Pumpkin Patch

I love Halloween time. It means the holidays are here, the weather is getting cold (meaning new cute winter clothes), dressing up in costumes, going to parties, trick or treating, and...going to the pumpkin patch (with no intention of buying a pumpkin there..haha:)

We went with Tim, Shannon, Luke and MattLittle buddies

Jake and Luke had so much fun going in the bounce houses, and going down the slide...which was SO tall. Should I admit they weren't scared at all and I felt a little nervous at the top...hmm, probably shouldn't admit that one:)

And they went on the fire truck

We also had Luke and Matt at our house on Saturday. Jake and Luke had so much fun playing together. I love seeing Jake coming out of the side by side play, and really starting to interact with a friend when they play. It is just so cute to watch. At one point I found them like this in Jake's room watching the train go around the track, and it just made me laugh so I had to take a picture. They certainly don't look like they're having the best time of their lives, but yet they stayed like this for a while...so they must have been enjoying themselves.

Matt was so cute because you could tell he wanted to be with the big kids. Everywhere they went he was a few steps behind.

And then the roles reversed when Matt was having his bottle...Jake and Luke begged me for milk in a bottle like Matt. I figured, why not??

I chopped off my hair!!!!!!

I can't believe it!! My hair has always been long...this was a pretty spontaneous decision. My friend Brynn and I decided to do each other's hair today. I was planning on bleaching it and just getting a trim. Yesterday I had the thought of cutting it short...Marc thought I should, but I decided I didn't want to do it. And then when she was getting ready to cut my hair, I just decided...why not?! Brynn did an awesome job...I knew she would:) I came home and totally surprised Marc. I'm sure I'll get really weirded out tomorrow when I go to shampoo my hair...and it's not there!!

I had my 4th Annual Halloween Craft Party last Saturday. It was a lot of fun...here's everyone working at the craft table.

I made some treats...in the back is one of my favorites, the bite-size chocolate dipped apples. Some were then dipped in oreo, and some in nuts...mmmm! And there's caramel apple cupcakes too.

Here we are with our witch's boots!

Jake has been coming up to me lately and showing me the letters he can draw...this has totally surprised me. Here he is showing his paper where he drew an "A" and a (backwards) "J" and of course, he had to make a silly face for the camera (believe me, I tried to take the picture like 5 times...and he made this same face for all of them)
Last weekend we went to Disneyland and renewed our passes...yay!

month of September

So for the last couple months we've just done little things here and there. But we did make one big step forward with a big purchase this last month. We bought...kitchen cabinets! I can't wait to do the kitchen even though it will be the most massive project. We bought a display of cabinets that were in a showroom. We had to go last Saturday to take them down ourselves and take them home.
Marc's brother Mike helped us take them down. We were all so careful all day while we took them down, wrapped them in plastic wrap, loaded them onto a trailer and drove them home. I didn't want there to be any scratches. When we got home this guy who we hired to do some stucco work on our house helped us unload the trailer. I couldn't believe it as I watched him trip on the curb while holding two base cabinets...they flew out of his arms and he rolled over them on the driveway. I screamed (as I usually do with even small things) and Marc hadn't seen it and thought I screamed because I was worried about the guy. But I'm sorry to say that scream was all for the cabinets. I knew the guy was fine...the cabinets broke his fall! But after I got my priorities back in check I made sure he was ok. He was fine, but he felt really bad. Of course it was a total accident. The cabinets have a couple problems from that but Marc thinks he can fix it. Crazy! Anyway, here you can see some of the cabinets except their doors aren't on. I'll take a picture of them and include it in my next post.

A few months ago I started a weekly Craft Club at my house. I wanted an excuse to scrapbook while hanging out with friends...so I started this club where the kids all play while us girls work on whatever crafts/projects they want to work on. A cool thing we started now is once a month someone is in charge of a craft where we all make the same thing. It's cool because everyone has different talents, so we will get a wide variety of things to make and learn. Lindy did our first one...she is so great at sewing. She had us make these cute crayon roll-ups. I loved that I could wipe the thick layer of dust off of my sewing machine and actually use it!! Here we are working on them:

Here's my crayon roll-up for Jake...I used Cars material on the outside:

And here's when it is rolled open. Even more than coloring, Jake loves to just take the crayons out and put them back in again.

Shannon just did our second group craft where she had us make these car mats for the kids to play with their cars on. We sewed a border around the big piece of canvas:

And then we started planning out how we would draw out our towns:

Here's my car mat for Jake. It was so fun to show it to him. He was so excited. Everything I put on the mat is places he is always going. And yes, Lowes definitely made it onto the mat:) Today he was playing his cars on it and he said, "Now let's go see Teresa." And he parked his car at Lowes. (Teresa is the girl who works there that we always go buy things from. ) I also put Angels Stadium on there, and Disneyland's Cinderellas Castle with fireworks...he LOVES those two things. The other things I put on there are: Stater Brothers, church, Target, the beach, a fire station, McDonalds, the park, our house, the pond with ducks that is by our house, Rockview Dairy, and the gas station. This was such a great craft for Shannon to have us do for our kids.

Here's something else I created this month. For enrichment they asked me to make some bookmarks that went with the them of the last conference. I've never "scrapbooked" bookmarks before. It was fun to come up with it.

I took this picture because it represents marketing's first effects on my little boy. He saw a commercial for Apple Jacks and kept begging me for Apple Jacks all day. This was his first time asking for something from a commercial. We didn't have any so I kept telling him the next time we go to the store I'll get him some. We went to Lowe's (of course) that day, and as we were leaving he said, "Bye Teresa! See you later!" Then he turned to me and said, "Now, Apple Jacks!" The way he said it made me laugh so much that I pushed the cart straight over to Wal Mart which was next door and bought him a box of Apple Jacks.

Now that summer is over, we are back to going to Disneyland with our annual pass. When we went a couple weeks ago it was so nice to have there be no lines for the rides. And we kept coming up on characters with barely anyone around them. Oh how I love the annual pass to avoid crowded days! Here's Jake with Sully:

With Woody (who looks a little frightening if you ask me):

With Mater and Lightning Mcqueen:

I actually photoshopped a picture of this earlier this year and it's framed up in his bedroom:

He loves the Buzz Lightyear ride

Marc's parents were down visiting last weekend...and stayed with us from Saturday to Tuesday. On Monday we went to the Aquarium in Long Beach. This is Jake and his cousin Sean.

This was the hottest day of probably the decade in Southern CA. It was about 115 degrees. I didn't think we'd be going outside of the Aquarium, but for some crazy reason, at the hottest part of the day we were outside for like an hour. Hence, the sweaty and red faces.

Here's our group by the shark tank.

Jake kept saying, "It's Bruce!" because this shark looks just like Bruce in Finding Nemo.

And then he got excited because he found Nemo and Dori too.

Marc works in Long Beach so he ended up meeting up with us in the afternoon. Other than constantly sprinting through the Aquarium after my runaway child, we had a very fun day:)