cider mill 2014

cidermill2014_14

Well, what do you do on Halloween during the day with a two year old? You go to a cider mill. It was absolutely gorgeous there. It was about 70 degrees with a little breeze. Not quite cold enough to sport the infinity scarf I had brought, but enough to wear a sweater. It was such a lazy afternoon feel because there weren’t many people there at noon, so there was plenty of room to let the kids play and the lady behind the donut counter was so sweet. She asked Zac, Emily and Ray to say “trick or treat” and they all did, so she gave them 6 mini donuts each! They loved it. It was so cute to see each one saunter away with a little bag of donuts, stuffing one in their mouths and getting cinnamon and sugar everywhere. beautiful.

cidermill2014_2

cidermill2014_1

cidermill2014_3
Can you see Ray holding his bag of donuts and the huge grin on his face?

cidermill2014_4
We saw a woodpecker. It was captivating. That’s what Ray was looking at.

cidermill2014_5

cidermill2014_6

cidermill2014_7
See??! There’s fall in southern California!

cidermill2014_8

cidermill2014_9
Zacky got a stomach ache because he ate all 6 of his donuts in under ten minutes. #smallpeopleproblems.

cidermill2014_10
Then Ray, Emily and I went on a walk.

cidermill2014_11

cidermill2014_12

cidermill2014_13
Good Halloween Day! Now I’m thinking of carving Ray’s and my pumpkins (the boys did theirs last night), eating dinner, getting dressed up and going trick or treating! Happy Halloween!

Trunk or Treat 2014!!

I looooooooooooove Halloween. It’s really my favorite holiday … I think even more than Christmas. Anyway, usually we do an adult Halloween party that is totally ridiculous. I go all out for it. But this year we decided to put all our energies into the trunk or treat ward event. So I used all of my past Halloween party paraphernalia and constructed a theme for this year: Egyptian tomb. We decorated our trunk like a pyramid and tomb and then I dressed up like Cleopatra, Ray was King Tut and Daniel was a mummy.

I love that Daniel does all of this with me. Some husbands wouldn’t participate or support such craziness, but he does and I love him for that. Anyhow, here are the pictures from the evening. Oh and I need to explain one last thing – Noah always likes to pick a totally obscure individual to dress up as for Halloween. This year he went through several random people, starting with Martian Manhunter?? (Google image that one) and he landed on ….. Vitruvius, from the Lego movie. I made his whole outfit from scratch. Had to. Nobody makes a Vitruvius costume. shocker. Liam was Ironman and we even did the facial hair of Tony Stark on him and surprisingly, Liam really kind of resembles Robert Downey Jr. More pictures will be posted for Halloween night.

Not to be outdone, Christina decorated her car beautifully as well. They did a witch’s haunted house. Complete with a working, bubbling cauldron, a crystal ball with floating head inside (hard to see in the pictures) and amazing detail all together. Here it all is:

trunkortreat2014_1

trunkortreat2014_2

trunkortreat2014_3

trunkortreat2014_4

trunkortreat2014_5

trunkortreat2014_6

trunkortreat2014_7

trunkortreat2014_8

trunkortreat2014_9

trunkortreat2014_10

happy valentine’s day

I like making a big deal out of … pretty much every holiday. I would even love to get crazy about President’s Day and St. Patty’s Day and everything. But I have laundry to do, so those other holidays get overlooked, but not Valentine’s Day!! I signed up to bring cookies to both of my boys’ classes and I’ve been planning their little valentines for a week now. So here are my designs. Oh, I ended up taking over Christina’s boys’ valentines too. They are below … oh yeah … and a few pictures of the babies :)


The candy that is supposed to go with his is “Pop Rocks” … but they were too expensive, so I got ring pops instead.


Obviously … the candy is M&M’s

Christina’s boys’ candy are going to be Starbursts.

I was watching Emily and Zac while Christina was at Scouts with our older boys – Ben, Rocco and Noah. Emily and Ray are “frenemies” (friend/enemies). Today was a special day. They were friends and were playing pretty happily together. The cutest and best part of the evening was watching Ray while he was in his highchair. He would yell to Emily and say a ton of nonsense words to her and outstretch his hand. Emily would grab a dinosaur out of this bucket of dinosaurs and hand it to him and grunt back at him. Then Ray would smile and set up the dinosaur so it was standing on his highchair. Then he’d yell at Emily again. This went on for several minutes, until Ray’s highchair table was full of dinosaurs. Beautiful to watch.

Christmas cupcakes

I always sign up to bring in cupcakes or cookies for the school class parties, since I usually can’t come or put them on or donate time in the classroom. This is my way of sharing. This year, I found a fun idea on pinterest for cupcakes. Liam looked at the finished product and said, “what are they? butterflies?” … seriously?? Why would I make butterfly cupcakes for Christmas? Anyway, I spent some time on these. I even got up early on the morning he needed them for school to freshly frost them (6:30 am kind of early … they have to be at school at 7:40, sooo). When Noah came home from school I asked how his class liked them. He said, “Well, Johnny doesn’t like pretzels”. I asked if Johnny just took off the pretzels. He said, “no, he just didn’t eat any.” No other information was freely given about the enjoyment of these cupcakes. I’m not sure the extra time and effort was worth it. hmmmmm.

Christmas morning

This year we did our own Christmas morning. By choice. And it was nice. We slept in a little, then Noah and Liam woke up. They opened their stockings and then all their presents and it was fun to watch and take pictures and just enjoy the morning focusing on Noah and Liam. Then, Ray woke up. And then Ray experienced Christmas morning. It was so cute.


Best Christmas morning picture ever, right?