Week Fifty-two

As promised, we went back to the pumpkin patch with Annika

Where we made the girls take pictures like this...

Annika chose to use her tokens to ride a pony,

and Naomi used hers to feed goats.

Sarah preferred to hang out with things that weren't moving.

She has a hard enough time keeping her balance without adding that factor.

Then I got the great idea of trying to get a pic of the girls at the pumpkin patch.

Only slightly better with my intervention.

Tuesday Oma came to town and we carved our pumpkin.

Clifton did an awesome job...

...giving the girls the cat-o-lantern that they wanted.

Halloween day--a pretty exciting day in the school life of elementary aged kids. Preschoolers got to wear their costumes to school

During preschool they had a parade where they got to march through a lot of the big kid classes. Annika needs to pull up her tail a bit...

And then came back to do some crafts and games in their class.

Then in the afternoon my mom and I went to Naomi's classroom where I was in charge of the Halloween party.

They played games, had snacks and did some crafts.

Then they got to do their all school parade. These are a couple of her classroom buddies: Audrey and Clare.

I took this to give you some idea of the chaos that occurs when you put an entire school's worth of kids in the hallway... in costumes... and add a couple hundred parents...

Ready to go trick-or treating in our neighborhood.

Oma with her girls.

We really enjoy the chance we have to catch up with neighbors on Halloween. I guess when our kids get older and have more of a how-many-houses-can-I-get-to-in-an-hour mentality we might not have the luxury of taking the time to chat like that.

One neighbor we didn't even know saw Sarah and dug around in her kitchen to come up with a bag of puffs since she doesn't get candy.

Look how excited she was with them--so excited that she wouldn't give up the bag long enough to let us open the bag for her and just gnawed her way through the plastic to get to them.

Just hanging out here looking for any food scraps that might've fallen...

Saturday was Sarah's first birthday party!

It was an Elephant and Piggie party planned for 5pm which is usually when she starts to lose it. Good thinking, Mama.

But these pig ears make it all better...

....and having Oma here is pretty cool too.

Timothy and Jeremy came over for the day.

This is what happens when you try to take away a teething ring so she can open a present. Let's just say she's figured out how to show you what she wants.

These were the cakes for the party.

A close up of Gerald and Piggie.

And Dave and Val are the creative genius behind these cakes. I baked the cakes and had an idea of what I wanted to do but no ideas for execution and these guys did it all perfectly. I might hire them for future parties.

What? Haven't heard of Elephant and Piggie? It's a book series by Mo Willems and you must check it out if you have kids. And maybe even if you don't.

 

We had a fun party with 13 kids and 16 adults...

It was so fun. We are incredibly blessed to have awesome friends walk this journey with us.

 

Sarah eating her dinner.

And Oma reading to the kids. Isn't it funny how kids just keep getting closer and closer when you read until they smother you?

  

Ready for her cupcake...

...she knew right what to do with it...

...and gobbled it up quickly...

Uncle Dave is always fun to play with...

The kids seem to figure this out pretty quickly.