The kids and I did not have school or Bible study last Thursday due to Veteren's Day, but Brandon had to work and he was going to be on call on Saturday, so we decided to go out of town. I dropped them off at school Wednesday morning and then rushed home, packed the bags, ran to get my haircut, rushed home, loaded the car, picked up the kids and were there by dinner time. It was great! (Except for Christopher complaining the last hour about not being able to sit anymore because he just HAD to be there already. Why do they think that complaining will make things happen? Trust me, I wish it would!)

Sophie found all the old baby dolls and had to climb in the crib to put them to bed that night. I really wish that everyone could experience Sophie taking care of her baby dolls. It is the funniest thing you will EVER see!!!


Pop had a book about making wooden toys that he had pulled out before we got there that night. Christopher found it and the next morning he was up and asking to go build something at 6:15 in the morning. The kid LOVES to build stuff! I told him he had to get dressed and wait for Pop to wake up first. He then asked if he could go get dressed while I go wake up Pop. I told him to wait. Later I found him curled up on the couch carefully studying all the trucks that the book shows you how to make. Once Pop woke up he wanted to go. I then told him that everyone had to wake up, get dressed and eat breakfast before going into the shop to work. He immediately sat down next to Pop and asked for Cheerios (I never get specifics when it comes to breakfast) and he plopped the book in front of him and kept reading while they ate. Then he ran to get his apron on (this has to come with us every time we visit because he knows he'll be in the shop) and off the two went. This photo captures just how excited he gets about building things in the shop with his Pop. I love it!


Sophie had to put her apron on (my sister bought one for each grandchild and put "Pop's Shop" on them) and then helped Grammie vacuum. She has on the new Fancy Nancy zebra ballet shoes. She is really getting into dress up now too. I see a baby doll and dress up filled Christmas in our future.



Aunt Jenny and Anne Morgan came over for the day and we loved getting to see them. AM LOVES horses and went straight to the one that my parents have at their house. It was ours when we were kids and the protective caps have broken and fallen off and the springs are exposed (nobody cared about that stuff back then) so they have "beautifully" covered everything potentially dangerous with fabric and duct tape. (I mention that just in case anyone out there freaks out over this kind of stuff.)







 And they fight over who is going to hold on. They both put up a good fight. Don't remember who won.


Next thing we know, Pop and Christopher come back inside with a crane in hand. I seriously have no idea how they built this as fast as they did. My dad said it's much faster to build a truck from scratch when someone has the plans written out for you, than when a 4 year old walks up and asks you, "can you build a firetruck and a flatbed for me please?"

Brick cut his paw Friday morning pretty bad, but Doctor Pop took care of him. We wrapped him up real tight and let him stay inside that morning. Pop and Christopher hung out at the house while Sophie, Grammie and I went into town to do a little bit of shopping for the kids.


This is pretty much what the photos look like of the kids on this day. They would not stay still and ran and ran and ran and rode the plasma cars all over the driveway. It was great!

Living where we do we miss out on a lot of things that the rest of the country experiences. Don't get me wrong, we have loved living here, but we don't have things like leaves changing in the fall, snow on the ground or spring trees in bloom to let us know when the seasons have changed. It's all evergreen plants, so if you think you see some red/orange/brown leaves among a sea of green it's probably a dead tree. But I'm ok with that! (Not really, I've just learned to accept it.) Because though we also may not have true pumpkin patches to go to, we do have.... FARM DAY!!!!! I think we told about 30 families that they had to go to Farm Day this year and all of them came. It's that awesome!

What is Farm Day you ask? It is only the most fun you will have all year! It was started back in 1984 by a local doctor who has a farm and several of his friends from church. They had about 25 people get together the first time and it has grown to over 3300 people. They have everything you can think of to do on a farm from animals, horse rides, bbq, hot dogs, hay bales to climb on and corn to play in to bringing in a knife thrower, old cars, Home Depot workshop, cotton candy, funnel cakes, fire trucks and a helicopter lands in the front yard of the house. There is also a treasure hunt and when you get to the end they throw out more beads, candy and stuffed animals that you have ever seen, they ask if you want more and they throw just as much again. Once it gets dark they have fireworks and a bonfire. And it's all FREE. That's right! All you need to get in is to bring a covered side dish to share with everyone there. It is his church's way of showing the world that you can have fun as a Christian and hopefully show those you know who are not churched, how much God loves us.

You are probably thinking, stop talking and just show me pictures, so I'll do that.

