Decorating for Christmas

It's our family's tradition to decorate for Christmas over Thanksgiving break while Daddy's home with us for a few days.  The last few years we've done it the day before Thanksgiving.  It's always fun to see the decorations come up and bring in that initial spirit of the Christmas season.  It's fun that our girls are big enough to help!

Savannah got bored with decorating and took a break to take pictures of everyone for a while :)

Watching a Christmas classic "Miracle on 34th Street"

What the tree looks like from Savy's point of view :)


After all that decorating, our girls were tuckered out!  They like to sleep with their beds close together and it cracks me up when I find them sleeping in the same position :)

The next day, Aurora found the star in a different box.  We let Savannah help put it up this year because she hasn't really been big enough to help do it until now.  Thanks for being such great helpers, girls!


Bring on Christmas!!

Pumpkin Smash Bash at Jaker's

A few days after Halloween, we went back to Jaker's one last time before the end of the season for the Pumpkin Smash Bash.  Basically it's a party where anyone can come and smash up any remaining pumpkins in creative ways.  The girls and I had a lot of fun (Daddy had to work late that day and wasn't able to join us).  We were joined by some of our favorite Aussies, and we're always glad when we can be together :)

The main attraction and favorite way for most people to smash a pumpkin is to be lifted up by a crane and then drop the pumpkin from 100+ feet in the air.  We watched other people do it for a little bit while we waited for our Aussies to join us.

Our girls always love the petting zoo!

It was fun to see more of the animals up and moving around this time.  I thought maybe they were up and about trying to keep warm.  It was a pretty chilly, windy day!

Even the kangaroo was up!

It looked like the pig was biting the sheep and Savannah kept yelling at the pig telling him to get down and "stop that"! Haha!

After getting their fill of the animals, they were ready to start smashing pumpkins!  Way to go, Aurora!

They realized how hard pumpkins really are--some of them were pretty hard to smash up!

Then it was Savannah's turn!

She had a hard time with it, and because I was taking pictures, the nice guy jumped in to help her :)

And that's when our Aussies joined us.  Go, R!

And Mr. P!

Tracee wanted to do the crane drop with her kids before the line got too long.  Our girls, of course, didn't want to do it.  I was totally fine with that but we took pictures of Tracee, R and P up in the basket dropping their pumpkins!

There they go!  It was really high up!

Next, we went to the pumpkin tower.  Aurora was even scared to try that one (even though it was her idea), but she did it--with a little help from Mommy!

Savy didn't mind it too much.
(Thanks, Trace for taking pictures for me!)

I think Aurora's favorite way to smash the pumpkins was using the trebuchet!  Savannah didn't want to try this method though.
Putting her pumpkin in the basket.

Pulling the rope to fling it!  She did it all by herself!  Way to go, Rori!!

Then we had some yummy doughnuts and apple cider and the kids all got their faces painted!
P's shark was pretty cool!

Rori's was a pretty pink fairy :)

Savy's unicorn in progress.

So pretty!

Our cute girls with their awesome face paint!

Trying out some hula-hoops :)

And we couldn't pass up one last chance to play in the corn pit!  Although, Aurora saw some bigger boys climbing on the hay bales and then that's all she wanted to do too.

 
 It was pretty fun to go smash pumpkins together!  And, the best part about it was that it was all free!!  Hopefully Daddy can come with us next year!

Halloween 2015

Aurora got to dress up in her costume two days in a row!  They had a party at preschool the day before Halloween and they learned lots of fun festive songs.  I was treated to a little performance when I went to pick her up after school that day.  It was really cute!  Aurora was super excited to go to school as Elsa and bring treats for all of her friends.  Special days for kids are the best!

And of course Savannah had to be Anna while Rori was at school.

On Halloween morning we got everyone ready to go and headed over to Jaker's again for our last chance to play before it closed for the season.  It's always fun to spend some time at Jaker's!

Chillin' in the corn.

Some sweet moves! :)

Doggy pile on Daddy!

I think she looks a little too cozy right there. Haha!

 She's such a funny kid.  Love you, Savy!

Concerned about an "owie" she got on her thumb from going down the tube slides.

Up on top of the hay tower.


I'm not exactly adventurous these days, but Daddy had to get a shot of me down on the ground by myself :)

Daddy got the idea that it would be fun to get some shots of him jumping off the hay tower.  The first shot I got was pretty good.

Then we just about died laughing because every other shot I took after that first one turned out like this...with him in pretty much the exact same position.  I just couldn't get the timing right with my trigger finger.  I guess you really had to be there. But we thought it was hilarious ;)

Got a good one of Rori though!

Our cuties watching some people ride on the horses.

Me and my lovey.

The pumpkin tower was pretty cool.  I was bummed we didn't get a good shot of the girls in front of it.  This was about the best we could do.  Oh well.

The kangaroo at the petting zoo was huge compared to last year.  The little guy grew a lot in the last year!

His fur feels so soft!  I guess Savy thought it would feel better to pet him with her toes though.  Silly girl!  And she started a trend because a couple other kids watching close by started taking their shoes off too! Haha!

Halloween evening we got the girls dressed up in their costumes again before heading out to trick-or-treat to our family in the area and then with our Aussies for the rest of the night.
We thought they made a pretty cute pair of Elsa and Anna!

Our beautiful girls!

Love it!

 Our sweet little SavANNAh.  She didn't like that we said her name like that :/ Haha.

Our beautiful little Elsa for the night.


Our crew ready to go trick-or-treating!

 Let the fun begin!

I was impressed with Aurora that she took the initiative to tell people at just about every house we went to that she couldn't have peanuts, after saying "Trick-or-treat!" of course.  She's a smart girl for remembering about her peanut allergy and knowing that we'd take away any candy she couldn't have.  She did pretty well for herself that night!  We didn't even tell her to say that to people.  I was proud of her for coming up with that on her own.

Happy Halloween!