It's Fall Ya'll

Fall is here...in all it's beautiful glory. One thing about living in PA is the beautiful scenery of fall. On the way to school the kids love to spot the colorful trees, each of them pointing and yelling out the color. After Oliver's Pirate Party, which I'll post some photos here, we then fell right into Halloween. We trick or treated twice, once with Tiffany and John and then over the weekend with our friends' the Kings. We had a blast, notice the group photo of the kids, there were alot of kids! Oliver didn't want to get out of the stroller and eventually fell asleep; the girls made it about a block-and-a-half before they had to go to the bathroom; and Isaac's bag was 1/4 full when he decided he was DONE. Oh well, that was it and we still ended up with a ton of candy.

Next comes leaf raking, something the kids look forward to. We didn't have much time this week with Sophia having to participate in the Mercersburg Halloween parade for dance, two more nights of dance, girl scouts and then finally a family fun Friday night. We plan on raking some leaves tomorrow for the kids' to jump in and play. And Sunday we're surprising them with Disney of Ice tickets to see Toy Story 3.

I've also been cooking alot lately and trying to stick out the kitchen challenge, boy was it hard at first, but it's getting easier. This week I made pumpkin pies, suausage and brocoli quiche, turkey tetrazinni, a beef roast, masshed potatos, french friends, steaks, pasta and tonight we got pizza. I made it a whole week and a half with no grocery store run with the exception of a few things from Target because I was cooking for someone else. My friend Becky challenged this on her blog and another friend Anna and I decided to try it together. I will have to hit the store tomorrow because we need milk, eggs, bananas and some kid type essentials. But I'm starting to find that using what's in my pantry is helping to clean it out. In December I hope to make lemon, choocolate and red velvet whippersnapper cookies because I have about 3 dozen boxes of cake mix I need to wean down.

Here are some kid highlights as well:

SOPHIA joined the Girl Scounts and is officially a Brownie. She loves it! My friend Heather asked me to be the co-leader and we're enjoying getting to know some new kiddos and having fun. She's also doing well in dance and I'm so happy that this year she loves it and her anxiety has lessened alot.

ISAAC is doing wonderful in school, absolutely wonderful. I was so worried about him but he has proven me wrong on all accounts. He is learning to spell, read and loves to draw and write words. He has pulled a couple tickets, but he's a pretty good boy in school. He actually asked me if we were going to start pulling tickets at home if they didn't behave. I told him that mommy prefers spanking instead, and he replied that he would rather pull a ticket! LOL

LILY is a whole other story. She stickes to me like velcro, in and out of the house. She cries every morning for an hour because she doesn't want to go to school (even though I think she likes it when she is there). She just finished her first term of soccer and loved it, she scored many goals too and played with her brother Isaac who did not like being shown up by his little sister. She is also a mean fashionista and has developed quite the mini-clothes horse habit like her Mother...

OLIVER is now 3 and just exploding with independency and knowledge. He is very smart and tries to do what the other kids do, in every way possible. He loves to be with me and just follows along the group. One of his favorite things right now is building with Jordan's old legos...

JORDAN is still living in Pittsburg and finally got a full time job at Rite Aid as a cashier. Keep praying for guidance and diredtion for him!