Warning: Pic heavy post ahead...
So, Halloween isn't technically until Monday (which stinks in the grand scheme of things) but we have been having so much fun this fall and Halloween season, that I wanted to bring back the Friday Favorites post for a week to recap some of the highlights.
This year we hit up the pumpkin patch near our house early because we mainly wanted to take pictures. =) We have plans to go back this weekend and pick up an actual pumpkin to carve because we didn't want to buy one too early when we were there the first time. We went early because we wanted to try to plan to go with our neighbors and their little girl again this year. Luckily, we were able to find a day and even more lucky... it wasn't crowded at all. Last yer we were closer to Halloween and there were a ton of people there. This year, there were just a few people around which let us take our time and get some pretty good pictures of the kids. Both kids also picked out small pumpkins of their own for the season. It was so crazy with the difference between last year and this year. Last year, Will wasn't walking yet. This year he was OFF. He wasn't super excited about the big monster blow up initially until we explained it wasn't real but he loved the pumpkins. Kenzie spent the time we were there asking me to to take pictures of her and then striking her model pose. Crazy kid. She is certainly a ham.
Then, we had Will's birthday which you can read about HERE. You can also check out his 2 year letter HERE if you are interested. I love having a fall birthday in the house. Everyone else is July so Will's is a nice break from the norm. We have football going on, slightly cooler weather, and an overall feeling of change is in the air. We had a blast celebrating TWO this year with him.
Steven and I ran our first 5 mile race ever and we both did pretty well for first timers. We were super proud of our performance and are definitely looking forward to our upcoming races. Our race recap is HERE for anyone interested. =)
We finally got our first real taste of "fall" weather in the last week or so. It has been hanging around longer than expected too so it's been a real treat. One of my favorite things about fall is opening windows and doors and letting the cool breeze come in. I also love breaking out the long sleeves periodically (but not needing jackets yet). Kenzie's fall fashion sense is my favorite. She practically wants to live in her boots. Guess we will need to find her some wintery boots for this year again in case it ever gets colder than it is now. She's a flip flop kid but also a boot kid. Best of both worlds thing, I guess. She's adaptable if nothing else. She is perfectly happy spending all her time at the pool and beach but always game for watching some football in her leggings and sweater dresses. Really, she just loves every experience.
We had our church's Fall Festival last weekend. We created a trunk again this year. I was pretty proud of our Wizard of Oz themed trunk. It's my favorite movie of all time and I was happy to hear everyone say they liked it and a good number of young children express how much they like the movie. There we also quite a few children that had no idea what we were going for because they haven't seen the movie. Blasphemous! (Also, it made me feel old...) We also had the kids wear their Halloween costumes for the first time. Technically, we trial ran Kenzie's the night before and I'm glad we did because I got some good pictures of her then. At the festival itself, she was more interested in going on the bounce house slides and in the bounce houses so she didn't spent much time in her costume. Also, her costumes tend to not hold up too long with her because she gets to crazy and tulle isn't exactly the most forgiving material. Will, however, let me leave his costume on long enough to enter into the costume contest and he won! He was super cute as Mr. Fredrickson from Up. I'm glad we got some good pictures of him at the festival because I don't think we are going to go as all out for Halloween itself. The balloons aren't exactly cheap and he broke his cane almost immediately upon it being handed to him (if you look, you will see it is taped together in the pictures) though I do plan to fix it because it is just adorable. Plus, the balloons aren't super feasible in the wind so we don't want to make him deal with that again on Monday night when he is likely to be more concerned with candy anyway. He will wear his costume but won't have the balloons so I'm glad to have pictures already. The kids had a blast at the festival (as usual) and we feel so thankful to have this church family. Side note: Kenzie won her first year entering the costume contest, too. I think it's time for me to retire. =) THIS post has her costume. She was one cute calico Kenzie cat.
Along with the cooler weather, came the ability to eat (comfortably) on our patio for dinner. So, this weekend we grilled some burgers and hot dogs and had a "picnic" on the patio. I foresee a lot of this in our future this season. Both kids love it. Steven and I were talking about how our grilling season actually starts now and goes through spring or so. Confused Floridians.
