, re-painted, and re-built our deck.

  Here's before (about 3 years ago when we first moved in).  I was prego with Lydia here :)

And here is after... tada!
My favorite part is the deck, we put solar lighting on the posts, and I'm finally not scared to have my kids up there alone, there's no way they could fall through or under that thing!
Now Dave has the remodeling bug, and I'm milking it for all it's worth :) 

pum'kin pickin'

We went to Anderson Farms again this year, it's so big, with so much to do, that I convinced Dave to skip work a little and come along :)  Outside the corn maze

Bored Jaxen, and Alex copying him :)
Our pumpkins... My niece Madeline always tries to find the biggest, and she found a WHOPPER this time.  My brother is making a new rule that you have to be able to carry your own...he almost hurt himself
classic picture, no matter where :)
Our kids first funnel cake...Lydia didn't understand how to eat it
I also got my own seat in the water barrel train... I was the only adult on it.  And I'm really sad I didn't get any shots of Autumn, she's adorable as always :)  Jason, Melissa, and Grandma Marty came along too, but they don't seem to make it in our pictures...

What makes us smile

I had to write down some cute stories about my kids.

  Lydia calls kleenex "bless yous".  I smile every time she says it.  She also knows the words to all the popular songs that we listen to in the car and sings them out loud.  Sometimes I am allowed to sing with her :)  (but usually not...)

Our whole family went to the $1 theater and saw "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs".  It's not a great movie, not even good.  But Alex really gets into all shows, and with the big screen he really feels like he's there.  At one point in the movie A T-Rex is stomping around the ice age looking for her kids (long story).  It's the first time we see the big dinosaurs in the movie so all the ice age animals are scared and hiding.  At one point there's a little deer (or it's ancestor) and it's trying to run, and then decides to hide.  The T-rex leans down and looks right at it (just like Jurassic Park) and Alex suddenly stands up and SCREAMS a high pitch horror movie scream.  The whole theater laughed as I quickly covered his mouth and sat him down.  We're still laughing about it now, I guess the big theater might be too much for his emotions :)

Circus

Al's preschool had cheap circus tickets, so we all went!  Here we are early, we were told you could see the animals up close...but you couldn't.  The clowns were funny though

All my pictures are bad, and I didn't get any pictures of the most exciting acts because I didn't want to take my eyes off the stunts.

They've put a lot more acrobatic acts in the circus from when I last saw it (which was when I was 7).  The focus definitely isn't the animals anymore.  They still had elephants, horses, zebras, and tigers.  The tigers were so scary that I could barely watch.  I was just holding my breath for that crazy man in the cage with 9 full grown tigers.  He's weird.

  It was fun, and really long!  We also got free comic books about elephants from the PETA guys protesting outside :)  Great day.