thanksgiving

i loooooove this time of year.  this time when we can pause from our busy lives and remind ourselves how much we have to be thankful for.   i've always felt that our family was beyond blessed.  we have our ups and downs, but life is so, so good.

this year around thanksgiving i made a resolve to recognize my blessings more readily and express more gratitude to my Heavenly Father for them.   

my cute little kiddos (minus one). they really make my heart full.

getting to eat dinner with family, especially that cute guy on the left trying to sneak in a bite during the picture.

some randoms

some random pictures from life.  

for a while brynn had two obsessions.  one was watching frozen and the other was pulling her diaper off when she didn't have any pants on.  frozen has now lost her interest, but not pulling her diaper down.  she thinks it's funnier than ever.  i used to be able to stop her by putting pants on her, but now that doesn't always work because she's figured out how to inch her pants down as well.

brynn looked like such a big girl sitting in the chair all by herself.

reese and brynn are the best of friends!  they will spend most of the day together.

reese taking care of her baby.

tanner doing what he loves best-making silly faces for the camera!

halloween night

i really, really love trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.  i may not always love how close the houses are where we live, but this is a night when it has it's advantages.

i really love themed family costumes, but my kids are getting older and have their own opinions about their costumes.  i tried to convince them to do what i wanted, but they wouldn't budge.  in the end though, they were happy, and that made me happy too.

katelyn was a goldfish ( and i could tell she felt so beautiful in that costume), reese was minnie mouse, tanner was optimus prime and brynn was a cow (one of our old costumes).

tanner with his best friend tate.

we walked around with this gang of kids from the neighborhood.  

crazy hair day

thanks to pinterest i can pull off crazy hair day with ease! i found this idea online, asked katelyn if she liked, and we were good to go. once i had actually done her hair though, i was really worried she wasn't going to like it. i was worried she would think it was too boyish and not "cute" enough. but she took one look and smiled, thank goodness!

halloween dinner

this year for our halloween dinner i scaled back a bunch on how much food we made, but did more with decorating the table.  i kept the table very simple, but the kids loved how it looked.  thanks to the dollar section at target. we got everything we needed.  

our veggie pumpkin has become a staple at our halloween dinner.

we played with our vampire teeth while we waited for daddy to get home.

black island farms

i had heard so many good things about black island farms, i just couldn't pass this place up.  i'm such a sucker for activities like this during the holidays! we had already been to a pumpkin patch with tanner's preschool, but i wanted to go with the whole family.

the giant slides were such a hit!  all of the kids, minus reese, went down multiple times.  reese was too scared to go down.

we finally found the smallest slide and convinced reese to go.  she loved it!

the corn box was sooooo fun, but also gross knowing that lots of kids had put who knows what all over each of those pieces.

our last stop was taking a wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch.  everyone was able to get there own giant pumpkin since it was included in the price.  we literally got our pumpkins just in time.  a storm blew in right as we were returning with our pumpkins.   

preschool field trip

our first preschool field trip of the year was the pumpkin patch!  the kids always love the pumpkin patch.  this particular one is free to get in and has a decent amount of activities for the kids.  plus, they get to come home with their very own pumpkin.

the kids really wanted to pose with these scarecrows, or creepy giant dolls?

tanner was such a gentleman.  he saw two of his girl friends alone in the maze, so he went to go help them get out.

tanner chose about 10 different pumpkins before finally picking the one he wanted to bring home.

these two were investigating the inside of this pumpkin, then ended with a hug.