Kolby's Preschool Thanksgiving Program

Kolby was such a cute little Indian for his school program. The kids made a delicious "feast" for all the parents of corn muffins, stew, fruit salad and pumpkin bars. Kolby was proud of his hard work in the kitchen. He also did such a great job singing all of the Thanksgiving songs. It's so fun to see him progress and actually want to participate cuz last year's program I think he may have sung one word, but this year, he was belting them out!

Trying to get a good photo...

We discovered that trying to get a great photo of 3 kids is nearly impossible. This was about as good as we could get in our one attempt. We'll try again soon.

Carson's First Smile

What a wonderful day it was the day that Carson started smiling. I am happy to report that he is right on schedule and gave his first intentional smile on his 6 week birthday. It was a happy day for me to know that my little baby who seems very sad most of the time (he has reflux and breathing problems so he is miserable a lot) is actually a sweet smiley baby. I have so much fun playing with him now that he is so responsive to me. The smiling and cooing and gooing are so cute.

Trip Up the Coast

At the beginning of November, we hopped in the car and took a trip up the California Coast. We had such a great adventure. There was no planning or real schedule involved. We just went with 3 kids and a minivan full of junk. After 5 days of lots of driving, sleeping in different places every night and seeing lots of beautiful things and reconnecting with relatives, we joyfully returned to home sweet home. During our 5 day journey we went to Hearst castle, we saw all the elephant seals that migrated to the coast (the kids loved seeing them so up close), we drove through beautiful Big Sur, went on coastal nature hikes in Point Lobos Park, went to Carmel and Monterey, went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, drove along beautiful 17 mile drive in Pebble Beach, went on a train ride through the redwood forests (the kids loved riding on a real steam engine train), went to Santa Cruz and then passed through San Francisco to give my aunt and uncle in Upper Lake a surprise visit. We had a great visit with them and then headed back down toward Santa Rosa to visit with another aunt and uncle. Kolby loved their house with their huge toy room and real John Deere tractor that he got to drive around the property. It was so much fun for all of us. While in the quaint town of Windsor we stopped in "the" sweet shoppe of all sweet shoppes. It reminded me of something out of Willy Wonka...they had every kind of sweet that you could ever imagine. Not only were the kids in heaven, but I was too. Luckily we exercised some control and only shared a gelato. It was a great trip!

Halloween #3, Finally!

So, we had a great time at Disneyland and headed home to go to our neighbor's Halloween party on Friday night and then to a friend Halloween party on Saturday night. The kids had way too much fun and way too much sugar and if I never see another sugar cookie again I think I might be just fine. We spent Tuesday night carving pumpkins and Wednesday night at another friend's Halloween tradition...they invite people over for an open house style get together. They have scones, taco soup, hot dogs and scrumptious desserts. After we had dinner and chatted with friends, we were off to trick-or-treat. The kids were so excited. Carson and I stayed home and Geoff took Kolby and Eliza around. I thought they would be gone for a while, but Eliza only lasted about 10 minutes and then was ready to come home and dig into her candy. She had fun helping me answer the door and pass out candy, but still doesn't quite get why Kolby ended up with so much more candy than her that night. Kolby was a trooper and came home with a bucket full of candy. Luckily, he isn't much of a chocolate fan so he threw a lot of that away voluntarily. They both woke up the next morning asking if they got to go trick or treating again and if it was halloween. sorry kids...not for another year! It was quite the non-stop Halloween fun for us this year.

Halloween #2 - Disneyland

We had a fun day on tuesday, the 23rd. It started with a field trip with Kolby's class to the pumpkin patch and then off to Disneyland. The kids were so excited to get to our hotel and then go to Disneyland. We weren't quite sure if we were going to make it because of all of the So Cal fires, but we did. The air was a little smoky and windy but we all survived. We had a great 3 days playing at Disneyland and watching our kids be so brave. Kolby went on Tower of Terror, Space Mountain, Matterhorn, Big Thunder Mountain and of course all of the other smaller rides. I was in shock that he wanted to go on all the rides. I will say that though I don't think he loved them and was scared to death through most of the big rides, he just gave us high 5s and told us how brave he was when he got off the ride. Hopefully he will want to go on them again. Eliza keeps telling everyone she went on the "mountain" ride, or the Matterhorn, which she did. But she was definitely excited when the ride was over. The biggest hit ride was Autopia. But more than rides, Kolby loved the parade. We had to watch it every night or else there were major meltdowns. The photo of Eliza sitting on Kolby's lap is during the parade. They were so cute together. They could have done that over and over and over...We had so much fun getting to see our friends, the Wilsons, and also getting to hang out with family as Heidi and Abbey and Ashley all met up with us. Good times, but of course I was glad to get home and get back into a little routine.

Halloween Party #1

Wow...it seems like Halloween was very drawn out this year and it was so much fun. Our kids definitely got use out of their costumes and loved putting them on as much as they could. These are some photos for our church Halloween activity...the cute kids and our trunk decorated for trunk or treat. I was proud of Geoff for grabbing anything he could find around the house and making our trunk look cute for Halloween trunk or treat.