Halloween 2019

It's so crazy to me that Halloween is already over! We got some snow the evening before, so we woke up to everything dusted with white. It all melted during the day though! The boys wore their Halloween costumes to school. Here are their costumes:

                        

We had an army guy, and Steve from Minecraft.

We had to get our Halloween cat, Luna, in a few photos! She's the favorite lately!

My annual picture with the boys, for the collage:

And Daddy needed one too.

At school, they had the parade over to the nursing home first. I realized next year will be Sutton's last parade! The 5th and 6th graders don't do it. So sad.

Then we had parties in their classrooms. This was the first time I had two in the same school so I had to split my time between classes. I had planned the activity for Ren's class so I stayed there quite a bit longer than in Sutton's.
                  

You can see Ren's costume crumpled on a chair in the background haha. It was so huge and annoying. Hopefully he learned his lesson about hard-to-move-in costumes. One of the moms made these cute treats, and we brought the drinks with jack-o-lanterns drawn on:

Ren's class picture that his teacher, Ms. Koehn took:

I missed the treat portion of Sutton's party but they played Bingo and did a Go Noodle for their activity.

His class picture. The lights in their room are covered with blue cellophane, hence the weird lighting.

After we got home, we played football catch out in the yard while Daddy set up the trailer for our hayrack ride. The dog and cats were all out and playing, it was such a fun afternoon! Then I made mummy hot dogs (hot dogs wrapped in strips of crescent roll with ketchup eyes), stuffing, and apple slices for supper. We took a few photos (the costume ones at the beginning of this post) and then our friends came over to go trick-or-treating with us.

We had (from left to right) Aquaman, Steve, Michael Scott, Batman, army guy, the Flash. Quite the group of boys! We had a fun dance party to Monster Mash:

Then we drove around town, Papa Ed drove the FJ and the boys would get off at all the houses to trick-or-treat. There were THREE houses that gave out full size candy bars!

It started getting really cold so after about 1.5 hours, we decided to end at the really spooky house in our town that goes ALL out decorating with all kinds of scary animatronics. Ren was too scared so I stayed on the hayrack with him and he buried his head in my lap so he didn't have to look at anything. Sweet little guy. Our other buddy who is his age decided to be brave and he came back to the hayrack bawling. Awwwww.

And lastly, here's our collage of me with the boys every Halloween since I was pregnant with Ren! I still love that I got to be a pregnant cheerleader that year! Ha!

Bye-Bye Crib, Hello Big Boy Bed!

Tonight was a big deal in our house! We gave away our crib, and now we have two big boy beds.

Adam's dad Ed made us the crib when we were pregnant with Sutton. I was able to choose the stain and the hardware, and it was made with so much love. After having it up in our house constantly for the past 6+ years, it definitely holds so many memories. It is hard to be done with it, but Ren is almost 2.5 now, so we knew it was time.

He took his last nap in there this afternoon, and then we took a few photos while we were cleaning out the drawers. He is pant-less after his nap, and wearing his new backpack that we just bought him for Kids Day Inn that he will be starting in September (which is basically a pre-preschool, but you know what? Momma needs to get stuff DONE!).

Two amazing boys who spent their baby years in this beautiful crib!

Ren pretended to sleep one last time. :)

I have to give Adam all the credit for this next part. Long story short, there's a couple whose wedding I photographed several years ago who have a pretty similar infertility story as we do, and they are finally expecting! Adam thought they would be the perfect people to gift this crib to...with the stipulation that they gift it to another deserving/loving family when they are done with it. So we decided that we should write the names of all the babies who have used this crib on the bottom and it can be a crib with an awesome story!

The first two names of what will hopefully be a long list!!

Adam disassembled the crib and we took it over to Abby and Drew's house this evening. They are just the sweetest people you'll ever meet and are so appreciative of this gift. Their kindness and excitement about the whole thing makes it even more wonderful to give it to them. That's my words-of-affirmation love language shining through. :)

We went back home and hauled in all the pieces of Ren's new bed to assemble. This was the bed that Papa Ed made for Sutton after we found out we were pregnant with Ren and had to move Sutton out of the crib. It has been in storage since Sutton got his bunk bed, and Ren was so excited for it to be his!

There's a piece that slips on the foot of the bed that looks like Lightning McQueen and has a steering wheel. So that's what he's "driving"in the photo above. Then he pretended to sleep in his new bed.

We got him a pillow and he obliged me by saying "cheese."

But this was how he really felt about the whole thing...

And then he stood up and told us "new bed! Ta-da!" as if we hadn't done all the hard work of putting it together.

He's fast asleep in there now, and I'm hoping this transition is a smooth one!

4th of July

With this epic new space of ours, we had to have an epic 4th of July party, right? We had so much fun last night and I got my camera out towards the end of the night to capture some memories.

Our friend Jed camped out here the night before and got up at 4:30am to start smoking meat in his new smoker. We had some amazing brisket and pulled pork, and then everyone else brought sides and dessert and we did it potluck style! So much good food. After dinner, we started fireworks.

See that can in mid air in the photo below? Adam had just shot it in the air with a black cat and I got it on it's way down.

Ren's not a fan of fireworks and was much happier to hang out with Grandma!

Adam worked with Sutton a lot to get him more comfortable with fireworks this year.

The one below is another photo with good timing!

Love this picture of Ren with his two Grandmas!

The Aliceas won the prize for the best patriotic outfits!

Some people had left before I got my camera out, but I tried to kinda capture the set-up.

We tried to get all the kids to hold sparklers in a line for a photo, but it ended up in chaos. :) And then all my photos ended up being of Sutton.

I tried to force him to hold a sparkler but he really didn't want to. :(

I'm obsessed with this photo of Breegan. The lighting is so fun!!

And here are a few phone photos.



Jed's daughter Avery was here and played with Sutton during the set up, before the party started.

Our lovely patriotic ensembles courtesy of Adam's wonderful Walmart shopping skills.



My parents had awesome patriotic outfits!

Most of the spread.

                  

Ren and Uncle Steve stole my phone for some fun.

We are all related through marriage!! Jessica (on the left) is Adam's sister. Tara (in the middle) is married to Jessica's husband's cousin. :)

I got to sit down for a few minutes and all my boys needed momma time.

Hope everyone had a great 4th!!