Happy Thanksgiving! ha ha

I just remembered that I had started this post a month ago and never finished it. So I am already a step closer to catching up than I thought!
Our kids had a whole week off school for Thanksgiving so we headed down to Fort Myers at the beginning of the week to see Jim's family. Some of Jim's cousins came in town to see Emily and Spencer in Naples, so they drove up to Fort Myers one night and we got to see them too. It was great!

Here are pics from that night...
Zoie, trying to look like mommy, ha ha

We had a great time and the kids all had fun playing with their cousins too.

Baby, its cold (sort of) outside!

The weather here in Florida is finally cooling off so we decided to have our first fire of the season, and roast some marshmallows. The kids have been asking to roast marshmallows for a while, but its just not as fun to do when its ninety degrees outside.

Here are Nolan, Zoie, and Jim

Aidan and Zoie

See food. Nice!

Learning to ski

Some friends of ours have parents who live on the ocean and they decided to invite us over for a party they were having. Score! It's nice to have friends with connections. he he
They took their boat out on the water and people were wake boarding so of course Nolan wanted to try it. Here are Nolan and Zoie on the boat.Nolan was super excited to get in the water and try it out. Here he is with Jim trying to get the wake board on his foot.

He did really well for his first time. This is the best shot I got of him.

Zoie was getting bored on the boat and she had to pee, so I was trying to entertain her with the camera to take her mind off it it. As you can see, it was clearly not working.
Once Nolan was done, we convinced her to jump in the ocean to, ahem, relieve herself. We told her its okay because all the fish pee in the ocean too.
Jim tried out the wake boarding also, but unfortunately I didn't get any good pics of it cause Zoie wanted out of there and I had to take her off the boat.

Aidan wasn't really interested in the boat either. He spent most of his time playing in the pool and was happy when we all got off the boat and joined him (even though there were tons of other kids there for him to play with, sometimes he can be a little anti-social).
It was a fun day. I was disappointed I couldn't do any skiing or wake boarding, but didn't think my doctor would approve, sigh... maybe next time.

Happy Halloween!

I figured I should post the rest of our Halloween pics so that I can change the background on the blog. Here are the pictures from Halloween day.
Poor Nolan's costume looked a little bit different each time he wore it. I never could get his oxygen tank to look right or stay on. I meant to go back to JoAnns to get something to make a better belt out of, but the last time I was there I almost tossed my cookies all over the cashier (I didn't, luckily), so I wasn't too jazzed about heading back to that store anytime soon. I don't know why but I don't do well in JoAnn's when I'm pregnant. It is the only store I have ever thrown up in.

Here is Nolan trick or treating. Love the flip flops, so Florida.

Nolan with Grant and Elizabeth.

Our friends the Perkin's always trick or treat with us. It's so fun to have a big group to go with!

Here is Aidan trick or treating on the scooter.

Heading up to the door for some more loot. Some random kid jumped in my shot. Wolverine is not with us.

About halfway around the neighborhood, Zoie and Aidan were whining that they were thirsty. Being the awesome Mom that I am, I told them to suck it up because if we went back to the house for water we weren't coming back. Jim was a little more sympathetic and was about to take them home when Elizabeth starting asking at people's doors for a bottle of water. After about the third try, someone was nice and actually gave her one.

Maybe next year we shouldn't trick or treat three nights in a row....

Here is Zoie trying to open the water.

Jim, Jason, and Joshua after trick or treating.

Bill (the birthday boy), Elaine and Megan and Aidan

The Angels had some family stuff to do but they were able to join us later. Here is Mikelin and her kids Dalton, Denae and Mason

The process of digging through the candy after.

That's all for this year. It was a great weekend, although tiring. Happy Birthday Bill!!

Trunk or Treats!

This Halloween weekend was a little crazy. We had our ward Halloween party/ trunk or treat on Friday night (which Jim and I spent all day decorating for on Friday), then on Saturday we drove down to Fort Myers for Jim's dad's birthday and attended our old ward's trunk or treat that night. Then of course Sunday was Halloween and birthday festivities. Needless to say, I think we were all a little worn out by Monday.

Here is Aidan at the Clearwater party. He decided he wanted to be Frankenstein this year, which was fine by me because his costume was super cheap, only $2! I made the hair and shoe covers out of felt I already had, and then he wore an old shirt and church pants with one of my black blazers. The only things I bought for him were the face paint and some green stretchy gloves. And get this, he won a prize for his costume! Go figure.

Here is Nolan in his costume. He wanted to be an astronaut and once I looked online and saw the crazy prices for astronaut costumes, I decided to make his. It was not as great as I would have liked but for the money saved, it was worth it.

And Zoie wanted to be a butterfly. I think hers turned out super cute, but it was the most expensive of the three. I bought the wings and then made the skirt to match it.

Here we all are at Bill and Elaine's getting ready to go to the next party, at our old ward.

Jim and I were soccer players and the baby bump was the soccer ball. he he

We were originally going to do basketball, but then I realized we could save money by reusing Jim's costume from last year and just getting one for me that matched.

The back of our shirts
My friend Emily and her kids.

Me with Rebecca, Erika, and Lacey

Ruth and I

Jim and his buddies, Jason and Devin
Our friends, Jen, Troy, Jennifer and Burton

Zoie and Reagan

Jennifer and I

We had so much fun at both parties, and we really enjoyed being able to see everyone from our old ward again.

Zoie's pre-school trick-or-treat

At the preschool Zoie attends they had a dress up day with trick or treating on Thursday. It was super cute. All the kids made bags and then went trick or treating to several cardboard houses. Zoie wore her costume from last year because I was afraid of her new one getting dirty or torn if she wore it to school. She looked adorable (of course)!

Here she is walking to one of the housesHere she is at one of the houses, each house even had a door that the kids could knock on.Another house

Zoie and her friend Ethan, who is also in her Sunbeam class at church

She had a great time and she loves her little school. I am so glad several people recommended it and she goes there!

Duck!!

A while back we had a duck that would come around almost every day. At first we thought it was so cute... the kids would look out the window and see the duck waiting, and they would run to get it some bread.

Here is Jim with the kids, throwing bread to the duck

Zoie and duck Aidan , Nolan and duck

happily feeding the duck...

After a while though it became, well....less than cute. This duck would not go away. And for some reason it thought our porch was its personal toilet. After getting to the point where we had to hose down our front porch almost every day, the question became, how do we get rid of this silly thing?

We stopped feeding it and eventually it got a clue, although not before leaving us some more parting gifts. I decided to spare everyone by not taking pictures of that detail.

Fun Halloween crafts

I decided to get crafty this year and make some of our Halloween decor, and save some major bucks while I was at it. After seeing some super cute Halloween stuff at Pottery Barn Kids (which I definitely could not afford) I decided to try to make my own, and suprisingly they turned out pretty well.

Here is the picture from the pottery barn catalog (I really liked the advent calendar on the wall, and the trick-or-treat bunting, so that is what I copied)

And here are my versions

Advent calendar
a close up

And my bunting

I couldn't hang them together since I have a TV on top of that buffet. Over all I was super pleased with how they turned out, obviously not the same as the originals but for the price, totally worth it. I saved $47 on the advent, and I think just over $20 on the bunting. Oh yeah!