Chickens and Halloween and Surprise Time Change!

 Well, there's nothing like waking up to a time change that you didn't know was happening!! I heard the boys up and peered at my phone clock through one slitted eye to see 6:20am staring back at me. We recently laid down the law and enforced some morning rules about times they are allowed up to read and then to play. (ex. on the weekends: stare at the wall or go back to sleep if it's before 7am, read a book if you're awake between 7-7:30 and after 7:30, they may get out of bed and play. Simple!)

So I threw on my robe, went to their room and said in my evil-mommy-perturbed-by-the-early-hour voice, "It is only 6:20 in the morning! What are you doing up?!" And of course, to pierce my heart, they turned from the books they were reading so nicely in their beds and replied in their innocent voices, "But mommy, it's 7:20!"  What?! Oops:)

I roasted a whole chicken in my cast iron skillet a couple of weeks ago with potatoes and carrots nestled around it and it was SO yummy!! Juicy and tender and delicious! Cheaper than store bought, too:)

My mom and I have been going to story time together for the past month and a half or two with E and Little E (my niece) on Wednesdays. A couple weeks ago, we decided to kill time afterwards by going to the mall to let them play! They had a lot of fun!

Getting so big!

Here is Eliana watching Daddy cut the cake at her birthday party:)

And playing with her new favorite Elsa doll the next morning! She loves this doll!

 

Feeling very proud of herself that she is learning to write so well! The pictures always turn out badly on this blog so if you can't read it, she wrote all of our family names, first and last!

Trick or Treat from Queen Elsa, Captain America and Samuel the Magician! Samuel didn't want to go trick or treating this year but changed his mind at the last minute (seriously THE last minute) so he threw on last year's costume. He was upset about it but ended up having fun. Next year, we'll plan better!

We met up with Rapunzel (a.k.a. Cousin E!) and found a nice neighborhood to collect some loot:) Our little neighborhood is so filled with children that they are all out trick or treating and no one is home passing out candy! So everyone has to find a different neighborhood to go to. Isn't that funny? Anyone happen to notice that the girls have bigger candy buckets than the boys? Hmmm, how did that happen?! People were more than willing to put multiple pieces in cute little princess buckets and the princesses were more than willing to accept them:)

Thankfully, we have places to donate our unwanted candy this year. Ben took the extra yummy stuff (a.k.a. chocolate!) to work the next day where it was inhaled in mere minutes by a bunch of hungry warehouse workers and we are taking all the non-chocolately/peanutty stuff to Awana. They have a big candy bucket and the kids get to pick out one piece every week if they say verses. So we were just left with the top 15 pieces in our kiddos buckets and a few extras for their dearest mummy and daddy and that's it!

Happy Sunny Sunday!