Lovely October

Halloween! Yay! I'm extra excited this year for Halloween, because last year at this time, I was oh so morning sick while prego with little Claire. I am sad when holidays are clouded by not feeling well (even though it was for a good cause!)... so I'm particularly thankful to be feeling good this time around. :) Since I'm so proud that I decorated, let's take a little tour, shall we?...

We visited my sister-in-law, Emily's, house this past weekend, and she had her house so cutely decorated for Halloween... so I copied some of her recent finds (felt pumpkin garland from Target, and the crows below from Michaels- Martha Stewart craft line)- also swiped this idea from here for the candy corn and candles display.





Now let's hear some applause! I SEWED something!! And it's not even ugly!! haha! Found (and pinned!) this oh so clever idea for a Halloween inspired pillow... I didn't necessarily intend on making it, because I'm generally scared of sewing, but Ben encouraged me and we all went to Hobby Lobby for supplies. While Ben was working that evening, I made them. Yay! Now I feel inspired to maybe sew something else!






Aw, wasn't that fun? Now for something else. More Jake preschool! This week we continued working on more writing type activities, like writing in sand...

warning- there WAS some sand throwing that occured

And Becca joined us for some preschool animal alphabet coloring. We are to the letter D. I've been saving each of the letters (and I've been coloring them too!), with the thought that I'll make them into an ABC book when we're done with them all. Oh, and ever since I started to let Jake use the markers when coloring, he's decided it's super fun, and will color for a lengthy amount of time...


And this is random, but I thought this was cute - Jake likes to make "trains" with the chairs and stools in the kitchen - most recently he carefully dragged Claire's bouncy seat over to be the caboose of his train... as he did it, he says "c'mon claire! get on the train!". aw.


So, the weather has been AMAZING the past few days. We suddenly went from 100 degrees to 75 degrees, and I just can't help but want to spend all my time outside! It literally feels like a breath of fresh air. Also, Ben has been working A LOT recently. In September he found himself a moonlighting job at an urgent care across town, so even on his days off from working at the hospital, he's often at the urgent care. This past week he had a day off work, but his moonlighting shift didn't start till the evening, so we spent the day playing, and getting some projects done around the house. My favorite part of the day was getting out with the family (minus Emma who was at school) for a little jog/bike ride in this lovely weather. :) ...







We enjoyed being outside so much, that this morning we decided to get out and do the same thing (this time minus Ben)... I put Jake and Claire in the jogger, and Emma and Becca rode their bikes - we made our way to the park and played for a good two hours - such a great morning...
















Since Ben was going to be working a long shift today, we later headed to the hospital to eat lunch with daddy. :)


I'm currently super happy, because Claire is napping, and all the other kids are playing in the backyard at 3 in the afternoon and they aren't even sweating. Hooray!