We have been trying to get outside even more than normal with the wonderful weather and have spent some more time at parks lately. It just gets too hot in the summer to do this often, so we are having a blast playing while the weather is so nice. Also, with Kenzie's school schedule and then Will's nap, we only have a few days a week that both kids can go. I can take Will during the week but we only have weekends and Mondays if Kenzie wants to go really and our weekends are so packed. I seriously don't know that I remember what "down time" is. Anyway, the kids usually go on acorn hunts while we are at any park (or even outside our own home). They love to have slide races and Kenzie has finally gotten the hang of pumping her legs on a swing (though it doesn't always work effectively... she has the idea down).
Last Tuesday we went to our local Chick Fil A for their pumpkin party. The kids dressed up. One awesome thing about having so much dress up in this house is that Kenzie could probably attend 15 different Halloween events and be something different at every one. She decided to go with Sheriff Callie (which is one of my favorite outfits of hers) and we dressed Will up as a pirate. He was so excited. He kept singing "Yo ho! Yo ho! Pirates life for me!" (We like Disney in case you haven't noticed.) We got there right as it started and both kids were given a styrofoam pumpkin. Props to Chick Fil A for thinking that one through. Both kids can keep their pumpkins as long as they want and I can probably repaint them orange at some point and we could use them again next year. Will was also given a cow because this is his birthday month. We had dinner and both kids elected to turn in their toy for ice cream so they could partake in the sundae toppings. It was interesting. This is the first time they were willing to give up their toys for ice cream but both kids really wanted to try out the sundae bar so ice cream won. Will downed all of his but did cry for a second once when he gave himself a brain freeze. Kenzie didn't finish hers but in her defense, it was a LOT of ice cream for a little body. Kenzie wanted to have her face painted by the clown, but the wait was too long. I promised her she could do it next month because now that I know to get on the list as soon as the clown shows up. We ended up letting the kids play outside on the play area for a while instead of having their faces painted and they were happy with that. They really liked it and kids eat free with each adult purchase so I guess we will be going back next month. Our Chick Fil A does it the last Tuesday of every month (for any of our local friends that might be interested) and they will send an email notification beforehand if you are enrolled in the Kids' Club. This was our first time going as they haven't had the actual Kids' Club long, but I definitely see this being a normal monthly thing for us.
This coming weekend we have some fun things planned. We are going to the soft opening of the new Tijuana Flats. We registered and all 4 of us will get complimentary food and drink as the restaurant is training their new employees. Um.... can't beat that. One of our favorite restaurants. For free? For all 4 of us?? We are there. We were lucky enough to get a reservation to the soft opening. I heard they were gone in under an hour or something crazy like that. We also get to be some of the first people to eat in TF. We are super excited! This is one of our favorite restaurants. Our new location has an amazing looking outside area too which made both kids very happy as one of their favorite things about TF is being able to eat outside. After that, we are headed over to Disney for the afternoon. The weather has been so nice that we wanted to get out and enjoy it. We haven't been to Hollywood Studios in quite some time and we found that there were FP available for Fantasmic, which is one of our favorite things in the parks so we grabbed those along with another couple of FP and will spend the afternoon/evening at Disney. This should be an interesting trip as it will be our first one since potty training Will. We will see how it goes. We have lots of extra clothes packed. =) I also don't know if Hollywood Studios has many fall decorations, but I'm interested to find out. We didn't go during fall last year so I don't know. They have so much going on there as they transition into having the Star Wars area. I'm going to miss the Osbourne Lights this year but we have heard they are doing a new Christmas related things so we will definitely be trying that out when it starts up. Then, Monday is Halloween. Usually Kenzie has dance but the studio is closing early so in lieu of a normal class, they are having a Halloween Dance Party early in the evening before they close. Kenzie is so excited. It will be a larger group of kids with extra teachers, they get to dress up, and they will dance. As of right now, she plans to wear her Rapunzel dress but we will see how it goes. I won't be surprised to see her choice change because she wants to make sure she has a good spinning dress and I think her Elsa or Sheriff Callie are better spinning options. #priorities My parents are also coming into town on Monday to go trick or treating with us since they missed the festival at church this year. They should be early enough to see Kenzie dance, too. We are also trick or treating with our neighbors so it should be a fun evening.
