Halloween 2011

Yeah, I know my posts are always a little anticlimactic because they're always at least a month late, but here it goes anyway...

I think it's no secret now that I LOVE Halloween...everything about it. I start dreaming up what costumes we could make sometime in July (actually, most of the time sooner...I usually tuck away ideas throughout the year. I already know what half of us are going to be next year :)

Shane and I didn't really dress up this year...I know lame. Not sure what happened, but we still had fun with the kid's costumes.

Now I want you to know that I don't force my kids into their costumes. I do ask them what they want to be (yeah occasionally I plant ideas, but still :). Just lucky for me, they haven't wanted to be the commercial stuff yet (you know like Disney and what not...nothing wrong with those at all and i know they'll want to be those soon enough, but I can have a lot more fun with the generic stuff.).

Max requested to be a robot. So without further adieu, meet the xam bot 3000.

Max and I had a lot of fun together planning his costume. He gave a lot of great ideas and even drew a few blue prints. Here is one of them:



Xam bot slices, dices, vacuums your carpet, and even lights your way on a dark night.

He is also very eco-friendly. As a hybrid, he runs on fuel and electricity. And he's made from recycled materials. I know, we're very green around here.

Don't forget to put candy in his fuel tank or he'll go into meltdown.

Can't get enough of that cute robot bootie :) This is the part of the photo shoot where he was "powering down" if you will. He was d.o.n.e.

Luckily, we fueled him back up later on and got a little robot boogie out of him

So technically, I didn't ask Jayne what she wanted to be and wait for the response, but I did ask, "Do you want to be a cupcake?" and thankfully she was all for it. I saw this genius idea from a friend's sister-in-law and I was instantly smitten and had to do it. Just made a couple changes to make it our own and voila...

...a delicious cupcake with a cherry on top. Made with a lamp shade, spray paint, an old sheet, some plastic bags for stuffing, ribbon, rolled up paper and a little felt.

Jumping in a cupcake can be tricky, but she pulled it off :)

Now for Lucy, I could not decide what I wanted her to be. Thank heavens for my friend Sig...she came to the rescue and sent me a link for this awesome idea and as soon as I saw it, I was on board...

Lucy: hot air balloon pilot extraordinaire . It doesn't get much cuter than that folks. Sorry, it just doesn't.

Well, so I said Shane and I didn't dress up, but as we were running out the door to go to our neighborhood trunk-or-treat, Shane whipped together this little concoction

I think this partly came because of the fact that I almost had us dress up as Magnum P.I. and Higgins. (Maybe someday soon :) Yep, I'm a sucker for a good 'stache, what can I say :)

Happy late Halloween y'all!

Pix of my kids...way late

I guess while I was pregnant with Lucy, editing pictures was one of the last things I wanted to do because these pictures have been sitting in my computer collecting dust. So, although I stayed up WAY too late tonight letting Jimmy Fallon entertain me via hulu whilst I edit, I vowed to get them done! So here they finally are, basically a year later, Max's 4 year pictures and Jayne's 2 year pictures. To see them all go the my photog blog. Scroll down an extra post to see Max's. I know, I know, you want to squish their little faces. Wish you could :)

Happy Birthday to Max!

Max is 5...what! It's crazy how fast that came. Max is such a fun kid. Although a little shy in public, he's super goofy when he's comfortable. And he is oh so sweet (when he wants to be :) Here is a prime example.

Translation: "I love Dad cause I love kissing him"

Translation: " I love mom more than this" (and then drew 2 ice cream cones)

He is constantly writing notes or just flat out saying stuff like this. Sometimes he writes more than my favorite thing (whatever that is at the moment) or more than a hundred trillion gillion or bigger than the biggest heart. Stuff like that. It melts me every time. The reason I said he is sweet when he wants to be because you might notice that the ice cream cones have red x's through them. He got mad at me later that day and crossed them out. He then saw that it made me feel bad and so to make up for it, he later wrote "100" meaning 100 scoops of ice cream. So we're good :)

To start off Max's big day, we did our traditional pancakes shaped like the first letter of your name and also how old you are. I need to work on my pouring skills, but you get the point.



Earlier this summer, we went to the lake and Max knew from that point on, he wanted a beach party, so that's what we did and it was a blast. Good call buddy :)

Ben, Madelyn, Cohen, Max, Justin, Jayne

They made boats and used their straws as the sails

Happy Birthday Max...we love you!