Jenna's Baby Shower

 We celebrated Jenna's baby shower at the end of October. (I am way behind on posts.) We rented the KC hall in Watertown. It has a full kitchen and tons of seating for guests. We had a brunch with croissants, fruit, yogurt, and egg bake. The food was really good and we had a pretty good turnout.

 I gave the girls my cheap canon camera and they went to town taking pictures. I love seeing things from their point of view.

 Kelly probably isn't going to like this one very much. Oh well. 

 Here's a close-up of Aunt Sarah.

 We decided to play a couple of games. We bought quite a few different jars of baby food and made Jenna sample each one. She had to try and guess which food it was. It was VERY funny.

 She didn't like any of them as you can tell from her face. I think she only got one right.

 The kids had a blast watching her try them all.

 Instead of giving Jenna a tiny bit, Kelly loaded the spoon up with baby food. 

 I saw those little hot dog chunks in a jar at Walmart. I never bought them for my kids because they look absolutely disgusting. I had to get them for Jenna!!

 This was my favorite of the kinds she tried. Kelly thought it was equally as funny.

 After she tried all of the baby food, she said that she will never buy baby food for Margaret.

 Next, we played the candy bar in the diaper game. She did much better with this game. I think she only had one wrong.

 Next, it was present time. Do your kids love opening presents as much as mine do? They were tearing at bags as fast as they could and Jenna was trying to keep up with them.

Isn't she cute? Margaret (Midge, Marge, Margo, Magpie) is one of the easiest babies I've ever seen. I don't know how Jenna lucked out! She hardly ever cries and smiles constantly. She's so sweet.

Happy 10 Year Anniversary to Us!

Mike and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary on November 22nd. I can't believe it has been that long! These years have flown by. I'm lucky enough to be married to a great guy who loves me and who happens to be my best friend. I hope God blesses us with many more years.

I was hoping for a trip to Europe or an exotic vacation to an island somewhere, but it didn't work out. We didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on a vacation right before Christmas and it turns out our passports are expired.

We still wanted to get away over our anniversary and ended up going to Kansas City for the weekend. We had a good time! We ate lots of good food, went to the second "Hunger Games" movie, and did a little shopping. It was nice sleeping in and being relaxed. It was just what we needed.

Funny Pictures

I thought it would be funny to post some of the funnier pictures. I think you can see their personalities shining through in some of these photos.

I had them sit on a wood railing and Ethan kept shaking it. Riley thought she was going to fall off of it, hence the worried look on her face. The sweet girl is still trying to smile though.

Mia can be such a goofball! There's Riley smiling again.

Here's Ethan and his silly face. He did something similar in almost every picture.

Here are four pictures of Mia snapped really quick. I wanted to show what happens to her hair.

Doesn't she look annoyed?

He gets distracted easily.

Riley looks like a diva here.

Kelly told them to jump.

Mia must have a death-grip choke-hold. She always seemed to be in the middle and put her arms around Ethan and Riley.

Mia isn't as innocent as she looks...

Ethan and his silly face. Do you see Mia's hand around Riley's neck.

I told Ethan to open his eyes. Mia decided to help me.

Oh, Ethan. I should repay him with silly faces when it's time to take pictures of prom or his wedding. :)

Pictures for our Christmas Card

 Kelly and I took the kids to a local park to take some pictures for our Christmas card. A lot of wedding photographers take their clients there for pictures, so I thought it would be a pretty spot.

The kids were slightly better behaved when compared to last year's photo session. I'll say again that I could never be a photographer. I took hundreds of pictures and Ethan usually is making some silly face. I had a few that turned out really well.

 They're getting so big. It's hard to wrap my head around sometimes. I love these little boogers.

 Ethan just had to wear a Buzz Lightyear t-shirt under the shirt I picked out for him. You pick your battles, right? I realize now that I should have fought harder. I didn't realize we would be seeing Buzz's foot.

This would have been my favorite if Ethan would have had his mouth shut.

