Merry Christmas!

We wish everyone a wonderful Christmas filled with love!

Group Halloween Party

Once again, our group found a date to get most of the kids together in costume to celebrate Halloween.  With our meetings getting less frequent, these moments are truly special.  The kids are growing up so fast, but despite it all, they get along great!  We missed Julie, Sam, Alex, Evelyn and Grant.
Cheryl was gracious enough to host at her new home.  The kids ran around and caused a ruckus but sure did have fun doing it!  The ladies had a nice time catching up with each other.  Love this group!

 Top: Brady, Kevin, Jacob, Will

Bottom: Elizabeth, Isa, Gabi, Elin, Kaitlyn, Natalie, Gina

Halloween 2013

What an adventure this Halloween was!  The girls have had their costumes picked out and ready in their minds for months.  Will, was a little less decisive.  He contemplated some Minecraft character or not trick-or-treating at all (and instead selling candy... we told him this was NOT a good idea with everyone else giving it away).  Finally we tried the SWAT costume he got for Christmas last year, and somehow, it worked!
With 3 kids ready for the big day... the next thing to do was wait and hope that the weather would hold off.  After several beautiful days, the weather for Halloween was predicted to be in the mid 60s with a steady rainfall increasing to 80% chance by 6pm with possible 50mph wind gusts... yikes!
With pumpkins carved, food in our bellies, and dressed to trick-or-treat, we opened our door to check the weather.  With Daddy stuck in traffic a little longer, mom loaded the kids in the van, and with the door open, the kids jumped out, and ran from house to van for about a block.  Once Daddy was home, we all ventured the light rain and wind and had a ton of fun running from house to house.  Despite the rain, it was rather exhilarating!  We laughed from house to house.  The kids all got tons of compliments and we heard "look, real costumes" from several homes!  It was real cute watching them run to the homes and seeing them have fun.   We spent almost the whole hour and a half out and returned home wet, a little bit cold, but with lots of loot!  With Bapa around to hand out the candy at home and ready with a warm fire for us.... we huddled in the living room to check out the stash!  A fun night indeed!

some of our wet freinds

pre-Halloween fun

Some of our October days have been filled with lots of pumpkin, costume, and party fun!  Here is a glimpse of our pre-trick-or-treating days.

Pumkin Centers with Will:

Gabi's dance class costume party/practice:

Gabi has her 1st school Fall Party!  Mommy was able to be a helper at the party!:

 Finally, our evening of Pumpkin Carving.  This year rather than doing anything fancy, we put a marker in each hand and let the kids draw their own carving.  It was real fun watching them draw their own creations.  We unfortunately couldn't find the kid friendly carvers, so we assisted the kids in carving out what they drew.  Will drew a Minecraft Creeper and the girls drew faces.  We LOVE them all!

 

Great Wolf Lodge for Isa's 6th!

This weekend we took a little getaway to The Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky to celebrate Isa!  In lieu of a big birthday party, Isa asked to go to a water park.  We were blessed to have a few of the special families in our lives also decide to book rooms with is and share in her special weekend.  We had a special loft suite for our family, Bapa, Gramma and one of Isa's bff's Ava.  The Millers and Shammot's also booked rooms for the night with us!  Kateri, Paul, Chloe and Lincoln joined us for the day on Saturday!  How can we feel more blessed?
We had a fantastic time with all the water activities.  Isa and Ava loved the lazy river along with Bapa and Gramma.  The littlest cousins were sure brave venturing on all the slides!  Will had tons of special time with his Bapa, Daddy and the boys.  These are definitely memories that will last a lifetime!

 

some video highlights of our fun!