Halloween Spirit

The girls have been wearing Halloween inspired nailpolish on their toes this week.  They have thought it was so cool to have a pattern on their toes.  We tried it on their fingers but they put their fingers in their mouths too often and the polish didn't last long on most fingers.

I will be back soon with costume and trick-or-treat pictures.

Pumpkin Carving

The kids and I carved a couple pumpkins this weekend.  I think Boothe has found her calling in life...a gooey pumpkin gut extractor.  Couldn't get enough of the slimy stuff between her fingers and wanted to do it all herself.  Magnolia on the other hand wouldn't touch it.  Once was enough then she washed her hands and didn't want to get her hands dirty anymore.  She enjoyed the design part but not the messy part.

After they were done, we carried them upstaris and put glow sticks inside instead of candles and the girls have used them as their nightlight for the last couple nights.  Guess which one Magnolia designed and which one Boothe did.

Halloween Cookies

Twice a year we decorate cookies; at Halloween and at Christmas.  Not sure why those 2 holidays make us feel like eating cookies with frosting and sprinkles, but that's just the life that we live.  I made some whole wheat sugar cookies that were very good but not too sweet.  Adding the sugary frosting and sprinkles makes them perfect.  Orange frosting, sprinkles and candy corn = happy kids and delicious cookies.

 The girls placed their candy corns upright and called them birthday candles.

 Mom's creation:

 Dad's self portrait...but I think he is being a little bit generous with his hair line...

 I can remember when it was more likely to see Dan holding a beer bottle like this, now this is as crazy as we get!

In the past we have baked a couple dozen cookies, decorated them all at once and then not ended up eating all of them.  This year I baked the cookies and we each decorated and ate 1 per day for a couple days.  Everything is fresher this way and spreads the fun out all weekend!

A Very Special 4 Year Old

Magnolia turned 4 last Saturday, the 22nd.  We had a little birthday party for her at the South Bend Chocolate Cafe downtown with family and some of her friends from the neighborhood and from church.  It was a nice day and there was plenty to keep the kids busy between playing on the indoor playplace to having lunch to playing some more to having cake to playing a little bit more.

Here is the birthday girl pre-party.

 Magnolia and some friends playing inside the playplace.

 Caged animals or 4 year olds...or both...

 Boothie having fun with her Gramma Kath at the party.

 Blowing out 4 candles.  I can't believe this is the 4th time we have celebrated the birth of our beloved child.

 Time for presents!

 Lots of Strawberry Shortcake toys, their favorite right now.  That stuff has been played with non-stop this past week.

 Magnolia graciously let Boothe help her unwrap a lot of her gifts and didn't care one bit when Boothe began hoarding them in this bag which she titled "my bag".

 Raife slept almost the whole time, but when he did wake up...

 he was immediately smothered.  Ryan with the girls and mini-me (Raife).

 I did a mildly polka dot theme for the party.  Her dress, cake, balloons, wrapping paper and it just so happened that the room we rented had polka dots on the walls.

 We do a family picture at each birthday party.  Some of them turn out better than others.  This one reminds me of a bad passport photo...the white-ish background and bad lighting.

How blessed we have been these past 4 years.  We are constantly amazed at how smart you are and learn so much from your kind spirit.  We couldn't love you more, Magnolia!

Kiddie Craft

I have been letting the girls get more crafty lately and play with glue and stickers; ink and paint; and beads and strings.  After baby brother is born in December we will probably be spending 5 days a week hunkered down indoors at home until April.  Thats a lot of time to get bored and watch plenty of movies.  So to combat that a little bit I am trying to find artsy activities that the girls like.  Some favorites so far are stringing large beads onto pipe cleaners to make bracelets and necklaces for their dolls, drawing faces on paper and gluing on googlie eyes, cutting anything and pasting anything and stamping anything.  I saw this idea on Pinterest and we tried it out.  I got an ink pad with many different colors at a craft store.  I couldn't find anything that said washable but this one did say "could only be used on fabrics if blah blah blah..." so I figured it must wash out of fabrics pretty easily and it did.  White pants, blue ink and good as new.  We gathered a couple of unsharpened pencils and used the erasers as stamps.  Easy, colorful and interesting.  The sky's the limit with the number of patterns you could make with circles.  This would be especially great of older kids who could make some impressionist style prints.

Fall is here

Fall has arrived and is definitely one of my favorite times of the year.  We had a good week of about 80 degree temps recently and while I tried not to complain about it too much, the pregant part of me is welcoming 60 degree days (as long as the sun is still shining).  The hotter temps did allow for some nice outdoor fall activities however.

Look how amazing these colors are.  I wish I could say this was my backyard, but then I probably wouldn't be writing this post since I'd be outside enjoying a mug of hot cider surrounded by the beauty.

 We have broken out the spooky glow-in-the-dark skeleton pajamas to get ready for Halloween.  Boothe is dressing up as a baby chick and Magnolia is obsessed with Strawberry Shortcake.

 We've taken some walks around the neighborhood to see all the changing leaf colors and brought back home a collection to make into leaf art.  Seriously, give a kid a glue stick and 2 things to glue together and they are happy as clams.  I think their art turned out pretty good.

 Magnolia has been wanting to take lots of pictures lately.  This one of Boothe turned out pretty cute!

 The girls were having a ball playing ring around the rosie in the leaves.  Serious belly laughs.  Can you tell?

 And last night we made carmel apples.  It was getting close to their bedtime so we couldn't wait for the carmel and chocolate to cool and harden a bit before eating so we were left with a gooey yummy mess which was thoroughly enjoyed.  They were seriously so good.