Happy Halloween

From ::
Olivia the pig + My little strawberry
(who both refused to wear their head wear on this occasion)

{Hope you have a spooky holiday}

If you're anything like me, come tomorrow you will be completely over Halloween.
(if you aren't already)
Since there is no way I'm going to be caught up with all my Halloween posts by today...
or am I even going to try,
consider yourself warned that this blog may still be in the Halloween spirits for the next week regardless of whether I want it to be or not.
Oh how I wish I was caught up.

Gardner Village

{October 22}
One of our favorite family Halloween traditions is going to Gardner Village to check out all the witches.
We've usually gone a little closer to Halloween and dressed the girls up in their costumes but this year we thought we'd try to avoid the crowds and go earlier - it was still totally crowded (I'm sure the whole month of October is) but we still loved it.

(I seriously roll every time I look at the picture on the right of Olive...ha she rocks my world)

Like always we had to stop in the candy store and get a small load.
(not sure why, heaven forbid the girls need more sugar - I guess it makes me feel better since we lost half the bag of candy somewhere along the way)
But give Olive a sucker and she's quiet and satisfied the rest of the time.
We took the girls to check out the animals after seeing all of the witches and Ivy immediately said she wanted to ride the horse....ha, talk about hilarious - she wouldn't crack a single smile the entire ride,
but the second she got off she came running to me and Chris with the biggest grin saying she got to ride "Thunder!!"
(apparently that is what the worker told her the horse's name was)
She was thrilled and continued to talk about it the rest of the day.
Poor Olive was too little and had to watch her sissy ride the pony,
but like I said, she had her sucker so she was fine.

Tuesday tidbits

:: ivy ::

01. Ivy had a play date today with Miss Elsie...Ivy loves having her over - and they actually play really well together.
Yes, there are a few arguments here and there about sharing, but they are both so easy to reason with.
Makes life easier for us moms.
02. Now that I'm not nursing Olive at night she tells Chris and I every night,
"Dad put Olive to bed and mom put me to sleep"
Ha. Guess she likes the way I like reading books better :)
03. She loves going to story time every week at the library....
and loves picking out different books for the week.
04. Her burn has healed so so well....just a little red, but so much better than I imagined.
Thank heavens.
05. She wants to do everything by herself.
All I hear all day long is, "no, I want to do it all by myself"

:: olive ::

01. Olive is obsessed with the nut things that fall off our front tree.
The second we are outside she makes a beeline for them and tries to carry as many as she can.
(kind of hard to see in these pictures but she took a nose dive on Sunday and scratched her face up pretty good)
02. She's had a runny nose for a few days....and she hates hates to have it wiped.
I'm positive its from teething - I stuck my finger in her mouth the other day, and besides almost getting my finger bitten off, one bottom side of her mouth is pretty swollen.
Could she be cutting molars already?
Seems crazy since she only has two teeth on the bottom.
03. She loves bran muffins.
Which results in her pooping multiple times a day.
(only wish they would work that easy on Ivy)
04. Anytime the front door opens she says "dada!!"
05. She is doing so good at not nursing.
Chris is the one that puts her to sleep now and she goes right down for him every night.
(the first two nights were a little brutal)
She also is sleeping in much much later...
today she didn't wake up until 9:30!
I could hardly enjoy it I was so paranoid.
Figures right?

And yes, I was that mom today who's child is dressed up in costume days before Halloween.
haha. awesome. I don't mind.

The perfect pumkin patch.

{October 19}

We finally got our real pumpkin patch fix for the season.
It was perfect.
Hayride to a field full of pumpkins to pick out,
(Ivy insisted we get one for each member of the family - she picked hers in the first five minutes and would hardly hold still she was having so much fun.
Really, at one point she and Taryn were at the very far end of the field looking for the perfect pumpkin for Taryn....
they learned quickly that it was hard work to carry it all the way back to the front)
horses for Olive to go completely nuts over,
a maze...that wasn't too big for the kids to actually get lost in,
and a tiny candy fix at the barn for the ride home.
Thanks Jen for having us over and especially for agreeing to go pumpkin patching with us.
I'm feeling a whole lot better that we now have pumpkins on our porch :)
Maybe we'll get around to carving them?....doubt it.