10-31, Halloween Costumes

Halloween was a lot of fun.....that night.  I'm having my doubts about it now after the fact.  Emalie has since become scared of everything and only wants to be with a mama.  Maybe rushing around the neighborhood in the dark and asking strangers for candy wasn't the best idea after all.  In the past day and a half she has cried a lot, clung a lot and slept a lot less.  It's a classic case of hindsight being 20/20 and 'it seemed like a good idea at the time.'  It's hard to see her struggle with anything that affects her normal, happy balance.  At the time, she did love her costume (Snow White), she did like hanging out with the older girls who adore her, and she did like going to everyone's doors.  She did, she liked it all.  I think it was actually our own front door that scared her the most-- a creepy, howling decoration.  After that, it became all about the "noise".  As for Nikolas, he had a great time that night.  He trick-or-treated on our street with a friend before going to another (more dense) neighborhood with that friend and his family.  I think his costume was mighty frightening.  Thankfully it was the one thing that Emalie was not afraid of as we'd convinced her that Nik was just a dog (as opposed to the creepy werewolf he actually was).  Anyway, here are the pics as we were headed out the door.  Hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween!

10-27, Fall Leaves

Well, it's officially fall.  Huh.  To be honest with you, I wish it were still summer.  Evening sunsets that took place after the nightly news, early morning walks before it got too hot outside, leisurely reading on the front deck during Emalie's nap (because it was too hot on the back deck).  Yep, I miss summer already.  I have to admit that this is one of the first years that I didn't feel ready for the changing seasons.  I didn't get fed up with the heat.  But now, only a few weeks into autumn, I've already been chilled with the  cold!  Sigh.  We've already had snow, but soon enough the snow will actually stick to the ground.  (I don't even want to think about shoveling snow!!)  Until then, I will cherish every day there is sun and warmth.  This past Sunday was one of those days.  It was a beautiful 70 degree fall day. (Yes, 80 would have been nice, but I guess it IS fall and not summer anymore.....).  

We have several patches of scrub oak trees in our front yard.  Thankfully, due to the larger driveway (which I won't be saying 'yay' to when the snow shovel is in hand), we have about 1/3 less than we did last year.  Given this fact, we couldn't figure out why there seemed to be more leaves on the ground this year.  (How is that possible?!)  Sunday, we tackled the larger group of trees, because the others had yet to fall.  Here is the result of several hours of work....and play.....with the kids.

Monkey see.......

....... monkey do!

These leaf grabbers were one of my best impulse buys yet!  We got them this summer while we were shopping at Ace in Montana (always thinking ahead, I am).  They were so much 'fun' to use that we all couldn't wait to take our turn.  I see multiple sets of these things in our near future (the leaves from the Russian Olive and Cottonwood trees in the backyard will be next-- at least Mother nature spreads out the work a little bit and those won't be for a few more weeks!).

Little Missy had a cold, but that didn't stop her from enjoying herself.

Big brother is always SO FUNNY!

What does one do with all those leaves?

Trash bag headstones, of course.

Happy soon-to-be Halloween, everyone!