Halloween

After saying that he "had already been everything that was awesome," Jacob finally decided on a knight. I guess this is a demonstration of a knightish move.

Merry requested a pink and turquoise butterfly this year along with green eye shadow.

Grace loves owls. Why? I really have no idea, I am not really a bird fan myself.

She trick or treated at 4 houses but then was so worried that she might not find me in the dark she climbed in the stroller for the rest of the night.

Adam dressed as a tiger because that is the costume we had in the dress-up box that fit him.

Jacob giving everyone a pep talk.

As we are no longer subdivisionites, we went to some friends house for hotdogs and trick or treating. Here is the treat seeking troop.

P.S. I always think I am going to make every costume. In the end I made half of 2 costumes. That sort of counts as a whole costume, I think.

Octoberish stuff

Here are all the fun activities of October smashed into 1 post.

Merry went on her first field trip. When one receives a mini pumpkin, one must always try and balance it on one's head. Rule of fall #27.

Merry and the mini pumpkin holders.

Grace after a fall festival at the elementary school. She requested a pink pumpkin painted on her face. The pretty yellow flowers are in bloom by the lake. Maybe I will attempt one more set of family pictures. The rest of the festival was undocumented because I really didn't want to lug my camera around.

This face pretty much sums up Grace's attitude this month.

Hmm. I sure have a lot of pictures of Grace. Any who, if you are looking for a good Halloween read for children try "The Blue Nose Witch" by Margaret Embry. It is out of print but you can still find it on Amazon or in some libraries. Side note, it was written by my Grandmother for my Mother. The dedication is to "Merry who owned the original Brockett." My Merry was named for my Mother, that is why the weird spelling.

We also went and rode the Halloween train. Our driver looks so excited.

The trains were mini and towed cars with benches to sit on.

We went through a Halloween decorated forest. The kid's favorite part was a man dressed like a giant chicken that jumped out and said "Cheese- Chicken Man."

Adam sporting a butt-part after the train ride.

Failed family pictures

We went out to take family pictures tonight. After trying to get 6 people to coordinate, dressing sweaty soccer playing kids and bribing everyone to be nice, the sun was almost down. I also found out my tripod is broken.

If only I could learn to jump in the picture in the right place and fix Grace's hat at the same time.

The fam in front of Lake Iola. Brian looks so excited.


So I opted to spend the last few minutes taking individual shots- they are much easier.
Luckily, I am visiting my sister in a few weeks and I am sure if I buy her a case of DDP I can bribe her into taking my family pictures.
http://annadelephotography.blogspot.com/

the clean part of the house and some sillies

Some boring pictures of our house (only the clean part.)

The front door and stair case to the loft.

Really cool fans and some incredibly high pot lights. One light just burnt out and I am going to figure out how to change something 40 ft in the air.

The master bedroom.

Kitchen #1, the counters are blue. Crazy, I know. I am not really loving them so much.
Kitchen #2 is not very clean today. At least I can look at kitchen #1 and pretend I have a clean kitchen.

The living room, the doors go to the patio. There are patio doors in the master bedroom and kitchen #2, too.

The view from the loft. We need a rug, a coffee table, end tables, something over the fire place, lamps and stuff.
This is the end of the clean part of the house, I let the kids in the other part.
Now on to something more interesting.

Sillies- pose #1.

Sillies- pose #2.

A picture that I love

I was browsing through last months photos, when I stumbled on this picture.
It may be one of my favorites-ever. Sure Adam has a grimy face, but that is what he usually looks like. I love it because you can see that Grace adores Adam. I also love that Adam's fingers are so busy holding food and a blade of grass, his little fingers are always busy. I love the light and the tree filtered bokeh. All in all this picture makes me smile.

Boys and the house

The boys were feeling a little left out, here they are in September.

No fancy-schmancy clothes, just Jacob.

Adam, complete with rice crispy treat.

Our cute little house. Not so crazy about the amount of blue. The best part is that it is really like 2 houses glued together so I can shut myself in one part and the kids can destroy the other. Very convenient for my sanity.

So here is what I want it to look like. More yellow and cheery, maybe a red door and a tin roof. Fatter columns with more details and some shutters and rocking chairs. I guess I should have put in some plants.

While I am changing things. Here is me in my sports car, blonde hair, fake body parts, spray tan and a nose job. It is totally realistic except the purple. I really do not wear purple. Here is to dreaming.

What life is really like at our house after school. We have a couple of plasma scooters that the kids take to the top of the drive way and ride down. Road rash is pretty common at our house.

I finally got the camera out tonight to take some pictures of the girls.

Grace posed for about 30 seconds for pictures until she realized there were fire ants.

Pretty Merry lasted a few minutes longer.