Happy Halloween!

We had a very eventful Halloween this year. We started out with a birthday party for Ellie and Michael. Ellie turned 4 and Michael turns this week! They invited many friends and everyone got to dress up in their Halloween costumes.


We played pop the balloon on the trampoline:

We made candy necklaces and bracelets:


We ate donuts off a string:



They were supposed to eat it without their hands, but a few people (including Nate) cheated:

We went on a bug hunt:
And had a great time!

After the party we went to a friends house to have a barbeque...it was lots of fun.

Then the kids and dad carved pumpkins, and they got re-dressed up and went trick or treating:
Adam was Frankenstein, Michael was a wizard, Ellie was a witch and Nate was Tigger! Emma and Lily came over and went trick or treating with us:

Lily was a cute cowgirl and Emma was a witch!



Last night, Joe and I went to a Halloween party. Here is a picture of our costumes. Joe's is a leisure suit that his late grandpa, Aut used to wear.

Happy Halloween!

Joe lost Nate

...in weight. It's official, this morning Joe weighed in 27 pounds lighter than when he started his diet at the end of August. (That is how much Nate weighs). Nate is a lot of weight to lug around when I am walking around everyday, so I can attest to the fact that that is a LOT of weight! Doesn't he look great? Joe looks really good skinny.
How did he do it? He started with a 40 day cycle of the hCG diet. Briefly, hCG is the hormone that women secrete when they are pregnant. When you take this hormone and you are not pregnant, it causes your body to release your fat stores to use as energy. He found that when he was taking the hormone, he would only eat about 500 calories a day, and yet he never got headaches and wasn't feeling hungry all the time. He still had cravings and the desire to eat, but he didn't feel low energy like he needed to eat or he would be ill. The side effects that we noticed were that he was more moody (just like me when I am pregnant) and by the end of the day he would be exhausted...so that he couldn't do all the extra projects that he usually does. We found he did actually need more sleep too.

His 40 day cycle ended and he had lost 22 pounds. Part of the diet is that after your hormone cycle, you eat minimal carbs for the next 6 weeks. For Joe, he has put himself on the quick weight loss center diet, very similar to the south beach diet. He is not starving himself, just not eating carbs. Since he started the maintenance, he has lost another 5 pounds (its been about 2 1/2 weeks. We like to call it the "Quick Nate Loss Center Diet!"

Here's a snap shot of him shortly before he went on a diet...so you could compare:

Merry Christmas

In our house, one of us will decide what we want for Christmas (or birthday or other holidays), and then we will approach the other one and open a discussion about buying the item, the price, where we will get it, etc. About a month ago, Joe decided that he would like either a dirt bike or a 4 wheeler for Christmas. Since the kids can't participate in dirt bikes yet, I suggested he look toward a 4 wheeler. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had the official discussion about if it would be okay to get as a Christmas present. I approved it as a Christmas present, and then....what do you know....we now own a 4-wheeler for Joe. He spent a lot of time on Saturday riding it around our property and chasing the boys on their's. Merry Christmas Joe, hope you don't tire of your present BEFORE Christmas!

We recently replaced Adam's four wheeler as the old one wouldn't start without being jumped...not helpful for a 7 year old to use it! He loves chasing Joe around!

1000 Words

Some Old Film

So, the last few times I have tried to edit my pictures on my memory card, the computer would not let me save the images. Then I put the memory card back in my camera and attempted to take a picture, only to find that I couldn't take any pictures because the card was "locked." I pulled the memory card out and looked at it, and the tab that locks it was broken off, apparently in the "locked" position. Well, at least I can access my pictures. I quickly ordered a new card on amazon ($10 shipped and 4 X as big).
Then Saturday came and I wanted to take the kids to the pumpkin patch. I didn't have a new memory card yet, but one was on order so I didn't want to go buy a new one (plus Walmart's prices were significantly higher than amazons). So I found my old file SLR camera. It had film in it, but the batteries were dead. $17 later, I had new batteries. There were 7 pictures left so I was able to get pics of all the kids at the pumpkin patch. Then I went to develop the film and see what was on the old film. ($7 just to get a CD, digital is SOO the way to go). Since the film was so old, it was grainy...also not so good. The pictures on the film, turned out to be from Adam's 5th birthday. That was February 07. SO I had to post the pictures cause some are really cute.

