Pumpkinville 2015

The Myriad Gardens' Pumpkinville is one of my very favorite fall traditions.  We visited twice this year, both times with the Korenaks.  The first time was the last day of fall break and the second was during the Monster Bash party.  

Each year the set up is a bit different, but it always features 100s of pumpkins, yard games, crafts, and awesome decorations throughout.  Here they are making witches' soup, I believe. 

I snuck this picture of B and really love it. 

Then E requested his picture as well :)

All 5 kids holding still for one moment!

Ro is too cute and very good at having his photo taken. 

Zane is playing us a tune!

Three cute kids!

M wore her new, special head band earned for being on extra good behavior and being an wonderful helper in all reports from while I was gone to DC. 

 M loves to spin on these every time we come to the Children's Garden 

 On Saturday, we went to Monster Bash.  Again this year Brent was at an OU football game, but we persevered. I had tickets to the ballet immediately thereafter and thankfully the Korenaks took our kids home for us!

 The candy craft was quite delicious!

 Our little witch - Lady M wore this same costume to every single Halloween opportunity this year, which was definitely a first.  It is a really cool costme!

 E was a dragon and loved hanging out with his buddy Ro the tiger.

B made an awesome ninja.  The sword was essential to this cool look. It did break later in the weekend, but thankfully Uncle Zach was able to repair it!

 All three kids - ready for Halloween fun!

 The boys ate the results of their candy crafting right away.

I was a little surprised how much our kids adored bingo.  They played for a very long time and had to be lured away by other attractins (ok, candy).  We really should play bingo more often!

I love the Myriad Gardens and getting to play in the Gardens with our kids surrounded by pumpkins and beautiful creations.  We will certainly be back for Pumpkinville 2016!

E's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Party!

 The wonderful thing about our friends and parties at our house is that they are very fluid. I generally include a start and end time, but everyone understands that you are welcome to come early or stay late and we're just happy to have you share the day with us.  This time, M & her twin Serenity were one of the hits of the party. They loved it, we parents were often confused about who was who, and it was tremendous fun to have twins for a day!

 Grandma & Uncle Able were early arrived too and a bit help.  Zane arrived and exclaimed "there are two Ms"  and of course there were.  Dance party ensued.

 B wired a circuit to play Happy Birthday for his Brother and then spent a lot of time doing more wiring.  It so happens that our parties also skew heavily towards engineers and other science folk who loved this too.

 There was was lots of conversation and E hung pretty close to his parents, both because of his foot issue and general cranky/clinginess.

 We made plenty of fun food, including oreo mickey mouses, watermelon cute out in Mickey shapes (with help from B), and everyone could have regular rice krispies or cut theirs in to Mickey shapes too.

 Lots of boy babies ran or were passed along.

 E was adorable, if a bit sleepy. We made ears for everyone and had necklaces too, just for fun.  Zane brought his own ears and a special hot dog full of candy--- which every party needs.

 We scattered balloons all over and they were the base of many a kid-created game, and definitely terrific fun.

 E had progressive present opening.  He had lots of presents on Thursday and today opened a few close to the beginning and others as more guests arrived.

 His present from one of his Godmothers (my friend Heather in DC) even arrived during the party and was immediately well loved. He also got two different lawn mowers, that all his guests used more than he did, but I think will be awesome.

 For whatever reason the Mickey frosting got really dark (I know it gets darker as it sets, but sometimes I forget and I "might" have had a few too many helpers during the frosting tinting phase).  In any case, it was popular and is all gone.

 E dug in and at his piece up as well as a quite a bit of his orange sherbet.

 There was lots and lots of playing outside. I try to break out the parachute whenver we have guests as it is really best with lots of friends.

 Lots of kids over around and playing their own way.

 E & B continue to be awesome together.

 We did manage to find the little guy's smile somewhere along the way.

 Daddy's and their baby boys remain completely adorable.

I love our crew family and friends that are family.  It was wonderful to have everyone here just playing and laughing together.

 Grandma caught this one unawares enjoying nature.

E & Ro shared some love and some wrestling as always, but parted with a hug, which was so sweet.  It was sad to see everyone go, but lovely to have had a wonderful visit and celebration of our little E.  He is a very lucky boy to be surrounded by so much love, and we are all so lucky to share his story.  We love you little one, today and always 

DD Day 20: Crafts + Insert

When I was flipping through the remainders of my SC Dec. Daily kit (there is still plenty left) I discovered that I forgot to include B's wishlist with his post yesterday.  So, I made this insert.  On the "front" side is this holiday playlist card.  (Let's pretend they were listening to Christmas tunes in the picture, right?)  The Frozen soundtrack is on basically non-stop here. However, we sometimes mix it up with the music to the Nutcracker, the Pandora Kids Christmas Channel, or Glee or Michael Buble Christmas CDs.  We have been having music on a lot more than usual so I was glad to include this.  Below the metal strip I list the Christmas songs we have been singing the most: Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, Hark the Herald Angels, and Santa Clause is Coming to Town. 

Here is B's list, made weeks ago, with a picture of him and his stocking during the Candy Cane  hunt that I just happen to like.  His list has remained fairly steady so I felt fine not updating it. (Also given the weather/time don't want to set ourselves up for lots of asks that won't happen). 

Here is a zoomed out look at the revised 2-page spread. 

Here is today's very simple page.  My apologies for the photo, it is quite dark now and the glare was tricky.  The photo is of a sampling of the kids craft projects so far.  I talk about in the journaling what sorts of crafts each kid made both here, at school, and elsewhere.  I thought the "Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas" strip made sense here as our house is newly covered in even more crafts as today was the last day of school for the year. 

Craft note: The snowflake brads and arrow are from the Freckled Fawn December kit.  The letter stickers are from Dec. SC PL kit.

Day 9: Snow Day Fun

School was closed yesterday (and today) so we've had lots of at-home fun.   I took the day off of work to take care of the kids so I got to play too.  I made three pages to try and capture the busy day.  It begins with the two page spread above.  The left page is about decorating gingerbread houses with Grandma.  The right page is about the other fun we had that morning, including filling bird feeders, playing a very long game of Candy Land, doing craft projects, playing more games, etc...I added a glittery ampersand (made by embossing this diamond embellishment from the Dec. SC kit with red glitter zing) as the story continues on another page. 

The back page is about Brent and my date night to the Myriad Garden's Glow and Wreath Auction.  It was a beautiful event, but hard to photograph as it was at night and the gardens were lit almost exclusively by Christmas lights.  I had a fun time bidding on wreaths, but did get nervous when I was winning four auctions at one point.  We ended up winning one small knit wreath made by the Myriad's yarn bomber and a tickets package for the OKC Barons.  The later definitely made our kids happy when we arrived home to relieve our awesome babysitter (Uncle Zach).  It was a fun, busy day.