Halloween 2013 (yes Halloween, even if it’s a month late!)

Seriously friends, I am drowning in life. Recovery, holidays, company, birthday’s, school stuff, cleaning, cooking, planning, day to day stuff, AHHHH!!!! So I am trying really hard to not give up this blogging thing because let’s face it, I NEED my blog. You are my sound board to spill out all my word on. You are my children’s/families scrapbook. So with that little rant stated, I am trying to keep this going for the next couple of crazy busy months for us, so please bare with my randomness, scatterness, way behindness, and lack of words. Okay, here we go.

Halloween this year was crazy. I had surgery that morning, so in my guilt ridden self I planned way too much Halloween stuff the weekend before Halloween for the kiddos so I didn’t feel so bad. Did I still feel bad they did no trick-or-treating on ‘actual’ Halloween-Yes, am I crazy-Yes, did my kids seem to care one bit-No. And that my friends is all that really matters. So, from the Friday before Halloween to the Sunday before Halloween (so in 3 days) we managed to attend 2 Fall Festivals and different rounds of Trick or Treating and that’s not even including our trip a couple weeks before to the Pumpkin Patch or our Family Pumpkin Carving night the week of. So with that said, I’d say the kids had a fabulous ‘Halloween’ despite all the fun not happening on “Halloween”! Okay, no more writing and onto the hundreds of pictures I have from the crazy weekend (and yes, I literally have hundreds, I’ll do my best narrowing them down, but we all no my best isn’t much).

I present to you Mr. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Owen,

Yes, he is absolutely the most handsome fierce ninja turtle I have ever seen.

This costume was actually made by Grammy Pam (a very good family friend who is my Mother-In-Laws BFF who we officially adopted as our children's other Grandma). Get it? The really cool part of the costume is that she made this back in the early 90s when the TMNT’s were first popular for her boys who are now my age. It is retro, handmade, and reused…stinkin’ awesome! Owen has really high standards and this made every one of them and more. Grammy Pam, you ROCK!!!!

And Miss Hello Kitty,

I made Autumn’s Costume again this year. She picked the pink, sparkling, ridiculously blingy fabric all by herself. I love her and all her adorable glory SO SO much. This child is a pure joy and her pictures always give the best description of who she is inside and out.

And together you have PURE AWESOMENESS…

I can’t tell you how very happy this makes me :)

The First of the 4, The Church for All Nations Fall Festival:

We attended this as a family of four Friday night with Owen’s good friend Brayden and his family. It was so much fun for the kiddos They played some really fun games, jumped on the abundance of jumpers they had, and they got lots of candy!

Brayden, Owen, and Brycen.

The Second of the 4, Trick-or-Treat Street Downtown Littleton:

I took the kids to this last year and it was a lot of fun. All the merchants of Downtown Littleton participate and the kiddos get to dress up and go walk around to each business and trick-or-treat. Along the way they had Face Painting and Free Apple Cider. It was just the kiddos and I this year but it was so much fun and they got WAY WAY WAY too much candy.

The third of the 4, Trick-or-Treat street at Columbine High School:

We heard about this via a packet that got sent home from Owen’s school. We decided since it was Daddy’s old high school and to support the awesome schools in Jefferson County that I’d be fun to go check it out. We basically did this right after the Downtown Littleton thingy, with a little nap in between :) The school had the halls decorated so nicely and it was a joy to see all the High School kids dressed up handing out candy to the little ones. They also got a lot of candy here too. Are you seeing a trend? And yet again, the kiddos had a blast!

Daddy’s old stompin’ grounds :)

Above is Owen’s Vice Principal Mrs. Nieto representing the Normandy Knights!

And finally the fourth of the 4: Red Rock Church Harvest Festival:

What can I say, I LOVE our church. Red Rocks is amazing and they have the BEST EVER Children’s Ministry. This year was the second annual Children’s Harvest Festival. There was Chili and Cornbread, a Carmel Apple station, Face Painting, Balloon Animals, a Hallway of Trick-or-Treating, Family Photo’s, and Free Mini Pumpkins. Mimi came along with the kiddos and I and we all had a great time.

Here are the kiddos with the absolutely wonderful best ever Children’s Ministry Director Miss Sarah. She really is Wonder Women don’t let the costume fool you, she is so amazing and dedicated to making Christ known to each and every kid who walks through the doors week in and week out. Love her and so blessed by her friendship!

