The Neverending Halloween

I kind of forgot that I started this post awhile ago so now I will quickly try and finish it up. Halloween was an 8 day long extravaganza at our house. It started out the Saturday before the Saturday before Halloween with a free event at a shopping complex by our house. They had a free petting zoo and bounce houses along with candy of course. Netta didn't love the petting zoo like I thought she would. She is going through this weird phase were stuff that never bothered her before now scares her. She has started making me pick her up in parking lots if she hears birds and she says "The birds scare me." I have no idea where that is coming from. Anyway, the bounce house was a bigger hit. Here is EZ in his Super Why costume.

The next day my sister Sarah and her husband Casey came over. I think it was actually so Sarah could interview John and I for a class assignment, but it turned into a Halloweenish activity when they decided to make masks. Netta and Casey look especially frightening.

Later that week EZ had a Halloween party at school and while he was there Netta, King and I went to the festival that the city of Round Rock puts on for preschoolers. It was really windy, but really fun. Netta opted to go as a witch and this isn't the best picture, but it was the only one I could get because the wind kept blowing her hat off.

King enjoyed himself as well.

On Friday, our church had it's annual Trunk or Treat party. I love it because it is so much easier to trick or treat in a parking lot with the kids than going door to door. Especially with Netta who loves to run away. The kids busted out some new costumes for this event. King got to wear the Chinese outfit I bought in NYC for EZ for his first Halloween.

EZ opted for a Superman costume this time. Not much difference, except way more muscles.

Netta was a kitty cat. She talked about being this for the last month since my sister Rachel came and bought her a cat mask from Target. Of course I don't think I managed to get a single picture of her with the whole costume on, but at least in this one you can tell she is a cat from her tail.

Saturday Sarah and Casey joined us again for some pumpkin carving. EZ loved his so much that he wouldn't let me put it outside, because he wanted to be able to see it all the time.

Then finally on Hallween we went with Sarah and Casey to UT for their Halloween activity. Basically all the student organizations on campus set up booths at the arena and kids could walk around and play games and get candy. We attempted to get a family picture, but was you can see it didn't turn out very well. We honestly don't have a single good picture of all 5 of us together. In fact that is the only one have at all. Luckily, I won a free photo shoot so hopefully some good family pics are on their way.

Meeting Lucy

While my dad and Winston were here visiting, my sister Meghan was busy giving birth to her baby girl Lucy. Pretty much as soon as I knew she was pregnant, I knew that I wanted to go visit and help her out when the baby was born. Of course John is awesome and was totally on board for me taking off for a long weekend. I also have an awesome sister and friends here that were willing to help out with the kiddies. I was lucky enough to get there when she was 6 days old. Obviously, King got to come with me. I am so excited that finally one of my kid's is going to have a cousin the same age on my side of the family. Here is a pic of King and Lucy meeting for the very first time. Can you tell he is older?

The poor girl had jaundice and had to be on a billy bed when we first got there. Luckily, it didn't last the whole time and I got to have plenty of chances to hold her.

On top of getting to meet Lucy and help out Meghan, I got to hang out with my sister Katie. Her husband was out of town part of the time and we stayed at her place so we had some good girl time.

King seemed to really take a liking to Lucy. So much so that he king of kept trying to rip her face off whenever he got close enough. Luckily, we were able to get this really cute picture before he attacked.

I wish I could have stayed longer, but it was an awesome trip. I admittedly got a little teary-eyed when it was time to go. It's hard to be so far from family, but luckily the sisters will be reuniting in January for a girl's weekend and of course Lucy will be joining us!

Winston Comes to Visit

This past month or so we have been blessed with quite a few visitors. My sister Rachel and her husband Robert came at the end of September and my parents and John's nephew Winston actually came to visit the same weekend in October. Unfortunately, I only have pictures documenting Winston's visit, so he gets the blog post dedicated to him. Winston is going to BYU and also writes for a music blog, which allows him to score some pretty sweet tickets to concerts. He just happened to score 2 press passes to Austin City Limits, a 3 day music festival held in duh Austin, so of course he flew down and John and him got to live it up for the weekend. Luckily like I said my parents came the same weekend so I was not left completely alone. That definitely helped fend off some of the jealously that John got to spend 3 days listening to awesome music, scoring free food and most importantly getting a break from the kiddies.

John, being the awesome dad that he is, did not completely neglect the kids that weekend. In fact kids under 10 were able to get into the festival for free and there was a whole "Austin Kiddie Limits" section, so John took EZ with them for part of one day. This picture of him and EZ is one of my all time favorites.

The kid part was amazing. EZ got all this cool free stuff and was able to do crafts, check out real instruments and even get a tatoo. He had so much fun that we are thinking we should buy tickets for at least one day next year and take all the kids. Here he is showing off all his swag.

After the concert was over, Winston had another day in a half to hang out. He was awesome and watched my older 2 kids so I could go do some clothes shopping one day. My kids absolutely adore him and they were more then happy to hang out with him instead of me. We also took Winston to see the ginormous bat colony that lives in downtown Austin. Here is is hanging out with Netta waiting for the bats to take off.

Finally, an adorable pic of Netta and EZ hanging out together while waiting. They have really started to play well together and I know it's cheesy, but it seriously melts my heart.