Despicable Me Party

 Back in September we had a Despicable Me party for a Young Womens activity and it ended up being a blast! 

 We all had to dress as minions. Baby bump was just 17 weeks along at that point but still made a nice minion face :)

 We had minion cupcakes

And minion cake

 And ate our minion yummies while we watched Despicable Me. 

It was a great night and as always, so much fun hanging out with these awesome young women!

Happy Birthday to me...I turned 33!

This year on my birthday some of my girlfriends took me out to lunch at Foxfire, one of my favorite restaurants in Geneva.

It was so fun getting away during the afternoon for some grown up girl time.

 I ate the most amazing burger ever because when it's your birthday, you can eat whatever you want.

When Taber came home from work he had a cake and party hats to celebrate.

 The best present ever: being with these guys.

 33 candles makes for a pretty fiery cake, I may switch to the big number candles next year…

Later that week Taber took me out for lunch and a movie and some ice cream at Graham's. We saw Thor 2 and had a great time walking around downtown just the two of us. It was a great birthday :)

Only Real Men Wear Pink: Updated 12/9/13

I guess with 2 older sisters who love pink, it was only a matter of time before Cam decided that he too must love all things pink.  

 It started with wanting to wear the girls pajamas. He refused to wear anything else to bed. 

 Then he realized they had pink shirts he could wear during the day and he started insisting on wearing those. 

 At the height of his pink madness, he actually tackled Brinley, ripped her pink shirt off, and then came over to me and demanded I put it on him (while simultaneously shedding his  NOT-pink, and therefore NOT acceptable, brown shirt)

 Since they really don't sell a lot of pink boy clothes, and I thought it might be best to avoid wearing girl clothes in public, we decided to contain his pink clothes obsession to night time only. He couldn't wait till the end of the day to put on his "pink sleep clothes" They made him so happy :)

And of course he needed a pink pillow, and if you look in the left hand corner, a pink bunny, to complete his perfect pink bed-time paradise. 

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UPDATE:

The pink fever died down for a little while, but recently it's come back in full force!

 Brinley is always the victim since it's her clothes he wants, and he'll throw some pretty impressive fits until half the time she can't take it anymore and just trades with him.

 Her coat is his favorite

But he makes her trade shirts sometimes too.

I think it's great he likes pink, but I've been struggling because I haven't found any pink boy clothes in the stores and his sisters are getting tired of him stealing their stuff.

Thankfully my awesome sister Naomi noticed his obsession, and the lack of boy clothes to feed this obsession,  and decided to make him some manly pink clothes.

Now he's one happy, manly, pink lovin' little guy, with his OWN pink duds that he doesn't have to rip off his sisters back. 

Thanks auntie Omi! You are the BEST!!

The simple joy of a leaf pile

At the beginning of November my children discovered the simple joy of a leaf pile

Doesn't get much better than that. 

All things Halloween! 2013

To kick off the Halloween season I hosted a Halloween playdate for a few of Teya and Brinley's little friends.

We started off by making Oreo bat cookies

 Lots of chocolatey fingers and faces!

Then we made paper plate ghost decorations.

After all that snacking and crafting the kiddos went downstairs to watch the Cat in the Hat Halloween movie.

And the mommies stayed upstairs for some much needed grown up time :)

Later in the month we went to Kuipers pumpkin farm to pick out a perfect pumpkin for carving.

These little pumpkins had a blast.

They jumped on the giant jumping pillow

and dug around in the corn pit

They slid down the giant slide, played on trains and tire horses, and sipped hot cocoa to stay warm.

Their favorite part though was the petting zoo. 

They loved all the cute little animals!

We didn't end up picking a pumpkin from there but we did go home with some freshly made hot apple cider donuts which were amazing!

Later we were gifted a few pumpkins so it was good we didn't buy any at the farm. 

For our family night before Halloween we got to work carving the pumpkins. Mommy traced out the patterns and Daddy did the carving. The kids did a great job pulling out the gunk and separating out the seeds.

 Taber and the girls with their finished masterpieces! They turned out great!

 We tried to get a picture with Cam in there too but his face pretty much sums up how he felt about that. 

He did however enjoy blowing out the pumpkin candle and yelling "Happy Bert-day!"

The weekend before Halloween we had a Trunk or Treat at church

Brinley dressed as a pumpkin princess, Cam was Jake, from Jake and the Neverland pirates, and Teya was a spooky Spider (my first attempt at a homemade costume for her)

On actual Halloween they switched things up a little. Brinley ditched her wig and Cam opted for the sock monkey costume Grandma Karen had sent him.

I also did some face paint on the girls to give their costumes a bit more pop.

 They looked darling :)

It was wet and rainy but that didn't stop us from trick or treating.

 Cam really had it down this year and was the cutest little monkey in the neighborhood .

 It was fun bumping into friends

 And trick or treating at our favorite neighbor's houses.

Brinley even got to trick or treat at her kindergarten teacher's house which was pretty exciting.

The kids pulled in a respectable loot, and after sorting and counting, they picked 25 pieces for themselves and surrendered the rest to be "donated" to someone who needed it more (aka, Mommy's emergency sugar stash) 

And that's it for Halloween! 

(well I still have to post about our costume party, but that's almost it anyway :)