So blessed to have the world’s best Mother-In-Law who is so involved and present in her Grandkid’s lives. Love her to pieces!

Some lovely Children’s Ministry Volunteers signed up to each decorate a certain classroom door of the hallway and then the kids got to Trick-or-Treat at them.

The four’s classroom was the best. Want to know why? Because I did it :) Honestly, I’m not a prideful bragger type person, but this was some good work for pulling it off last minute huh? Seriously I did this all the night before. I was super proud of it and it got a lot of compliments. Thanks again Pinterest, you win again!

A couple other Halloween things:

Autumn got to wear her costume to Gymnastics AND they got some candy at the end :)

Top Row, Left to Right: Melia, Alex, Ryland, Andrew, Gwen, Ben, Mrs. Doherty, Christopher, Sebastian, Carter

Bottom Row: Jayden, Zack, Hayden, Owen B., Savyna, Emerald, and Owen M.

And Owen had a really fun Halloween party at school and they all got to wear their costumes to school that day. I unfortunately had to miss the party because of my stinkin’ surgery, but Owen said it was “SO much fun”! P.S. the rumor in the Kindergarten Class is that Owen has a Girlfriend in his class. Her name is Melia Gonzales (She’s the cute Tiger, top row far left). Geeze, I had a talk with him that at this age it’s better to just have friends that are girls and not girlfriend ;) I also asked him what it means if someone is your girlfriend and his response was, “it just means you like them and they chase you on the playground. I love when Melia chases me.” Oh, the innocence of Kindergarten!

 

Happy Halloween Y’all!

Pumpkin Carvin’ 2013

Goodness gracious I am SO behind on blogging. For those of you who don’t already know, I had my 3rd surgery this year about 10 days ago. It has been a much much longer recovery process than I anticipated but each day I am making progress so I guess that is all I can ask for at this point. I promise to one day do another medical update on me, but to briefly catch you up…I had a laparoscopy where they found and removed 5 different spots of endometriosis (3 spots were the size of silver dollars which are very large considering the size of your uterus)that were all over different sections of my uterus. I go in tomorrow for my two week check up so I’ll have more info then. As for now my recovery, health, and my family are my #1 priority so everything else during this time is getting thrown on the back burner, which is very difficult for me :(

Okay, onto blogging. For now I will do a short blog about our Pumpkin Carving a couple weeks ago. I still have a VERY large Halloween blog to do but it will have to be another day as I don’t have much time. On Monday, October 28th, we had our 3rd annual Pumpkin Carving with Papa Bruce and Brandon’s Sister & her family got to join us too. I made a big pot of my famous Kickin’ Chicken Soup, Cornbread & Carmel Apples for dessert. Dinner was delicious and gone in seconds! After we inhaled our dinner we pulled out the Pumpkin’s and started carving. Papa Bruce just recently had knee replacement surgery so he sat back and watched us this year, poor guy was in a lot of pain that night. Brandon & Autumn carved together, Bailey & Dan carved together and Owen and I carved together. As you can imagine Autumn & Bailey’s interest ran out pretty quickly so Megan watched them run around the house eating WAY WAY WAY too many M&Ms while the rest of us adults had our hands dirty carving :) It was really fun and the pumpkins came out really good. Good work peeps!

Owen thought it was nasty and was stressed about his hands being dirty, Autumn refused to touch the insides and sat there quietly being pretty, and Bailey was so truly confused and had no clue what to think. LOL!

Yes, I am SO short I had to stand on a chair to get a good angle to scrape out my pumpkin.

Owen did all the pin poking himself and did an amazing job. Once he finished, I did the carving :)

Once the girls lost interest, they ran around like crazy women eating a very unhealthy amount of candy, M&Ms were the main choice. They both have a really bad candy addiction…we found them hiding under tables and what not sneaking more. These girls are going to be the biggest trouble makers when they grow up!

Here you have it, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Owen & I’s Pumpkin), Mickey Mouse (Dan & Bailey’s Pumpkin), and Rapunzel (Brandon & Autumn’s Pumpkin)!

And while the adults were busy cleaning up all the Pumpkin Mess and Washing the Seeds the kids all relaxed and watched a movie as they were coming down from their massive sugar highs :)

Such a fun filled family night, the pumpkin carving Burgess Family Tradition lives on! And just a side note, Brandon is the the MASTER at baking Pumpkin Seeds, they were SO delicious!!!!!!!!