This is Ellie and Teia. They were both one.

Cute Adam about to blow out his candle...look at those cute cheeks.

Here's another one...

This one has a profile of Michael...no glasses in the orange and red shirt. Kade has his back to us.

This was also on there...look how little the boys are!
The rest of the pictures were not exciting (a pregnancy test picture...must have been from Nate) and some blurry grainy pics of Adam's birthday. I really am grateful for digital...it is SO much more usable and cheaper!

Pumpkin Patch

Joe was out of town last weekend, so we decided to get out of the house and go visit the pumpkins. It was very rainy and a little cold, but the kids were excited to see the pumpkins.
I am so cheap so I told the kids that one of them (it was Adam this time) could pick out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch, and then we would go to Kroger and the other two could pick some. There was some initial grumbling, but they got over it and I got 2 pumpkins for the price of one at Kroger!

As you can see, it's been pretty rainy and wet here.

Monkey Boys

About a year ago, Joe built a "fort" for Adam. Adam immediately didn't care for it because it wasn't how he pictured it being (how do you know when your kids are spoiled)... Well, recently, he found a new use for the fort...or at least for the roof of it.
Ellie gets really upset because I won't put her up there (are you kidding...NO WAY)!

Meanwhile, the kids have learned how to climb to the top of the fence and walk along it. It is a shortcut to the house behind us, so they try to employ it often. I was amazed that Michael hopped right up there with them and started doing it too.

I guess it's official...I do have boys. The other two boys in the picture are some of Adam's friends that live near us.

Cousins

I got to watch the Frost cousins for a few hours this weekend. The babies were so cute together. As soon as Nate say William, he lit up and said "hi." Then a little later, William wouldn't come to me, he didn't want to leave the safety of his dad's arms...until he saw Nate come up to us, and he was more than happy to get down and play with him. Honestly, I have never seen two kids this age play better together than these two did.

Nate has his favorite things in our house to harass...one is the shoe bins. He and William had a great time trying on Ellie's shoes. Nate settled on Ellie's red boots, while William decided he liked her tennis shoes (which ironically are a hand-me-down from Lily).
I put this next picture in because William is SO cute...look at those cute cheeks and brown cow eyes!

Obviously, Nate gets the smile for the camera idea!

The two boys were so cute, they followed each other around the whole night, make one mess after another. I am so glad that Austin and Koni live near so they can be such good friends...I am sure there will be many years of these cute boys playing together!

PreSchool Field Trip

Ellie's preschool went on a field trip to a place called 7 acre wood. It was a lot of fun, mostly because there were many of her friends (and their moms) with us. 7 acre wood is a little park (7 acres big) that has a mini golf course and a petting zoo and a playground and other fun toys that young kids can enjoy doing.

Ellie tried the mini golf, and did pretty well, she did need some lessons on how to hold the club.

Nate ran off and found some people who were going into the petting zoo, so he went and joined with their group and pet some goats. He really enjoyed the playground the most, however.

Ellie quickly found her friends that had been in her preschool last year, and the group of them ran around together playing all sorts of fun games.

The Zoo

Joe's company does an annual "company picnic," which is really an annual event where they buy tickets for everyone to attend the zoo or a family park and then make everyone matching shirts and pay for lunch. This year it was the zoo. Since I can only convince Joe to go to the zoo about once every two years, we had to jump on the opportunity (plus the Houston zoo is kind of expensive for a family of 6). We called our friends that go to the zoo so often that they have the names of the zoo babies memorized and they joined us for the trip. It was nice to have friends with us, they kept our kids distracted so there was minimal whining.
The kids really enjoyed all of the animals. Nate even noticed them...admittedly he was most interested in the pigeons that frequented the eating picnic areas, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.
This was our group photo...Michael purposely closed his eyes.

All the kids...they couldn't stand normal and smile, that was asking too much!

I put this next one in so you could appreciate what Nate did whenever he was out of his stroller...

The shirts were helpful to keep track of the kids, although we did still lose Ellie for a couple of minutes once....and as an added bonus, if we go to any UT games, we will be set!