This is Halloween, This is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween

Say it once, say it twice
Take a chance and roll the dice
Ride with the moon in the dead of night
Everybody scream, everybody scream
In our town of Halloween

If I had a dollar for every time we listened to that song this month, I'd easily have $100!  But I actually love that song too, so I'm not mad about it!

I don't remember Halloween being one of my favorites when I was growing up.  I never really cared much for dressing up, and I think I was pretty young when I decided I was over trick or treating.  My kids on the other hand?  LOVE IT!  They love everything about Halloween and because of their excitement, it's become one of my favorite days of the year!

I know there are a lot of Christians out there who are completely against the holiday and don't participate... but for me, Halloween is what you make it!  For Eden, Ila, and James, it's simply a fun day where you get to dress up and get free candy!

This year I had a...

Texans cheerleader!

And...

Cinderella!

And...

Sheriff Woody, the rootinest, tootinest, cowboy in the wild, wild west!

All together they were...

freaking adorable!

Also, today was freaking cold!  Cold, cold, cold, with a piercing north wind that made it pretty much miserable to be outside!  Those poor babies were freezing when I made them go outside to take pictures!  But I wanted cute pictures dangit, because I'm a mean mom like that!  

Back it up... I just wanted to say that I put James in his costume at about 9:00 this morning!  I was so excited about his; I couldn't wait!  I dressed him up, and then I put him in front of the mirror, and he saw himself and shouted, "I WOODY!!!"  He and I went to WalMart (to find a shirt and leggings for Eden to wear under her costume because of the coldness), and every once in a while, he would blurt out to somebody we passed on an aisle, "I Woody!".

Anyways, so after the girls got home from school this afternoon, and after they got ready, and after I made them stand out in the cold for pictures, we went over to Pops and Granny's house.  Now I do remember when I was young, that every year before my mom took me and Marshall trick or treating, we always went to Pops and Granny's house first - to show them our costumes and to get candy.  So it's really special to take my own kids to the exact same house to do the exact same thing every year.  Marshall was actually there when we pulled up, doing the same thing that I was - showing off his kids to them.  We didn't plan it or even talk about it, but it turned out that Harrison was dressed up as Buzz!  So I tried really hard to get a picture of Buzz and Woody together, but it was pretty difficult!

With each passing year, I cherish the moments that we are able to still do this type of thing with my grandparents more and more.

Then we stopped by my dad and Susie's house.  They always have the cutest setup for the kids when we arrive on Halloween!

And then finally to the church!  This is our 3rd year to spend Halloween at our church, and man, our church knocks it out of the park!  And they seem to improve it each year!  There's Trunk or Treat in the parking lot, games and prizes set up on the lawn, hot dogs and frito pie and chips and soooo many desserts and even more games and prizes in the Sunday school building!  So the girls put on their warm coats, and the kids went to work - playing and eating and collecting as much candy as possible!

 Eden and her cousin, Rylen

 All the people who were working the games were in costumes.  This lady is dressed for Christmas.  I'm not sure if she's actually dressed for Christmas or if "woman dressed up for Christmas" is her costume.

We got home wayyyy past our bedtimes tonight, so I told them to run and put on pajamas as fast as they could.  Then I set Alexa for ten minutes and told them they could eat as much candy as they wanted in ten minutes and the rest would be saved for later!

It was a super fun Halloween, and now tomorrow, we can start planning Thanksgiving!

James Goes to Big Boy School!

Today, I subbed at the girls' school, in Ila's building, for one of the four year old classes.

When they called to ask earlier this week if I could sub, I said yes, if I could bring James with me.  When the girls were younger, before they went to school, whenever I would sub, they were allowed to come and stay in the two year old class for the day.  So I asked if James could do the same thing.

Now even though I'm the one who asked if James could come with me, I was pretty nervous about him being there.  He's pretty unpredictable.  Would he scream?  Bite another child?  (He bites us!)  Run around and refuse to sit in his chair?  Throw a tantrum?  (A daily occurrence around here.)  But I really wanted to see how he would act in a school setting, around other children!

Ila was THRILLED when I told her the news.  She was partly excited because I would be at her school, but she was over the moon that JAMES would be at her school.

(In the days leading up to today, she told me exactly what I would need to do for the four year old class.  She explained to me how snack time worked, what the names of the kids in my class would be, what letter they are currently learning, etc.  So very typical of Ila, love that child!)

Now normally, in the mornings, Ila is hard to wake up.  She's the one who doesn't want to get up, and I literally have to pick her up and put her on the ground to get her out of bed in the mornings.  Not today.  When I walked into her room to get her up this morning, she was already half-dressed and in the BEST MOOD.  And do you know what she said?

"I bet Mrs. Carlin is SO excited about today!"

Mrs. Carlin is the two year old teacher, aka James's teacher for the day.  That absolutely MELTED me!  To know that Ila loves her brother so much that she just KNEW the teacher was as excited as she was about him being there!

And James did great!  He didn't bite any other children!  He sat in his chair!  He painted a picture!  He LOVED IT!  Occasionally I saw him as we were walking down the hall to different activities, and when he would spot me, he would shout "Mama!" and run to me!  I would pick him up and hug him, but then tell him that he needed to go back and be with his friends, and he would happily run back to his class!  It was the cutest, sweetest thing!

It was a fun day, seeing Ila at school, James getting to go to school... A great day!

As soon as we got home, without me saying a word, Ila took the paper that James painted and thumb-tacked it to the bulletin board where I display Eden and Ila's schoolwork.  So precious!

I snapped a quick picture as we were walking into the building.  

It is COLD today!  He's wearing his Astros jersey under his jacket.  GO 'STROS!

It's Pumpkin Time!

