December

I'm sure i'll have lots of Christmas pictures, so here's the first half of our month.

For the sake of all of our family's ears, we gave one of the kid's presents to them early....a karaoke machine.  They've been asking for one ever since they sang at a friend's house and we got a great deal!

We went to our town Christmas tree lighting.  There was a visit from santa arriving in a fire truck, hot apple cider, and cookies.  The kids loved it.

Caleb's made his famous wings :)

And we unexpectedly got our first snow of the year!  The 2 inches we got, of course, shut the county down for a few days.  Casen and Arya were soo excited.  They played outside for hours.

November

Our November was pretty low key.

I think I say every month that I married the best....but I mean it :)

Arya and I went in for haircuts.  It'd been a year, so we were both long due.  She had the typical little girl over grown mullet happening.  However, the haircut makes her look wayy too grown up!

I had the best stuffing making help again this year for Thanksgiving.

The morning of Thanksgiving Caleb came home from his last night of 12 hour midnight shifts and I woke up to this on our counter.  He is the sweetest and is always putting everyone else first.  He didn't want me to have to mess with breakfast the morning before i'd be doing tons of cooking.  Even on no sleep driving around finding a place open on a holiday.   Goodness I love him!

We had a stay at home Thanksgiving this year.  Gearing up for our big trip home to spend Christmas with my family.  It hasn't worked out for us to go home for Christmas since it was just me and Casen while Caleb was deployed in Afghanistan.  The kids are soo excited.

 Turkey coma

I forgot to take dessert pictures but we enjoyed pecan pie and cookie brownies the kids helped make.

Forever thankful.

October 2

I meant to save October as a draft and I guess accidently posted it, so here's the rest or our month.

My kids are obsessed with the show Good Mythical Morning.  Casen watches is every morning before school.  They eat a lot of strange things in the show and one day while we were wandering a little family store we spotted one of the foods from the show.  Jo, of course, couldn't wait to give it a try.

Sour cream and onion crickets

And the last day of the month was spent celebrating Halloween.  It's one of our favorites.  We did some crafts, made some cookies, and headed to the mall for their safe trick or treating.  The kids had so much fun.

October

We started off October with a great movie night.  We've come to realize that in theory going to the movie theater sounds like a great idea, but then you get there and it's expensive, the people surrounding you aren't very polite, and kids need way too many potty breaks.

So a few times now we've set up a theater at our house as a complete surprise to the kids.  This time we went a little more all out .  (If you're ever looking to do a movie night...go to the Dollar Store!)

I started out by hiding clues around the backyard for them to collect all the tickets they'd need to purchase the actual movie tickets and all the goodies at the concession.  While they were busy outside searching for this, Caleb and I were able to set up the rest.

Painting pumpkins is always a must for October

We took the kids to a trunk or treat a few days before Halloween. I forgot to take pictures at the actual event, but I did get a few of their costumes.  We just recycled from years past while they still fit.

We went to Bass Pro for some shopping and the picture booth was empty since it was a weekday, so the kids got an unexpected picture with the Peanuts gang

September

September has a major lack of pictures.  We're back into the school life, which limits our family adventures.  We're enjoying fall weather and all that entails, so October should be full of lots of fun!

We've obviously been enjoying football.  I have plans to finally get our family pictures taken since we somehow missed last year all together.  We're battling school germs at the moment, so hopefully that happens next month too.

I'm super blessed to have this guy as my husband.  The rest of the family has been under the weather and he's been a trooper, stopping on his way home from work for soup, tissues, medicine, and treats for the kids.  And 10 years later he still surprises me with flowers in the morning for no reason at all (and he gets bonus points because he stops on his way home from working a 12 hour midnight shift instead of coming straight home to sleep.)

 Macintosh apples have hit the Virginia grocery stores!!!  It's mine and the kids absolute favorite and all of us enjoy the fact that this is the start of apple crisp season.

One of the nearby parks that we frequent has a road that leads to a giant sports park including a baseball and football stadium.  It used to be a railroad area, though and they kept a lot of the railroad cars in place for the public to be able to enjoy. The kids love going there!