November

Posing with Evan after his choir concert.  He was asked to flip pages for the pianist.  He is big time. 

 An afternoon of raking leaves.  Doesn't  Spencer look so thrilled to be doing yard work?

Spencer had his fall Players production -The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon.   He had a couple of pretty big roles and did a fantastic job.

Sunday after the play he got a pretty drastic haircut.   I thought he looked adorbs.

Hailey, Evan and I went on a chilly walk to the beach.

I loved looking into the great room and seeing all my kids playing LEGO's together so nicely.

Fall means back at the cross stitch.  I so need to get this done.

Evan went food shopping with me one Saturday night and we had dinner at Russ' after.  He loved the food and especially the dessert.

Hailey fooling around with Spencer's ukulele.

A Pinterest find that I was super stoked to try out for Thanksgiving.  Four pies and one sheet pan.  It turned out really good.  Not a Pinterest fail at all.

On Thanksgiving morning, Hailey and I got up to do a Turkey Trot.  I have always wanted to do one and since the weather was decent, we went for it.

Our annual day after Thanksgiving tree hunt.  I think it is tall enough.

Sadly they keep getting taller and older for this shot.

Hailey found a new reading nook under the tree.

The rest of October

Hailey trying on the wig that goes to Evan's David Pumpkins costume.  

She is totally channeling Jan Brady in the episode where Jan doesn't want to look like her sisters.

Walking with my girl in our last grade school Walk-a -thon.

We bought tickets over the summer to see Wicked when it came to Grand Rapids.  We were all very excited to see the show that we have been singing for years!

The morning after the show I had my shoulder manipulation.  They better be good from here on out because I don't have any other shoulders to crack apart.

The toast Hailey made me to feel better. 

So many bags of ice. 

At least I felt good enough to go to Hailey's final school Halloween party.  I can't even handle all of these "lasts". 

Halloween 2017

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.  I love trying to think up creative costumes and then hunting down the pieces to make them all come together.  As the kids have grown older sometimes more often than not their ideas will not align with mine anymore - but everything has a way of working out in the end. 

We spent a Saturday evening pumpkin carving this year.  The kids can all carve their own with minimal help from us.  Hailey was the most into it.  She was all about the extra pumpkin and the power tools.

After carving and photographs we all sat down to a not so scary movie - Close Encounters of the Third Kind. None of us had seen it before and it was really awesome to see Devil's Tower where we had visited over the summer featured prominently.

Hailey had a spooky themed choir concert but she didn't want her classmates to see her "actual" Halloween costume so we dug up the stuff out of the bin for a makeshift vampire.  Cutest vampire I have ever seen.

For almost a year Evan has been talking about dressing up as David Pumpkins from the newish cult classic SNL skit.  We ordered him a tee shirt, pumpkin suit and wig and he was good to go. 

Hailey's costume turned out so cute and was so easy.  We just ordered a striped shirt and the necessary money bag (she was dying to use it for candy) and the rest of the costume we had around the house. 

Spencer wanted to be Jesus.  We kind of went back and forth about letting him actually do it because we didn't know if it would seem offensive or not.  He certainly didn't want to be offensive about it but people can be so touchy and quick to judge these days. 

It finally came down to us thinking if people have no qualms about dressing like the devil why can't someone dress like Jesus?  So I ordered him the robes and wig (though he really could have used his own hair) and he was a big hit.

On Halloween night, Evan's friend came home from school with him to trick or treat and we had the Brandon our neighbor to walk around with as well. The weather was really nice for trick or treating and then about an hour into it we had a random power outage that affected the whole neighborhood.  Luckily Spencer had opted to stay home with the grandparents passing out candy so he could find flashlights and candles for them.   

It was so perfectly spooky to walk around the dark, pumpkin lit up neighborhood to finish out the night. 

It was a Halloween night to remember for sure!