Speaking of dance, Kenzie's class has been learning their tap routine for their Christmas performance. They are dancing to Up on the Rooftop. Kenzie has been practicing a lot at home this time. It is interesting to see how different she is even a few months later. Last spring she rarely wanted to rehearse her dance, but now she does it all the time wanting to make sure she knows it. I'm loving watching her come into her own as a little dancer.
Anyway, those are just some of the highlights of the last few weeks as we enjoy fall. I can't wait to continue making new memories. We have so much coming up and before we know it, it is going to be almost Christmas and our Advent Activities will make their return. Such a fun time of year!
So, Halloween isn't technically until Monday (which stinks in the grand scheme of things) but we have been having so much fun this fall and Halloween season, that I wanted to bring back the Friday Favorites post for a week to recap some of the highlights.
This year we hit up the pumpkin patch near our house early because we mainly wanted to take pictures. =) We have plans to go back this weekend and pick up an actual pumpkin to carve because we didn't want to buy one too early when we were there the first time. We went early because we wanted to try to plan to go with our neighbors and their little girl again this year. Luckily, we were able to find a day and even more lucky... it wasn't crowded at all. Last yer we were closer to Halloween and there were a ton of people there. This year, there were just a few people around which let us take our time and get some pretty good pictures of the kids. Both kids also picked out small pumpkins of their own for the season. It was so crazy with the difference between last year and this year. Last year, Will wasn't walking yet. This year he was OFF. He wasn't super excited about the big monster blow up initially until we explained it wasn't real but he loved the pumpkins. Kenzie spent the time we were there asking me to to take pictures of her and then striking her model pose. Crazy kid. She is certainly a ham.
Then, we had Will's birthday which you can read about HERE. You can also check out his 2 year letter HERE if you are interested. I love having a fall birthday in the house. Everyone else is July so Will's is a nice break from the norm. We have football going on, slightly cooler weather, and an overall feeling of change is in the air. We had a blast celebrating TWO this year with him.
Steven and I ran our first 5 mile race ever and we both did pretty well for first timers. We were super proud of our performance and are definitely looking forward to our upcoming races. Our race recap is HERE for anyone interested. =)
We finally got our first real taste of "fall" weather in the last week or so. It has been hanging around longer than expected too so it's been a real treat. One of my favorite things about fall is opening windows and doors and letting the cool breeze come in. I also love breaking out the long sleeves periodically (but not needing jackets yet). Kenzie's fall fashion sense is my favorite. She practically wants to live in her boots. Guess we will need to find her some wintery boots for this year again in case it ever gets colder than it is now. She's a flip flop kid but also a boot kid. Best of both worlds thing, I guess. She's adaptable if nothing else. She is perfectly happy spending all her time at the pool and beach but always game for watching some football in her leggings and sweater dresses. Really, she just loves every experience.
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| I feel like she could be holding a pumpkin spice latte here and look like a miniature model for Starbucks... |
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| Will obviously doesn't get the model pose thing. He's just into photobombing his sister. |
Along with the cooler weather, came the ability to eat (comfortably) on our patio for dinner. So, this weekend we grilled some burgers and hot dogs and had a "picnic" on the patio. I foresee a lot of this in our future this season. Both kids love it. Steven and I were talking about how our grilling season actually starts now and goes through spring or so. Confused Floridians.
We have been trying to get outside even more than normal with the wonderful weather and have spent some more time at parks lately. It just gets too hot in the summer to do this often, so we are having a blast playing while the weather is so nice. Also, with Kenzie's school schedule and then Will's nap, we only have a few days a week that both kids can go. I can take Will during the week but we only have weekends and Mondays if Kenzie wants to go really and our weekends are so packed. I seriously don't know that I remember what "down time" is. Anyway, the kids usually go on acorn hunts while we are at any park (or even outside our own home). They love to have slide races and Kenzie has finally gotten the hang of pumping her legs on a swing (though it doesn't always work effectively... she has the idea down).