It's still HOT, HOT, HOT here in Texas, but the sun is shining differently, the mornings are a tad crisper, and the nights come earlier.  We have a countdown to Ila's birthday on her bedroom door (five more days), the fair is around the corner, and the grocery store has pumpkins everywhere you turn.  (As we walk through the store each week, James screams, "MORE PUMPKINS!  MORE PUMPKINS!" the entire time.)  Our mantle is decorated with flickering orange and purple lights, and we listen to the Halloween station on Pandora every time we are in the car.  Eden and Ila's Halloween costumes are in (still don't have one for James), and I'm anxiously awaiting the first cool front so I can make a big pot of soup!  It may literally be 96 degrees outside right now, but the spirit of fall is in the air!

This morning I took the kids to the St. Mary's Pumpkin Patch.

This is James's third visit to the pumpkin patch, but it's the first year he's old enough for face painting (although he insisted his dinosaur be on his hand) and pumpkin painting.

 Here's to sweaters, chili, and cozy, movie nights!  Let's do this, fall!

"I've Seen Georgia On the Map. It's Purple!"

Part 2 of our road trip: Georgia (and a little more Alabamia)

Atlanta is only an hour and a half away from where we were staying in Alabama, so on the Monday after the wedding, I planned a day trip for us to go there to visit the Georgia Aquarium and Legoland.

The plan was to be at the aquarium when it opened at 9am, and we started out strong that morning. We pulled out of the parking lot of our hotel at 7:15, just like I wanted, and I was mentally giving myself high fives for getting everybody ready and on the road on time.  Then Ila chugged an entire bottle of orange juice in 10 minutes for some reason, we had to stop twice for her to go to the bathroom, and then somewhere along our drive, Dustin told me to look at the clock, and I noticed we lost an entire hour because I FORGOT ALLLL about the effing TIME CHANGE!!!!  So it was more like 10:30 when we finally walked through the aquarium doors.

But oh my goodness, the aquarium was amazing!!!!  I actually feel like it would be pointless for our family to ever go to another aquarium ever again, because it would just be a let down after seeing this one.  The Georgia Aquarium is the biggest aquarium in the U.S., the 4th biggest in the world, and the only aquarium in the Western Hemisphere to have whale sharks.

And seriously, standing in the tunnel and watching the giant whale sharks swim over you was WOW!!!

 James was not about to stop looking at the fish and turn around for a picture for me.

Even though we got a later start than I wanted that day, we hit it hard once we were there - the ocean exhibit, the tropical fish exhibit, the cold water exhibit, the river exhibit, the dolphin tank, the dolphin 4D movie, the sea lion show.  The best thing we did there though (in my opinion) was take the Behind the Scenes Tour.  We got to see the pump rooms, the labs, the operating and medical rooms for the sick animals, and we got to see the tropical fish exhibit and the ocean exhibit from the TOP.  That was incredible!  We were soooo close to the whale sharks as they swam by.

 the top of one of the tropical fish tanks

 one of the pump rooms

 animal operating room

 the lab

 the top of the ocean exhibit

 a whale shark swimming by

a whale shark swimming by

The highlight of the day for James was the tropical fish exhibit.  Holy moly, when he saw the clownfish and blue tang, he about lost it.  He started running, jumping, and screaming, "NEMO! NEMO! NEMO! DORY! NEMO! DORY! DORY!"  And then grabbing my face to make sure I was paying attention to him and screaming again, "NEMO! NEMO! NEMO!"  And running to bang on the glass and screaming again, "DORY! DORY! DORY!"  He did not stop shouting "NEMO! DORY!" the entire time that we were in the tropical fish exhibit.  It was adorable.  He was so dang happy.

omg, it's DORYYYY!

We spent about six hours at the aquarium, and we could've stayed longer, there was still so much to do, and looking back, I wish we would've stayed and watched more shows.  Butttt...

When planning this trip, I googled "Best things for kids to do in Atlanta" and read several articles.  Every. single. one. listed Legoland as a must-see.  So I was just like, "Cool!  There's a Legoland in Atlanta!", and without looking into it further, I planned for us to go there after the aquarium.

It consisted of two rides (they sucked), an area set up with lego tables, and an indoor jungle gym.  James was free, but it cost the rest of us $30 each to get in.  So $120 for our family to go there.  Oh yeah, there was a gift shop, of course.  They begged for something, so I told them that they could each pick out a lego set, and duh, we paid about triple the cost that we would've paid for the exact same stuff at Wal-Mart.

IN MY OPINION, we could've gone to Chick-fil-a, let the kids play in the play space there, and then bought them some legos from Wal-Mart and had the exact same experience for way cheaper.

IN MY KIDS' OPINIONS, it was AMAZING.  Ila and James ran all over that jungle gym and went down the slide approximately 1000 times.  Eden had a blast building lego cars and then racing them down the track.  They thought the sucky rides were SO COOL!

James would NOT go near Lego-Man.

And at the end of the day, that's all that matters I suppose.  The day was for them, and they thought it was the best day ever, Legoland included.  (But we will never go there again.)

I rate the Georgia Aquarium about 5 million stars though!  That was seriously incredible!

After Legoland, we drove back to Alabamia and ate dinner at Bow & Arrow, Caleb's restaurant.  My cousin Jonathan and his wife and kids met us there and we had a fun evening eating wonderful food and visiting with them.  Bow & Arrow was absolutely delicious, but that's not surprising at all seeing all the success Caleb has had in the food world!

 I do not know how people manage to take good food pictures.  I always manage to make my food look unappetizing, but I promise this was amazing!  I got brisket, hash brown casserole, collard greens, tortillas, a watermelon margarita, and banana pudding.  

All in all, a fantastic day!

back at the hotel with their souvenirs from the day :)