Haloween costumes and such

Halloween is one of those holidays that is so much more vividly portrayed in pictures. So, without further ado:

Jacob, in lieu of being a banana, was a cheetah. Yes, a fast moving animal, indeed

As for the girls, an assortment of dress up clothes produced a connundrum that was solved only by attending several different Halloween events.

This year, Elena was a princess, a lamb, and a Pegasus

Julia was a mermaid, a princess and a unicorn.

Weather ultimately dictated that despite not having any snow, both girls wore the warmest costumes out Halloweening. I loved every minute.

Banana

A few months before Halloween, when they first started putting out the costumes, I was told about this costume and even though I know Jacob was growing like a weed, I couldn’t resist. As a result of not having any feet, I had about 10 shots before he was fed up with the whole deal. In my defence, when I bought it, he was neither crawling properly nor pulling up on furniture, how was I to know that by Halloween he’d be trying to walk by himself? Honestly.




The idea of it cracks me up—some people say that I shouldn't call my kids bananas but, hey, yellow on the outside, white on the inside? I’m a realist and I can handle the racial implications. Besides, have you ever seen a cuter banana?

Halloween pumpkin carving, circa 2007 and exciting developments

We had our annual pumpkin carving fest at our place. We were pretty darn proud of our carving afterward. For the first time, both girls helped to carve their own pumpkins.


All the pumpkins can be seen closer up in my facebook Halloween album so I will spare the bandwidth uploading them twice but I did want to note that on the day we carved pumpkins, Jacob must have been feeling unappreciated so he decided that it was a good day to:


WALK with his walker!! Crazy kid.

He was showing off at the end of all the attention, taking one hand off the walker and smiling. He was extremely proud of himself.

Well...

It was nice to have the kids play here but ever since I was able to get Elena into preschool (!!!), I decided that was more of a priority. I have this issue with guilt (you'd think I was raised Catholic or something) and even though I was only doing this lady a favour and only temporarily. I feel bad for making her find new care faster because in this town, childcare, good or bad, is hard to come by. But there is no way around it. I cant bring Elena to school and still be able to have the kids afterschool since Elena will attend preschool 4 days per week (Mon to Thurs) from 1-3pm, which is actually quite perfect because Julia goes to kindergarten Mon-Thurs from 11:45 to 2:35pm and every other Friday from 8:05-11:30am (Yes, as you might imagine, the Friday mornings are a killer on the kids' schedules)

Here is Elena so excited to go to school just like Julia, in her first day of school outfit from Grandma:

But it's Elena and she poured chocolate milk on herself soon after the picture was taken (argh) so this is what she actually wore for her first day:

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving in the company of friends and it was lovely. We put out the fine china and crystal goblets, we had melting off the bones turkey and all the trimmings. The girls got all dressed up, pseudo cousin Ethan chilled in his bouncy chair, Jacob crawled around his buddy we played a nerdy card game after dinner and all was as it should be.

Oh, and I got a fancy pants new 8 megapixel camera from Dwayne for my anniversary!

Anniversary

Dwayne and I have been married for 5 years (FIVE!) How did that happen when I wasnt looking?!

We have moved 4.5 times, had two more babies and have both (mostly) found a niche for our respective careers. There have been ups and downs and ups again. We have gone from renters to homeowners, from Edmontonians to Fort McMurrayites. We have so much to be thankful for this year. All of the kids are happy and in good health, our house is somewhat settled, I have accepted a paid commission for 2 scrapbooks for Christmas this year and I have another one in the wings that will look like it will be completed in short order. If I were to look 5 years forward, I would see a lot more changes and more challenges but good ones.

Busy

Whew, time sure has a habit of flying by when there are so many kids in the house. And I mean SO many kids in the house. There was a lady at Julia's school who was desperate for afterschool care that I decided to baby sit her children on a temporary basis until she was able to find permanent afterschool care for them. Which would be fine. But there are 4 of them, so along with my brood, I have 7 (yeah SEVEN!) kids running around in my house every weekday. Some people think that I am crazy for thinking about having one more baby--four kids does seem like a lot, but imagine how much crazier I would be in the four I look after were mine? They are 8, 7, 6 and 6. Yes, at one point the poor woman would have had a two year old, a one year old and newborn twins. So I am content to have mine spaced as they are. The crazy is all relative, I think.

So, you'd think that with 7 kids, its a madhouse all the time? It's actually not soo bad. The kids entertain themselves relatively well. They play with the kids and they arent TOO insane. Well one is kind of but one out of 7 I can handle. They play rough, probably rougher than I'd like but hey, what do you expect?

For now, having them here staves off Elena's desire to go to school. We'll see how long it lasts.