And that's all we actually had photos of. Brandon waited in line for an hour to get a funnel cake so he missed the treasure hunt. We went home after that was over because the sun was going down and it was getting really cold by then. I hate that we only made it two of our three years here, but I think we made up for it this year.

So, I know you are sick of Disney posts by now, but that's my fault. In a perfect world I would have them all posted back to back, but let's face it. I'm not perfect. (WHAT????? I know, I'm shocked too. But you get over it quickly.) Honestly, I don't remember a whole lot about this day, probably because we were on day 4 of our vacation and we were just trying to cram in and enjoy everything we could.

We took the kids to Animal Kingdom this day and it was the perfect day to go. It's a smaller park so we could get around to everything without feeling like we had to rush to hit everything. We started with the safari, which was lots of fun! The kids loved finding all the animals and trying to match them to the sign on the top of the "jeep" we rode in.

Later we took them to Dino-land and the kids went nuts. The parents relaxed, wait, I take that back. You could lose a kid in less than .05 seconds in this place. Scary!!! ONCE we had them contained in the digging area (it's tons and tons of tiny rocks) we could relax. I wanted to take my shoes off and walk around there barefoot b/c my feet hurt and it sounded like it would feel good, but there was an old man on guard and you were not allowed to do this.


This little guy just needed his digger and he would have parked it the entire day. He was in heaven.

And THAT my friends, is the end of our trip. Melissa has a much better post here about this day if you are interested.

Can I tell you just how funny Sophie is please? She is hilarious! Yes, she can drive us crazy sometimes and I am going to lose my hearing early thanks to the volume that she chooses to speak at, but I adore her. Sometimes it's really hard to get mad at her when she does something wrong b/c she is so funny! I tend to put the little funny things the kids do on Facebook b/c it's quick and easy, but I want to make sure I put them on here too so I have a record of it.

Let's start with Saturday night. We were at Baytowne Wharf and the kids were trick or treating at all the shops, but every time Christopher or his friend Landon would stop she would stick her arm out, move her hand back and forth and yell, "Keep going! Keep going! Don't stop! Keep going!" I was rolling b/c I was the only one who heard her. This is the first year that she got Halloween.

Next is Sunday night. We were trick or treating with the same family and after every... single... house she come running from the door yelling, "Me got so much candy in my bucket!!!" Every. Single. House. All the adults were laughing by now. She definitely has a sweet tooth and trying to contain it is tough.

Fast forward a little to Tuesday morning. Christopher goes to preschool and when I don't have MOPS, Sophie and I get to have a girls day together. Every morning the kids ask me where we are going that day and when I told her Target she started to squeal, jump up and down and shout "Can me get those monkey jommies?" (we were there Saturday and she picked a bunny pair over the monkey ones) and before I could say, "We'll see," she starts yelling, "Me be good. Me stay with you. Me not run away. Me no need to ride in the cart. Me be good. Then can me get monkey jommies?" Then she proceeded to go get herself dressed (not matching), fix herself breakfast, get her baby ready (who now goes EVERYWHERE with us), get the baby's bed and put it in the car and then continue to tell me to hurry so that we could go to Target. As soon as we drop Christopher off, we plop baby in his booster seat, throw on a seat belt and off we go. She was really good and waited patiently while I tried on one thing after another, something I never do because I hate trying stuff on, but I was determined to find skinny jeans and leggings with something to go with it. Then we finally made it to the monkey "jommies" and what did she pick? A pair without monkeys on it. Oh well!

I think I'm going to have to start wearing Depends because after having these two I have zero bladder control and they make me laugh (and want to pull out my hair) all the time!

Well, today I had to go to Destin because I was slam out of makeup and well, I look like I'm 14 again with the way I've been breaking out, so I had to go and it's my only day without children. Also, when I go to Destin without children (the only way I prefer to go if I'm the only adult) I have to stay until it's time to pick the kids up. Not good because it's all shopping. BUT, I did really well last month on saving money AND I've made some money from thirty-one, so I figured I could do a little bit of this. I hit up Forever 21 first. (Thankfully Brandon doesn't mind because he's excited about my new pants too.) I wandered and wandered and wandered forever. Tried on one thing after another and bought myself some things to go with my new pants and I'm very excited. It was POURING too, so it kind of took the fun out of spending the day at an outdoor mall, but I still enjoyed my quiet time.

