NOVEMBER

First off, can you believe it's November? I am totally in disbelief. I guess it's true that the older you get the faster time goes. I can still just remember back to being a kid and never feeling like time went very fast. But I just can't keep up any more. This whole month so far has been a lot about me trying to get and feel prepared for our upcoming trip to Ecuador, so we haven't done anything very fun and haven't taken very many pictures. We did get our family pictures taken, but we haven't gotten them officially back yet. I'm excited about them though.

Lucy is getting obsessed with real big people food. She is super unhappy if you are eating and don't share with her. We can give her tiny crumbs of bread and she chomps happily away. I gave her an apple slice and she sucked on that thing all through dinner one night.

Cutie Graham watching a show with his blankies.

Dane made this mask at his school. 

On our way to our family pictures!

How adorable did he look for the pictures?

Lucy loved this toy at the library.

They found the musical instrument toys, which I keep high up in the toy room closet. Unfortunately.

Graham has been not happy about leaving the gym. He laid here for like 10 minutes while I tried to wait patiently.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! 

I got to go volunteer in Dane's preschool classroom last week and it was super cute and fun. I mostly just spied on Dane to see what he did with his friends while they were playing. It was so cute.

He was soooo happy to see me! I loved it!

It was silly hat day the day I went to volunteer. 

Dane fed Lucy a bottle all by himself. She didn't act super grateful.

An attempt at a dogpile.

I play racquetball every Friday with these ladies. It's the best. So much fun, so much talking, a little racquetball :)

This girl's face while she was sleeping at church. I can't even.

She was sitting and watching the boys play outside in the yard. She wishes she were big enough to join them.

We went on a short walk this morning, and Graham had to stop and pick up nine thousand acorns to put in his trike trailer. So cute. And slightly annoying.

Halloween stuff

Why is it that October and Halloween involves so much work? I was shocked this year by how hard it was to do everything I had to do. Even the little things like remembering to buy Halloween candy for trick or treaters is annoying. This year, it felt like too much (not that I have that much going on or anything!). But, we got it all done, and the kids were super happy. And Tommy and I got 90% of their chocolate candy out of their Halloween bags and it was awesome.

A few non-Halloween pictures first. Cutie Graham.

I had to push all four of these kids on the swings, haha.

A friend hosted a little Halloween party for the preschool kids at our church, complete with Halloween games and a pinata. Very cute.

Lucy feeling festive in her Trick or Treat shirt.

We went to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkin. Crazy, but this is our fourth year going to this same pumpkin patch. I love this tradition. It's so much fun for the kids and so easy for Tommy and I. And we want to get pumpkins anyway so it works out perfectly.

Cute kids with their pumpkins.

 I love that we got a pretty good picture of the three of them!

Graham! Could you be ANY CUTER????

Running free among the pumpkins...

Super happy kids.

I signed up to bring a pie to the ward trunk or treat, and kind of regretted it. Luckily one of my friends told me she had an extra pie crust (since I'd foolishly thought I'd make my own) and it saved the day. AND this pie won the "prettiest pie" competition for the ward pie bake-off. Booyah!

The kids in their costumes for the trunk or treat. Dane won "best costume" and Graham got so many people telling him he was cute that he came back and told me, "I a cute waffle!"

And THIS GIRL could not have been more adorable in her kitty costume. Love her.

Graham was done trick or treating after a few minutes and just came back to the car and hung out with me handing out candy. I had my witch hat on so I looked relatively festive.

We almost forgot to carve our pumpkins, but we did it the night before Halloween (phew!).

This is Graham's face when he's trying to say "cheese!"

They were so thrilled. Too bad the pumpkins only last like 2 days here after they get carved. 

 I tried to make a fun Halloween dinner with chili, mummy dogs, and apple/marshmallow mouths. The boys didn't eat any chili, but oh well.

Graham went the skeleton route on Halloween itself. I tried to get him to do the waffle again but he didn't want to. Oh well.

I had to do three of Graham because he is just so dang cute. I LOVE THIS AGE. People complain about two year olds, and sure, they can be trying, but they also could not be cuter.

She looks chubby with the little cat ears around her face.

I hate that it's not possible to get a great picture of trick or treating, because they are so cute while they do it. Dane couldn't get his arm around the box to put things into his bucket, so we had to help him the whole time. But he got so many compliments on his costume the whole evening as we were walking around. It ended up all being wonderful.