Halloween 2009

We kicked off the Halloween celebration last Thursday by attending the Syracuse pumpkin walk with our good friends, the Merrills. The kids loved playing and looking at all the fun pumpkins. Thanks for inviting us, it was a good time, as always!

Sunday we carved our pumpkins. Dan and I love carving pumpkins and always look for a challenging pattern. This year Peyton wanted a Darth Vader and Bailey wanted a princess pumpkin. None of the one's we carved this year were too tough, they were fun to carve. Next year I think we'll wait until as close to Halloween as we can so they aren't all caved in and wrinkled by Halloween night!

On Friday the kids had their daycare Halloween parade, I went to watch and hand out candy to all the kids. They had a lot of fun showing their costumes to their friends.

This year we spent Halloween at Dan's brother Shawn's house. It's always fun for the kids to trick-or-treat with their cousins. It was especially nice this year to have some of the cousins help Bailey as she is so small yet independent and didn't want Dan or myself to help her up or down the MANY stairs on the MANY porches! The kids got way too much candy and Bailey and her sweet tooth are in heaven right now. Bailey's costume turned out really cute, everyone commented about how awesome it was!

And a random silly picture of Beetle Bug.

Christmas...

We had a great Christmas this year, as always. We were able to spend a lot of time with family which we always love. We started out the week by having my family over to hang out and play a little rock band. It was great to see everyone, the girls (my younger sisters) are all getting so big (we haven't seen them in about 7 months)! They brought the kids some fun Christmas gifts.

Zara- 9

Jade- 14 and Danielle- 16

Jazmin -12

Jade is getting so tall- she is 14 years old and is already 5'9"

On Christmas Eve we headed over to Dan's Mom's house for the annual December birthday celebration and more family time. We didn't get home 'till 9:30pm because our keys got lost (found in the couch after much searching)! We still had to make cookies for Santa, pretzel jello, and had planned to watch a Christmas movie (bagged that plan). Anyway, Dan and I got to bed around 1:30am and I was scheduled to work the next morning at 7am. Luckily I got put on call for the first half of my 12 hour shift and was able to be there when the kids got up. The kids were very spoiled this year, it was fun to see them both so excited about everything. Peyton was really excited about the gifts he gave to others, which we were glad to see. Here are a few pictures of the fun.

Sally got hooked up with a bunch of doggie stuff, including a new bed.

Thanksgiving...

We had a great Thanksgiving this year. We slept late, ate omelets, cooked a few things for the feast, then headed over to my cousin Oléa's house (it was also her birthday) for some yummy dinner with her family and her sister Celestial's family (thanks for the invite). We all had a great time, especially Bailey who adored Celestial's new baby Himaya "Maya". She just wanted to hold, kiss and look at Maya the whole time. She also loved to play with the cat and reading books with Celestial's husband Jake. Peyton had fun playing with Michael and AJ (Olea's kids). Dan and I enjoyed visiting and watching a little football. After Dinner and hanging out we headed over to Dan's sister Betsy's for some yummy pie and time spent with his family. It was a very relaxing day for all.