Wreck it Ralph Halloween

I wish Halloween came around more often.  I have all these ideas for costumes, but only so many people to dress up, and I only get to do it once a year.  The geek in me loves it.  We settled on Wreck it Ralph.  It wasn't the most popular movie, but it was easy to do, and had a lot of characters to choose from.  Jayden was on board until he thought about it more, and changed his mind.  But to humor his mom, he dressed as Fix it Felix for a few pictures, which was nice because we pulled everything from the closet.

 

Before the ward trunk or treat. Jayden is Agent P from Phineas and Ferb.  I forgot to get a picture of his tail. Not many people got who we were at first.  Some people thought Josh was a hillbilly.  That shows how awesome my sewing skills are, ha!

Tanner was Zangief, a street fighter from a video game.  One person actually knew who he was, that made my day.  I had a blast putting this costume together, he looked awesome with chest hair.  He was eating snacks in the car, and we found some stuck in it when we got home.  So funny.  If you don't know who Zangief is, look it up.  How could I not make my baby into him? 

Sidney loved getting into character.  In the movie, Taffyta, her character, is the mean girl.  She's mean to my character, Vanellope.  I didn't ask her to be her, but the first time she put the dress on, she started acting all snotty to me.  Oops, next year will have to be a nice girl.  We fixed the issue quickly.

Remember how the last couple of years I took the kids to a place with gorgeous, tall trees dripping in fall color for some nice Halloween pictures?  Yeah, Houston literally has zero fall color.  I wanted to at least find some green trees, but life has been really busy, so we never got to it.  So here's our trick-or-treating night.  At the last minute Sidney wanted to go out as a butterfly, so we pinked her up with dress up clothes, and we were off.  This fits her much better than Taffyta, I think. 



Camping

Jayden really, really, really wanted to go camping for his birthday.  We pulled him out of school a little early on Friday to make it that much more exciting for him.  This is sad to admit, but this was our first family camping trip.  Not being from the south, every year we thought about going, it was either too hot in the summer for us north blooded folk, or I was sick and pregnant, or we had a baby, or the excuses just kept coming.  Josh and I both love camping, but whatever, we just never went.  So we couldn't pass up 75 degrees on a November weekend.  It ended up being a lot of fun, and we were freezing at night, but we got to enjoy our first hot chocolate of the season. So much fun, we can't wait to go again.  It was really hard to come back to reality.  Jayden's only requirement for where we went was that we had to go fishing.  We had a place picked out with a waterfall and a 500 year old tree, but the day before we were supposed to go, it down poured and left the park under 5 feet of water.  So we found another place.  The kids looooved fishing.  We didn't catch anything, but they loved it anyway, and can't wait to go again. All pictures of fishing are on Josh's phone. They loved campfires, making s'mores, bedtime stories in the tent, and exploring the forest. Tanner was a champ.  He loves the outdoors.

Jayden called this the Mario stump, and was spinning around down into it. 

8 Years Old!

Jayden turned 8 last week.  Eight is a big deal.  He'll be baptized soon.  It's still weird to think about.  I'm pretty sure I say every year how crazy it is the kids are one year older, but it always is.  A little older, a little further away from being the babies they were; I can't help but get nostalgic. I have every intention of taking some nice photos of him for this special age, we'll just see when it will actually happen.  So for now, here are birthday pictures.

 He wanted to go to Rainforest Café for dinner. This picture is him looking up during one of the animal stampedes.

 He wanted an Angry Birds cake again this year.  It was the perfect low key, family birthday.

10 Months

At 10 months, Tanner can stand for several seconds.

No new teeth to report.

His baby chub is melting off, it's a sad day.

Being the 3rd child, he has learned to go with the flow pretty well.  I wake him up at 7:00 a.m. to take Jayden to school.  He doesn't complain, but sits patiently in the car, waiting for breakfast. I can wake him up from a nap if needed to go somewhere, which I prefer not to, but if I have to, he is normally ok with it.  That is definitely a first for my kids.

He is learning to dislike getting into the car seat.  He usually fights it, but once he's in, he's fine.