Trick or Treat

Olivia decided to be Cinderella so Emma went with the mermaid outfit again and Marcus was all about getting dressed up...a complete success!

Say cheese!

Who wants candy?

Just a few more pictures.

Can we go now Mom?

Our first stop was the neighbor's house.

This is pretty cool...they gave each of them a HUGE candy bar. Not a bad start :-)

Then we went to a nearby neighborhood and met up with all of our daycare friends. One of our friends lives in this neighborhood and it was a great one for trick or treating.

Marcus did awesome. He said "trick or treat" at every door and even said "Thank You!"

He was quite independent too; he wanted to walk on his own the entire time. I did carry him quite a bit because his little legs just couldn't keep up with the bigger kids. But he loved every minute of this.

They all loved this.

We did get a ton of candy. It's funny, people seem to give the little kids handfuls of candy. Works out good for me too :-)

Here is our group. The big kids were a lot of help. They had a rule at each house that the little ones go first then they go. It really helped toward the end when we started to run into more big kids that weren't part of the group. It made all the big kids aware of the little ones which was nice.

Here are the little princesses. We had 3 Cinderellas and one Little Mermaid. These 4 stuck together the entire night. It was so cute to watch them walk from house to house. I think this might be a tradition now...we were discussing next year's costumes and came up with little cheerleaders for the girls and football players for the boys...too cute! Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

Preview

This is how our morning started...

The kids had their Halloween party at daycare today; but Marcus really wasn't that into it. I did have to remove this lion costume prior to getting him to leave the house this morning...he was having none of this!

The girls on the other hand were so excited and have been planning their costumes all month. Olivia was going to be Cinderella up until this morning...she quickly switched it up and went as Snow White instead. The main reason was the hair piece. Emma wanted to be Cinderella one day, Sleeping Beauty the next, a baby bear for a long time but when I couldn't find a cute (and reasonably priced) bear costume, we settled on a mermaid. I don't know if you can see it but there is a little mermaid tail in back.

DeeDee got Marcus to actually wear the lion costume at daycare so I decided to take some pictures tonight; who knows how he's going to react to all of this again tomorrow so I had to grasp the moment. Here he is attacking his bear; just as a lion would :-)

The kids even carved pumpkins at daycare today. Here's Emma's.

Olivia's is so cute! So happy!

Marcus is finally into the spirit of things.

Stay tuned for tomorrow night...we are going Trick or Treating for the first time ever! We are ALL excited for that! I'm mostly excited to see what all three decide to be. Rumor is Emma will be Cinderella; Olivia is sticking with Snow White and we will attempt the lion costume once again with Marcus. Wish me luck :-)

Road Trip

Marc had to go pick up his tools at the house he was remodeling in a small town outside of our big town. The kids and I decided to tag along to see the house that took him away from us for so many weekends. The house happened to be right across the street from the little town's fairgrounds so we though it would be the perfect place for a picture.

Marc still had some finishing touches to do on the house so the kids and I walked into town and had lunch at the little tavern (the only place in the whole town that was open). We walked by this building and Emma said "This would be a good picture Mom"...so here you go.

Of course you have to get the Welcome to St John sign too. We pretty much saw the whole town on our little walk....it's a very small town. But it was a lot of fun. The kids have known Daddy was working in St John so I think it was nice for them to get to see what it was all about. The people were so friendly too...I don't think there was one person that didn't say hi or wave to us the entire time we were there. It was refreshing to be in a small town full of friendly people. The kids even took their naps at the house Marc was remodeling so he could paint the garage...when they woke up and it was time to go they all were disappointed; I think they thought we were going to stay the night since that is what Daddy always does...but we made it home just in time for dinner and they were ok with it.

The Littlest Pumpkin

Nana and Papa are here this weekend and wanted to visit the pumpkin patch with the kids. We've been gearing up for this all week...that is all the kids could talk about.

Olivia was all business. She just walked right up to a pumpkin, picked it up and was ready to go.

Marcus was all about finding the biggest pumpkin. I swear if he could have picked some of these pumpkins up, they would have come home with us. It was hilarious watching him try...he'd grunt every step of the way.


And then there was Emma...she was in search of the littlest pumpkin. She searched and she searched. We even pointed out the smallest pumpkins we could see. She literally picked all the small pumpkins up to weigh them and dropped each and every one saying "Nope, that's not it."

I think we were out there for 45 minutes or so and poor Emma could not find the littlest pumpkin. She dreamed about this and was so determined. It broke my heart to see her so defeated.

In the meantime, Olivia and Marcus were chasing bugs underneath all the other pumpkins.

We finally decided to take Emma back to the bins of pumpkins where they actually had one whole bin full of mini-pumpkins. I said "here you go...pick out your littlest pumpkin" and she did. As we drove away Emma said "Mom, that was so much fun picking the littlest pumpkin!" I was so relieved to hear that; I thought for sure it was a disappointing trip for her. But the smile says it all...she is proud of her littlest pumpkin.

Lunch Time Entertainment

I seriously didn't coach them at all on this one. This was all done on their own. What performers!

Daycare Fun

The kids got to visit the pumpkin patch during daycare today. I was bummed I had to work and miss all the fun but glad they have such a wonderful daycare to do this for them. They told me all about it; there was a train, pumpkin patch, castle and corn maze. They were so excited; they've been talking about going all week! They even picked out pumpkins and decorated them. The great thing about this picture is I just had to say "Do you want to take a picture with your cute pumpkins?" and they all shouted "Yes" and grabbed their pumpkins. This is seriously the only picture I took and all three cooperated! That NEVER happens!

Counting

Marcus is really trying to catch up to his sisters. He was counting all night so I finally decided to try to capture it on the video camera. He wasn't quite as interested when the camera came out (typical for him) but I did get him to do it. He also sings his ABC's with the girls, but we're always in the car and I'm always driving so I can't get that one on film. It's so much fun to watch him learn all of this. It really helps having two big sisters around to lead him every step of the way.

Picking Pears

We picked our pears today.

"Is this the way to get up here?"

"Or maybe this way?"

"Hey Dad, how did you get up there?"

"Oh, I get it...this way."

Look at all those pears we picked!

We picked some plums too.

All of this was done with the wind still blowing...but we made the best of it. Hope you had as great of a Sunday as we did!

A Little Wind

Ok, so A LOT OF WIND! We are the windy city right now. It started last night, we woke up to this damage and it's still blowing! Feels like we are at Nana & Papa's or Grami & Poppi's (ironically both sets of grandparents live in cities known for their wind).

Exploring

The kids decided they wanted to check out our field today.

We made it as far as we could. We don't have cows this year and I forgot there was actually a fence that would stop us from going too far.

Marcus seemed right at home in the field. He was the one who initiated going out there. The girls and I just followed.

Little Emma lagged behind doing what she does best...

Picking flowers!

Eventually she caught up to the pack and passed everyone along the way.

Of course our faithful companion, Tucker, was with us the whole way showing us where all the golf balls were hidden. What a good dog!