November Fun

Thanksgiving was the big event of November, but we had some fun family moments as well.

Craiger went to his very first birthday party for a friend at school.  He was SO excited & had a blast.

Cadence out of the blue decided she wanted to learn how to conquor the Rubik's Cube.  It took her a month, but she got it & can now solve any rubik's cube in less than a minute.

And Canyon & I had some pretty fun shopping dates gearing up for Thanksgiving & Christmas.  We love going to the mall to get cheesy fries & play at the Disney Store on Mickey's Birthday.

ER visits are NOT fun

It's now the tail end of January & I haven't updated my blog since Halloween.  How sad is that?  I've just been SO busy, but I'm going to try to get things caught up over the next 2 weeks.

November was a sick month at the Potter house.  Craiger had an awful double ear infection at the beginning of the month, & then 3 weeks later, he & Taya both got strep throat.  Cadence, Lorien, & I had colds.  Trek was gone TDY & of course that week was awful.  First the van broke down & with Trek being gone I didn't have a 2nd vehicle, then Craiger & Taya got strep throat & wound up in the ER.  Poor babies. . . 

And then 5 minutes after we walked through the front door from the ER, Canyon walked up to me & pointed to his nose saying "It's Up There!"  "What's up there?"  "It's up there!  It hurts!"  I peeked & sure enough, he had stuffed something orange up his nose just out of reach.

I cried & cried.  It had been such a horrible week & now I was facing going BACK to the ER after spending several hours there already that morning.  I looked on youtube & there was a video of a doctor showing how to dislodge an object from a child's nose.  I decided to give it a shot.  It totally worked.  SO MUCH RELIEF.  I was SO scared & SO dreading another trip to the hospital.  I simply plugged the nostril that didn't have anything in it, put my mouth over his entire mouth & blew really hard.  It shot the bead straight out of his nose.  Thank heavens.

It was one of Taya's pony beads.  He told me he'd never put anything up his nose again.  Oh man.  Six kids & of course it's the 6th that shoves something up his nose first.  Boy was I glad when Trek got home the next day.

It just goes to show that life is a constant adventure.  There are fun times & there are hard times, but we always seem to make it through.  

Adventure Awaits . . . 

Mischief Managed

My very dear friend is a photographer here in Mountain View.  She offered to take pictures of our family in our Halloween costumes & they turned out amazing.  Thank you Sara.

Canyon as Dobby the House Elf

Craiger as Harry Potter

Bladen as Draco Malfoy

Taya as the bathroom ghost, Moaning Myrtle

Lorien as Hermione Granger

Cadence as the unique Luna Lovegood

Trek's brother Tuhk as Professor Snape

Trek as Professor Dumbledore

And me as Professor McGonagall

Happy Halloween.  Until next year. . . . 

MISCHIEF MANAGED!

Happy Halloween

As you all know, Halloween is my favorite favorite time of year.  I work all year on making costumes for my family & we dress up as a family theme.  This year my kids finally got their dream theme:

HARRY POTTER

It was a pretty easy theme.  3 of the kids already had Hogwarts robes so I didn't have to make those.  The rest I put together pretty easily.

Bladen was Draco Malfoy. . . Harry's archenemy.  Bladen has that gorgeous blond hair & I knew he'd be perfect!  I didn't have a robe for him, so I took apart the red robe Craiger had in his dress up bin & made a pattern out of it to make Bladen's.  It turned out pretty well.

Craiger was Harry Potter.  And an adorable little Harry Potter he was.  (He's had this Quidditch robe in his dress up bin for a few years now.  I'm glad we could put it to good use)

Canyon made the absolute perfect Dobby.  I threw together some old white linen fabric & tied in on the side & left it fraying since Dobby's outfit always seemed to be falling apart.  A friend of mine did the hat.  How cute is that hat?

My beautiful Lorien was Hermione.  She had the robes, white shirt, & grey skirt already so I just found her a Gryffindor tie & scarf to finish off the ensemble . . . oh!  And a wig.  Because we definitely needed Hermione hair.

And Miss Taya was classic Moaning Myrtle.  We colored her hair black, but with her glasses & the added toilet seat, she was perfect.  She also already had a Ravenclaw robe, white shirt, & skirt so we just added a Ravenclaw tie & she was set.

Cadence was beggint to be Luna Lovegood so we put together some pieces from her own wardrobe that fit Luna's eccentric clothes & bought her some Luna glasses to finish off the costume.  She looked SO beautiful.

Our church Halloween party was the Friday before Halloween so we got some fun family pics taken at the party.  I was Professor McGonagall (& that dress was the hardest pattern I've evern sewn from scratch in my entire life, but I'm VERY proud of how beautiful it turned out).  And Trek was Dumbledore.  We ended up having to buy his costume & it looked a little out of place compared to the rest of the costumes, but I just couldn't find a pattern & didn't trust myself enough to sew something that big, especially if it was going to cost me $100 in fabric.  Together, they looked good though.  We all had a lot of fun.

Halloween morning, I took some final pictures of all our costumes hanging up & lining the hallway.  It always makes me excited to see my creations all lined up.

The kids were excited to wear their costumes to school.

 

And yes, I was Professor McGonagall ALL DAY LONG & loved every minute of it.

Tuhk flew in Halloween morning to spend it with us (I bought him a Snape costume & wig to fit in with us.)  On our way to the airport to pick him up, I took Canyon to get a free donut at Krispy Kreme. 

Our shadows together were hilarious.  SO HARRY POTTER.

I'm SO glad Tuhk came to spend Halloween with us.  He was a perfect Snape.

We went trick or treating at the library with Canyon & all around Castro Street.  SO many people took pictures of us.  It was funny.

Then we picked up the kids from school, went & had family photos done (you'll see those gorgeous pics in the next post), & trick or treated around our neighborhood.  It was a 

MAGICAL 

Halloween.