Picking Out Pumpkins

 I took the kids to pick out pumpkins at Hy-Vee, which is our grocery store. They had a cute little set-up and it was just as good as going to a real pumpkin patch. ;)

 They had fun choosing their pumpkins. Ethan and Riley chose the biggest pumpkins they could find while Mia chose the smallest. Hers looked pretty dinky next to the others.

Maybe next year we'll go out to the pumpkin patch. This was pretty convenient and I killed two birds with one stone--getting groceries and getting pumpkins at one time!

Little Squeaks

Meet the newest member of our family, Little Squeaks. Mia has been harassing us to get her a guinea pig ever since she saw Skylar's (Mike's cousin) last summer. She'd ask us EVERY day if she could have one. She finally wore me down, but it was Mike who she had to convince.

After months of asking, he finally gave in. Skylar's guinea pig had babies, so we bought one from her and gave her to Mia for an early Christmas gift. Little Squeaks is brown with silky soft fur. She's such a nice little guinea pig. She's nipped a few times, but the kids deserved it. Aren't I nice?

Riley wants one so we'll get one for her around Christmas. Skylar's guinea pig is pregnant again so the babies should be ready to go in December. I want another girl. There's no way we're going to start raising guinea pigs!

Happy Halloween

 I volunteered to help at Ethan and Mia's Halloween parties this year. I made sure I had the day off so I could help. I made vampire donuts for their classes. We brought 6 dozen donuts to school. Riley helped me make most of them. They were pretty fun to put together and the kids really liked them.

Both of the kids were excited and surprised to see me at school. I tried to split my time equally between each class. Next year, I'll sign up for a different holiday for each child. Lesson learned.

 Mia wanted to be a horse for her school party. She was so excited to slip into her costume. It was fun watching her interact with her class. She was very quiet and very shy with the kids.

Each child had to introduce their moms to the class. When it was Mia's turn, she absolutely froze. I felt so bad for her because I was really shy in school. She wouldn't say my name and the teacher finally asked me to say my name. When we got home, I asked her why she didn't say my name. She told me that she forgot what it was. :)

 Mia's class played the mummy game. They had to wrap up a classmate with white paper. Mia didn't want to participate in the game. She wanted to watch and stand back. That's exactly how I was in school. (The little boy with the superman costume is one of Mia's boyfriends. His name is Brody and he was in her class for preschool.)

They also made picture frames and bookmarks. One of the moms is a photographer and she took pictures of each child. I'm excited to see the pictures!

Here is Mia's class picture. She is in the second row on the right. The other parents sent along candy and gift bags for each child. They were so excited to see all of the goodies. I really love this age. I wish they could stay this small forever.

 Ethan wanted to be iron man for his class party. He was really excited for the party. Ethan was a little more outgoing in class and tried all of the games. He's kind of a goofball in school. I hope he doesn't act that way all of the time.

Ethan's class played quite a few games. They had boxes filled with eyeballs, brains, and witches fingers and they had to guess what was in there. They also played plinko and had a tootsie roll throw.

I don't know if you notice the bandaids on Ethan's forehead. He jumped off of Grandpa's boat and smacked his head on the cement. He was worried that the other kids were going to laugh at him, so we put bandaids on his forehead.

Here is Ethan's class picture. He is in the back row with the iron man costume.Their class also had a lot of goodies to take home. Their party was at the end of the day, so the kids rode home with me. They were pretty happy about that. They usually have to ride the bus and it takes an hour to get home.

 Mike got off work a little early so we could head over to Sarah's house for supper. The kids were itching to go trick-or-treating. Mike was bacon, I was an egg, Kelly was little red riding hood, Mia was Klawdeen wolf from Monster High, Riley was a unicorn, and Ethan was wolverine.

It was funny watching them go from house to house. They didn't walk. They ran--all 6 of them. They were really fast too. Riley and Jude are usually the ones that we end up carrying but they walked/ran the majority of the time.

They got so much candy. It was ridiculous!