trunk or treat

trunk or treat was the friday before halloween. it was fun and chaotic, and there were tons and tons of delicious chili's to choose from! so yummy!

so my halloween conundrum every year is whether to dress up kinda halfway, or not at all. i like to dress up and every year i have grand ideas, but i never really flesh them out, and then usually the day of, i'm left scrambling and end up with a halfway costume.

like this:

any ideas on what i am? 

look at my little companion, that's a big hint.

any thing?

don't feel bad, pretty sure 98.9% of people didn't know what i was.

URSULA.jpg

can you see the resemblance now?

i have the body for it too. ;)

when addie was deciding what to be, she went back and forth between lots of different ideas. then she finally settled on the little mermaid. and on her own, she decided (and declared) that matt should be prince eric, frankie should be flounder, and i should be ursula, the sea witch.
yeah, what does that say about us???

i actually think it's pretty funny, but i had reservations about frankie being flounder. she's a little girl too and she like to get dressed up and look pretty too. so then we decided that since ariel has a million sisters, that frankie would just be a mermaid, not necessarily the little mermaid, but ariel's little sister. well, finding a mermaid costume for an 18-month-old, that wasn't ariel, proved impossible. so twin little mermaids they were. and they were both fine with it. :)

the little mermaid and the bumble bee found eachother pretty quickly and it was over for them.
they ran around together the rest of the night.

triple threat.

i spent about an hour at the trunk or treat, washed off my face make-up, and headed to lhs for the football game. divide and conquer, that's matt and i. matt took the girls around trunk-or-treating and they had a good time. but it was soooooo cold! it drizzled the whole night and i froze at the game! but i was there, white hair and all, so that's what matters, right?

ps - i sat through an entire quarter before lexi noticed me. one of her friends saw me and pointed me out to her, at which time she motioned to my hair and mouthed "what?" then down the line of cheerleaders went the news of my hair. i just smiled and waved, smiled and waved. at least i washed off my make-up! mindy and laura offered me $40 to leave it on, but i declined because i'm a good mom like that.

a halloween gymnastics!

in the spirit of wearing our costumes as much as possible, our gymnastics coach asked the kids to wear their costumes on the friday before halloween.

here we are getting ready.

this was the only picture of the two of them.

it's a good one, right?

such a natural smile...

and the stoic one...

love, love, love the wigs!

and at gymnastics...

addie tries to weasel her way into frankie's class (franks is first) at least a handful of times each friday.

love this shot!

poor franks is looking nervous!

and now for some balance beam action.

the best part of the bigger kids jumping off the beam is that they shout "stick it!" as they land, whether they actually "stick it" or not, which addie usually does not.

a couple of torn little mermaid costumes later, and a halloween gymnastics class was a success.

a preschool halloween

the thursday before halloween, we had a halloween themed preschool and i got to be the helper.

they all looked so cute!

getting a picture of all of them, not so cute.

this one was the best of the best.

poor abby politely declined to be in the group pictures, but i tried to get her in anyway. :)

the biggest downside to preschool co-op is definitely how hard it is for our own kids when mama is the teacher. hopefully they will get used to it! 

learning about the letter "i." or, if you ask addie "ummm, d!" 

(or whatever other letter she cares to guess!)

 please tell me she's going to start caring about letters/numbers sometime soon! 

it's driving me crazy!!! 

sarah had cute mudcups (pudding) with dirt (oreos) and worms (gummis) for their snack.
they loved them!

and halloween preschool was a success!

big talker

frankie's vocabulary has exploded the past few weeks! she jibber jabbers constantly and now i can always pick out a few words in the mumbo jumbo. and she loves talking on the phone! i usually let her call daddy and put it on speaker phone so i can hear whats going on. the other day she was pacing around, talking with her hands, just going on and on to her daddy. and she did not want to hang up! there were some tears when i finally took the phone.

yes, she does add an 's' at the end of most words 

(i didn't notice her "addie" until i watched! whoops!)

 and yes, i still maintain that i do fix addie's hair when we leave the house.

and, despite what it looks like on this video, i do give addie attention too. poor girl was begging for it!

new york! - oct. 23-24

right after my fun time out for women trip, we packed up and headed to new york! it was pretty crazy (and more than a little tiring)! i got back from tofw late saturday night and we left for ny at 6 sunday morning.

allie moved up to ny and finally had found an apartment (and job:), so we wanted to get her boxes up to her pretty quickly and that was the only weekend we had free for a long while. since we had to take her all of her worldly belongings, we couldn't take any kids with us (bummer!;), so our good friends, sarah and tony stayed the night at our house with them. you can read about that here. 

we got up to ny in 6 hours and pretty easily found a place to park so we could unload the boxes onto the sidewalk, then i stayed with the boxes, matt went to find a spot to park our beast of a truck, and allie and her roomie started moving the boxes from the sidewalk into the lobby of her apartment building. then from the lobby we got to cart things up the 4 flights of stairs to her apartment. fun stuff!

after that workout, we were totally ready to get going and see the city! first stop: central park!

the boathouse.

