Thanksgiving part 1

Thanks giving this year was so perfect. I get everyone up and out of the house nice and early. Funny thing is even though we all left at the same time, Eric was 1/2 an hour later to arrive. He claims I was speeding. I claim he drives to slow  :) I couldn’t have planned a better day if I tried. Logan and Berti started out watching the parade. He barely got off the couch until after the parade ended. He was super focused.

Kiana and Elle set the pretty table.

There was a bit of downtime before dinner so I took some fun photos of the family while we’re waiting to eat. You’ll have to check out my other blog to see some of those  :)

The meal was absolutely amazing. Kim knew just how to make me happy. She served all my favorites  :)

What I did so far this November

I threw out the pumpkins  :(    It’s always bittersweet. I don’t like saying goodbye to Halloween but I do love the start of baking season.

The kiddos had a dinner date with Grandpa and Uncle Ross.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it last month or not but Elle is living with us now and my kiddos couldn’t be happier about it. They just love having her here.

I voted and I gave blood. And you guys all should too…I mean the blood thing, it’s too late to vote… but you should vote next time around.

Elle went to her first Husker game. Berti also wanted to show off some Husker pride but she didn’t just stop at the N, she went full on Zombie.

I decided to display all my Christmas cards in a fun new way… Seriously loving how this looks in my house right now.

I started my holiday baking  :)

I also did some holiday baking with my wonderful aunt Kim over Thanksgiving (I’ll post WAY more on Thanksgiving soon)

All of our cookies turned out awesome except these green sugar cookies. I made 3 batches of this batter and the green one is the only one I messed up… I was calling them “Grinch” cookies and saying we should give them the neighbors we don’t like so much. Then Logan saw them and named them “hulk” cookies. He loves them  :)

Halloween

Warning: This post starts out with cute cookies but it also contains photos from my yard and of our costumes that some may find a bit scary.

Halloween day was really quite lovely. The kids got up nicely for me and happily went off to school. I made cookies and FINALLY remembered to use my Halloween cookie cutters (I’ve had them for years and never once used them)

They turned out so good and the left over cookie scraps were cut into small chunks and put in my brand new jack o lantern tin.

I carved my pumpkins. I’ve never waited this long to carve them but this month I was just in a funk. I wasn’t in the mood to look up any real patterns so I just drew directly onto the pumpkins with dry erase crayons and cut them out. It was so much easier and I’m going to do it every year from now on. Putting on patterns can be such a pain and they take so long. From start to finish, each one of these pumpkins took less then 45 minutes. Usually they take over an hour and a half. I made a creepy hand reaching out to grab a kid and a Sugar Skull.

This is Kelsey’s first attempt at her sugar skull makeup. I really loved it but she washed it all off and had me do her makeup for her instead.

This is Kel’s make up after we redid it.

These are two of my white pumpkins that we painted. I really love how they turned out. I think I want to do ALL black and white pumpkins next year.

After getting the pumpkins out, I went to pick up Lolo from school and waited for Berti to get off of her bus. They were both very excited to get into their costumes and go Trick or Treating with grandpa (It’s his yearly job and he loves it)

My kiddos had homemade Trick or Treat bags made to match their costumes. Kelsey made the Witch for Berti and I made the Hulk for Lolo.

Seriously, How awesome do I look?  :) I made the hat/spider web veil for my costume.

Here’s me and my man. He was a scarecrow. A really creepy one too. If he stood still in the yard he looked like a prop. Even my kids thought he was too scary this year.

Me and my girls… So Serious  :)
My girl Jamie was a zombie bride. I LOOOOOOOVE her costume. I’m so jealous. This dress was a cheap back up for her real wedding dress just in case she changed her mind about her first choice and since she never used it, we decided to trash it with fake blood. That was fun too… you should see my garage right now. It looks like someone bled to death in there.

Doesn’t Eric look fake in this photo? It’s so creepy.

Elle had to work so Eric took the kiddos up to see her before grandpa came over. She was Marilyn Monroe.

I’m not sure exactly what Erick (Jamie's husband) was supposed to be but he pulled off the “crazy” look for sure.

We passed out candy to all the Trick or Treaters but there really wasn’t a lot of them. There was a football game out of town and most of the town went there. I did hear that they did candy stations and a haunted house for the kids that went to the game and that sounded pretty cool. But I still missed them.

After the kiddos went to bed we watched Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Sounds dumb but it was really really good. We all had a really fun time and I have LOTS and LOTS of candy left over :)