Then I went to Gymboree. Does anyone else think that Gymboree thinks highly of themselves? I know lots of people that shop there, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I was going to get her another pair of socks like I bought (out of desperation) back at Easter, but forgot that I paid $10 for 2 pair. I must have REALLY been desperate because I wanted to throw them at the lady that worked there. But I did find some leggings to go with a top I bought Sophie months ago and thought I could find the leggings that match everywhere, but apparently everyone else in town wanted them too. I just need to swap the blue button on the top, but I probably won't. She never really stops moving long enough for to see if she really matches. They are also a little long, but you can't open them to see how big they are. Better than too small I say!

I also found her a Halloween costume for next year. I am very proud and hope that she wears it when the time comes. It was only $8.99 and I was not going to pass it up. It is made MUCH better than the cheap-o ones they sell in the stores everywhere else.


Not that you care about my shopping today, but I haven't done this in a while so it was fun. I actually had an hour to kill when I was done. I thought I'd walk around more and browse, but the pouring down rain sort of killed that plan. I went to pick up the kids and they had fun at school. I'm so glad that I have the chance to send them somewhere they love going to and know that they are taken care of in a loving, Christian environment. We are up there 4-5 days a week and will miss it when we move. Speaking of, we have to put in our official list of places we'd like to go next week!!! Yikes!!!!! We are hoping that we can finalize it Friday night when we get a date night. Which reminds me, I need to make sure our friends know that we are taking them up on their offer! Better get on that...

I'm going to try to make this quick (yeah, right!) because I have more laundry waiting for me. I have done 8 loads this weekend and that's not counting the week's laundry too. Not sure why we had so much, but we did. Anyway, our weekend did not start out as we had thought. Christopher started throwing up Friday afternoon and did until he went to bed about 8:00 that night. Brandon had a patient go into labor around 4:00 Friday afternoon and didn't get home until about 8:30 Saturday morning. She didn't deliver until 6:00 Saturday morning, so he was fried.

Christopher was supposed to play in his last basketball game Saturday morning, but well, he missed it. He was feeling better (woke up at 2:30 in the morning wanting water and to watch a movie), but I wasn't convinced yet. I sent Brandon to bed, loaded the kids in the van with the money they received as Halloween treats from family and took them to the BX to buy a toy. Then we headed to Target. Sophie lost her toy between the outside of the store and the carts at the entrance and I was so mad I told her too bad and threw the kids in the cart and off we went. Christopher was starting to look a little tired so I grabbed only 2 of the things we went to buy and grabbed a movie at the checkout counter. It was only $10 and I refuse to pay more than that for a movie, so I threw it in the cart. I had a feeling I was going to need it later that day.

We head out the door and off go the alarms. I turn around and head to the help section and the lady tells me not to worry about it and to go on. Suddenly the kids yell, "There's Sophie's toy!!" and I look up and there is a little Sleeping Beauty with only her top on. That's her toy alright, so we grab it and head out the door. Again.

We stop at AC Moore to buy some ribbon to finish Christopher's costume, which I'm just praying we actually get to use and head back home for lunch. We eat, put Sophie in bed with Brandon and Christopher and I lie on the couch to watch our new movie. Brandon gets up and sends me to bed (I only got a few hours b/c I couldn't go back to sleep after Christopher woke up), where I crash for 2 hours. (We had a really crazy week and it hit all of us.) We wake up and I finish Chrisotpher's costume and we decide to pass on our original plan for the evening and head to Baytowne Wharf instead. It was a good decision. Christopher's costume breaks before we get in so it rides on the stroller the rest of the evening. We trick or treat, eat pizza, watch fireworks and get to bed too late.

Sunday we head to church, get there late. Come home eat lunch, late. Put Sophie down for a nap, I finally fold all the laundry that has built up in one corner of the house and then we fix Christopher's costume and head to a friend's house to have some fun treats and then do the candy thing. We come home and crash and the kids slept until 7:30 this morning. It was great!

NOW, on to the costumes......

Christopher originally wanted to be the gray and blue Batman. Could only find it in toddler sizes. Was going to make it but knew that would be horrible so we decided to be a dump truck driver. Spray paint some boxes, add a little construction paper, draw with a little marker and voila! You've got a truck driver. Sophie was going to be Spiderman. Then she changed her mind when we borrowed a Minnie Mouse costume from our friend Ainsley. I know she's my kid, but I feel like she is the cutest Minnie Mouse I've ever seen. I think it's the curls. And the huge cheesy grin she flashes. They were very proud of their costumes.... and I was proud that we only spent around $10-12 on them.


We lost the truck about halfway through trick or treating. It was starting to hurt his neck. I don't blame him. Then he got tired of the hat. So eventually he just became a boy getting candy from strangers.