Fall Pictures 2012 (November)

Tammi of More Than Words {by Tammi} did it again!  

She took our pictures near the beginning of November - about a week and a half after Easton cut his hair.  And, I had a beautiful shade of faded purple and yellow around one of my eyes.  About a week before the photos were taken, I was tickling Gianna and she was trying to wiggle away and head butted me by accident :(  I will forever remember both of these events when I look at these pictures!  Thank goodness I can laugh about them now!

No matter the obstacle, Tammi always manages to take the most beautiful pictures!!!

I love this sequence of pictures!

The kids thought this was fun!

Quin

Ellery

Gianna

Easton

Tammi tried to get a few pictures of just Jason and I (which will not be shown - we are not very good at being serious when it is just the two of us!). 

While she was taking our picture, she gave Quin a 'vintage' camera to help keep the four kiddos occupied.  Quin was hilarious!  She was Tammi's mini-me! 

And... don't you just love this picture!!!  Quin could not figure out how their picture got inside of the globe.  She kept saying, "but mom, it wasn't snowing when we had our picture taken".  

A huge thank you to Tammi!  She is so good at putting up with the six of us, and our short attention spans ;)  The kids love working with her, and I am always amazed that she gets a good picture of every child!!!

Thankful (November)

Somehow I failed in the picture taking department on Thanksgiving :(  We went to my parents house and were joined by my sister and her family, my brother, uncle and grandpa.  As always we had an incredible feast and enjoyed great company!  I am so lucky to have an amazing extended family that I love to spend time with!

Quin and Isadora - Isa reminds me a lot of Quin when she was her age!

Easton may not look like it in appearance/stature, but he is by far my best eater!  He was the first one at the table!

Ellery and Gianna love to play in the bubbles in my moms sink!

My Hip Halloween Kiddos (October)

I enrolled my mom in creating this year's themed Halloween costumes - and she did a great job!  She made all three of the pink skirts for girls, as well as a skirt for me.  They were SO cute!  I found saddle shoes and scarves online, and bought the glasses at our local Halloween outlet.  I also ordered Easton's pleather jacket, but had the converse and jeans.  They loved their outfits :)

My original plan was to grow Easton's hair out so it was just long enough slick.  He foiled that plan by cutting his hair about a week before Halloween.  And... guess what his tool of choice was???  Nevermind - you won't be able to guess.  He used nail clippers!  Yes, nail clippers!  They were the baby type with the big paddle handles.  UGH!  The woman who cut his hair did a good job hiding the chopped front, but she had to cut a ton of it off!

Anywho... back to Halloween.

All four kids LOVED passing out candy.  They fought each other to get to the door first and we ended up having to have a rotation.  

My little Fonzie - Aaaaeeeyyy!

A little dancing to get them in the mood for trick-or-treating!

Jason took them out while I passed out candy.  It was fun to see their pink skirts bouncing as they ran up and down all of the drive ways!  They weren't out long, just enough to fill their bags (notice I only give them small bags?!?!?).  They were happy to come back and pass out more candy!

A huge thank you again to my mom for pulling off the skirts!!!

Did Somebody Say Bananas?!?! (October)

There is one, and only one, show that all four of my kids can agree to watch - The Fresh Beat Band!

When tickets went on sale last spring (a good six months before the actual show), I grabbed six of them (and crossed my fingers that they would still all like the show by the time it rolled into town)!  

Jason and I decided to keep the concert a secret until just a few minutes before we arrived.  They were SO excited when we told them what we were doing.

The long line to take a picture in front of the poster didn't create the best moment for a picture, but it was fun to see the four Fresh Beats larger than life!

Our seats weren't the best, but we still had a great view!  

I love that we can say that we took our kids to their first concert :)  If only I could say that all of the concerts in their future were going to be so kid friendly!

Pumpkin 'Fun' (October)

We stayed close to home and went to Fun Pumpkins to pick our pumpkins this year.  

They had their tractor parked out front, and Easton was so excited!  It was hard to get him to leave the tractor and actually look for a pumpkin.

The girls did the hard work of pulling the pumpkin wagon.

They had a great selection of flat pumpkins for stacking.  

Their field also had a ton of pumpkins in all stages, sizes and shapes!

Gianna was so sweet.  She picked out the top pumpkin for one of my pumpkin towers and then found a stump to sit on.  She waited so patiently for everyone else to finish their search.

Again, I joined the fabulous teachers that I work with to have our annual First Grade Family Pumpkin Carving night at my school.  So, in an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, Jason and the kids joined us.  They carved pumpkins along side the families in our classes.  

I missed most of the picture opps because I was running around getting pictures of my students, but our cute little pumpkins turned out very cute!  A huge thank you to Jason for keeping all four kids focused on pumpkins and getting the job done!

Happy Birthday Isadora! (September)

We celebrated Isadora's 1st birthday at the end September!  She is such a good girl - so easy going, always happy and a true go-getter!

 The poor girl is allergic to dairy :(  Yes, allergic - not just lactose intolerant!  She can't have any cheese, butter, milk...  And this girl loves to eat, which I suppose is a good thing.  She isn't picky and is willing try new foods.  Abbey searched high and low, and came up with a dairy free birthday cake just for Isa.  She was all smiles over the cake!

 It appeared that the cake did not disappoint her!

 When she looked away, Lincoln would stick his fingers in the frosting ;)

 She was a trooper and did quite the number on the cake by the end!  I am so glad we were able to celebrate her big day with her!!!

As always my kids loved being with Lincoln.  I do laugh at Lincoln and Ellery - they have a special connection.  While all of my kids love Lincoln and get along well with him, he and Ellery usually end up playing together.  I think it is the blue eyes, blonde hair connection :)

Circus (September)

The circus came to Grand Rapids late in September.  I was on the fence about going, for a number of reasons.  Our kids love animals, but when I checked out the price my decision was made for me - ouch!  

On a whim I entered a contest through West Michigan Mommy - and WON!  And, we didn't get just regular tickets... they were 'Circus Celebrity' tickets!  This scared me, as the only description for me was that we were going to be part of the circus.  I HATE being the center of attention.  After doing some searching on-line I found that it just meant that we were going to sit in the middle of the circus floor for a section of the show, so that the high wire bicyclists could perform above the area where our seats were.  I could handle that!

Our assigned seats were in the second row.

We were each given lanyards to show that we were in the 'celebrity' area.

We sat in the middle of the floor for about 25 minutes while the performers were doing their thing around us.  The kids were in awe.

Quin thought the fog was SOOO stinky!

This is what the crowd looked like from our floor seats.

One of the clowns came over to talk to Quin.  He was trying to talk her into pulling Gianna's hair.  I had to laugh - she didn't go for it.  I was surprised... she doesn't need a reason at home to do that kind of stuff - ha!

As we were going back to our seats another clown talked Easton into holding his hand.  

It only lasted for about 5 seconds before Easton thought through his decision and decided to bail!

Gianna was in heaven every time the elephants came out!  Her expressions made our trip worth it!

She loved their tricks, and that they held 'trunks and tails'!

A big thank you to Melissa at West Michigan Mommy!  We had a ton of fun, and wouldn't have gone had it not been for the tickets that she helped give away!