Last Tuesday we went to our local Chick Fil A for their pumpkin party. The kids dressed up. One awesome thing about having so much dress up in this house is that Kenzie could probably attend 15 different Halloween events and be something different at every one. She decided to go with Sheriff Callie (which is one of my favorite outfits of hers) and we dressed Will up as a pirate. He was so excited. He kept singing "Yo ho! Yo ho! Pirates life for me!" (We like Disney in case you haven't noticed.) We got there right as it started and both kids were given a styrofoam pumpkin. Props to Chick Fil A for thinking that one through. Both kids can keep their pumpkins as long as they want and I can probably repaint them orange at some point and we could use them again next year. Will was also given a cow because this is his birthday month. We had dinner and both kids elected to turn in their toy for ice cream so they could partake in the sundae toppings. It was interesting. This is the first time they were willing to give up their toys for ice cream but both kids really wanted to try out the sundae bar so ice cream won. Will downed all of his but did cry for a second once when he gave himself a brain freeze. Kenzie didn't finish hers but in her defense, it was a LOT of ice cream for a little body. Kenzie wanted to have her face painted by the clown, but the wait was too long. I promised her she could do it next month because now that I know to get on the list as soon as the clown shows up. We ended up letting the kids play outside on the play area for a while instead of having their faces painted and they were happy with that. They really liked it and kids eat free with each adult purchase so I guess we will be going back next month. Our Chick Fil A does it the last Tuesday of every month (for any of our local friends that might be interested) and they will send an email notification beforehand if you are enrolled in the Kids' Club. This was our first time going as they haven't had the actual Kids' Club long, but I definitely see this being a normal monthly thing for us.
This coming weekend we have some fun things planned. We are going to the soft opening of the new Tijuana Flats. We registered and all 4 of us will get complimentary food and drink as the restaurant is training their new employees. Um.... can't beat that. One of our favorite restaurants. For free? For all 4 of us?? We are there. We were lucky enough to get a reservation to the soft opening. I heard they were gone in under an hour or something crazy like that. We also get to be some of the first people to eat in TF. We are super excited! This is one of our favorite restaurants. Our new location has an amazing looking outside area too which made both kids very happy as one of their favorite things about TF is being able to eat outside. After that, we are headed over to Disney for the afternoon. The weather has been so nice that we wanted to get out and enjoy it. We haven't been to Hollywood Studios in quite some time and we found that there were FP available for Fantasmic, which is one of our favorite things in the parks so we grabbed those along with another couple of FP and will spend the afternoon/evening at Disney. This should be an interesting trip as it will be our first one since potty training Will. We will see how it goes. We have lots of extra clothes packed. =) I also don't know if Hollywood Studios has many fall decorations, but I'm interested to find out. We didn't go during fall last year so I don't know. They have so much going on there as they transition into having the Star Wars area. I'm going to miss the Osbourne Lights this year but we have heard they are doing a new Christmas related things so we will definitely be trying that out when it starts up. Then, Monday is Halloween. Usually Kenzie has dance but the studio is closing early so in lieu of a normal class, they are having a Halloween Dance Party early in the evening before they close. Kenzie is so excited. It will be a larger group of kids with extra teachers, they get to dress up, and they will dance. As of right now, she plans to wear her Rapunzel dress but we will see how it goes. I won't be surprised to see her choice change because she wants to make sure she has a good spinning dress and I think her Elsa or Sheriff Callie are better spinning options. #priorities My parents are also coming into town on Monday to go trick or treating with us since they missed the festival at church this year. They should be early enough to see Kenzie dance, too. We are also trick or treating with our neighbors so it should be a fun evening.
Speaking of dance, Kenzie's class has been learning their tap routine for their Christmas performance. They are dancing to Up on the Rooftop. Kenzie has been practicing a lot at home this time. It is interesting to see how different she is even a few months later. Last spring she rarely wanted to rehearse her dance, but now she does it all the time wanting to make sure she knows it. I'm loving watching her come into her own as a little dancer.
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