Happy Than...er, I mean, Halloween!

I know, I know...it's a little late. But, here are my two angels!! Ashley wore a dress my mom sent her paired with her own pearl necklace. Bethany wore her blessing dress with my pearl necklace. The wings were wings that my mom and I picked up from St. Paul's cathedral in London a number of years ago. They were just too cute to pass up, and now we used them finally. ;)

Ashley was so excited about divvying up the candy. She went and placed a nice selection near everyone's place setting, being sure to let us know we couldn't eat it until after we ate our dinner....except for the one Bethany already was devouring.

October - Part Three

Ok, so October was only supposed to be two parts, but there are just way too many pictures for one post. Hence... Ashley (and I) started going to a little "Preschool" group rotation and they wore their Halloween costumes one day. I didn't want to send Ashley in her REAL Halloween costume (you'll see why...it has a hoop skirt), so we opted for Cinderella just for the Preschool Party. She LOVED it! Thanks to Grandma Stewart for the Cinderella dress. The pictures really don't do her justice. She was dazzling!

Rain, Rain go away, Ashley and Bethany want to play....

My big spiderweb brownie...I tried to get Ashley to win our own goodie at the cakewalk, but she didn't buy into it.

Carving the pumpkin...yes, Ashley's wearing her church dress

October - Part Two

It is defiinitely fall here...and I love all the fun colors! We've never seen our backyard in the fall before and it is beeeeeeeeautiful. Here's one of my favorite backyard shots along with some pictures of the fun we have in the front yard.

With all of these beautiful fall leaves, we just had to do something to bring the color inside. So, we collected a bunch of leaves (sadly we had to put many of them back outside...we had tons!) and then took some tips from our long lost sixth cousin thrice removed (Martha Stewart) to make our fall leaf mobile. We collected acorns from the front yard and tied them to the ends.
Later in the month we decided to do our first painting project since we moved it. Knowing what a non-daring decorator and person I am, I decided to start with a smaller room -- the dining nook. It hardly has three sides, so I figured I couldn't go too wrong. Above is the before picture and then...

Ta-dah! And yes, I invited Ashley to do that and she painted her name all by herself. I added the others and we had a great time surprising Jared when he came home for lunch, showing him that we painted our names on the wall! Ahh!!!

We also added this wall quote that is on a unique little wall of its own.

This was Jared's favorite part.

October - Part One

Life has been so busy, and so fun! Here are a few tidbits from early October.

First, Bethany was able to sport some new hairdos thanks to her growing locks.

That's right folks, her first ponytail!!!

I'm surprised how well Bethany keeps up with Ashley. One thing that helps is the set of kid chairs that we have. Bethany will drag one of those all over the house to explore, help, reorganize, play, and climb. Here were two of those instances:

(Helping with the laundry and organizing the junk drawer)

Our social butterfly Ashley was THRILLED to go to a princess-themed birthday party. Also shown is the activity she came up with on her own -- tracing only the letters that spell her name.

We had lots of fun as a family making Halloween cookies to drop off as secret "Boo" gifts to some neighbors and church members.

I made a batch of apricot syrup (about 14 jars) and have been enjoying that almost daily. YUM!

You think THIS is exciting, wait until you see October, Part Two!

No really, the rest of October really was more exciting....