hubba hubba. ;)

double hubba hubba. ;)

(or is it triple?)

we walked all around central park. we found the strawberry fields and saw lots of entertainers. we got a teeny tiny bag of roasted almonds. we lounged on the cute benches. and we visited many, many restrooms. so fun!

then we mosied over to the temple that is awesome and i soooo want to go into! i was bummed that we were there on a sunday and monday, the 2 days they're closed!

times square!

enjoying a rather disappointing gyro in times square.

replica of the new years ball. and one funny hubby.

we stopped by fao shwartz which is super awesome, but also super expensive. 

do people really shop there?

i call this one:

"this looks a lot easier than what i've been doing!"

and then one of the two "nurses" that were holding babies by the nursery offered to let me hold one.

very cute!

then we did one of my ny bucket list items. we went to serendipity for frozen hot chocolate!!!

matt's never seen the movie, so he got a quick summary of it during our 45 minute wait, where we also met a couple from the same tiny community that we had lived in in california. (lake wildwood). such a small world!

delish!

but not what i expected... i don't know exactly what i expected, i think something more like fried ice cream, like hot and cold at the same time? this wasn't hot at all, it was kind of like a smoothie. 

still yummy though. :)

word to the wise, there is an $8 minimum charge per person, so i recommend not going after dinner. we each left more than half of our goodies. that never happens, but matt and i had tummy aches, (we blame the gyros!) and just couldn't finish! we were super bummed!

the next morning we got up at the crack of dawn and scratched off another ny bucket list item:

today show filming!

this was right after we got swindled into paying $10 each for some ny hats. just beware of people trying to give away baseball caps. that's all i'm gonna say about that.

creepy big face, but that's matt lauer!

so cool!

we stayed and watched for a long time, it was very interesting and i totally recommend going!

 

do you see matt above the gold statue?

closer up.

the nyc library.

and an action shot, just for good measure. :)

empire state building!

we walked all over the city and back again. then we ate a delicious lunch and headed home.

it was like a 2-day date with my husband and we had such a good time!

new york was very cool, but so was driving for 12 hours with my love, being able to give each other our undivided attention. we stopped in delaware and got a cinnabon from a truck stop and it was just all so fun. very good trip!

and next time we go to ny, we are ready to actually go do things, instead of just go see things.

2 thumbs up for 2 fun days!

sunday night thoughts

*i want to blog about ny, halloween, trunk or treat, being 29 weeks pregnant, and lexi's last football game, but the camera isn't willing. i am soooooo tired of computer/hard drive/camera issues. probably because most are caused by my general lack of knowledge. instead i'll just do a quick update.

*it's the end of another busy week. baby showers, games, tryouts, preschool, playgroups, church responsibilities, all of the usual time takers.

*being away from home is fun, but the catch-up is not. i've been behind since we got back from ny. it seems like i can't cross one thing off my to-do list without adding two more. bleh. even my beloved regimented chores are behind and i haaaaaaate it. tomorrow i'm trying to get back on board. hope it works!

*i passed my glucose test!

 yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

i gained 6 lbs. last month!

booooooooooo!

(15 lbs gained so far. gotta reign it in!)

*alexis and i are having some growing pains. just typical stuff, but it's been an emotional week for both of us. that being said, i can appreciate my trials for the growth they bring, and i think we're both growing, and hopefully our relationship is getting stronger. i love that girl. i hope she listens and knows just how much.

*christian has been a model child lately. (isn't it funny how they take turns???) except that he "found" an atv in the woods this weekend. he and his friends brought it home (to our house, of course!), put gas in it, and voila! it works. seriously, parenting is so weird sometimes! a "found" atv?! how does that happen? i had him take me out to where he found it (i was scaling downed trees and balancing across precarious tree bridges. all at 6 1/2 months preggo!) and it does look like it was just thrown out as junk. still trying to figure this one out. any ideas???

*addie has been having night terrors. (i think) she's woken up a couple times in the last week, just crying and inconsolable. one night she was up 5 or 6 times like that. hard! on the upside, she is so funny lately! this morning at breakfast, she said "these eggs are frickin' hot!" way to keep me on my toes, addie! no more "frickin" for me. :( she comes up with such cute and clever things every day. it's so fun!

*frankie has become quite a little parrot too. she will repeat anything you ask her too, except she adds an 's' to the end of almost every word. so 'sis,' 'bus,' and 'yes' sound perfect. most other words, not so much. totally cute though. i am really working on her listening and obeying skills, and she's getting pretty good at time outs (within reason, you know). she sits still, with a sullen look on her face, but when her minute is up and i come around, she is all hugs and sorrys, and it's just the sweetest thing. i am savoring her being my baby for these last few months that she will be. she's a sweet girl.

*matt worked all weekend and had to get a flu shot today, so he was down for the count. he is so helpful and we totally miss him when he's gone. navy weekends make for loooong weeks!

*this sounds like a lot of complaining, but that's not what i'm feeling right now. i'm really feeling grateful and happy, even among all the weird parenting challenges (and there are a lot, aren't there?!)

*life is good.

the end.