It's Almost Halloween!

So if you know ANYTHING about me, you know that I LOVE to celebrate every and all holidays.  And not just celebrate but go all out as much as possible.  My perfect teaching job would be if I could teach little kids with a themed month and have them learn and celebrate all kinds of holidays and traditions and cultures.  But instead, I have to teach silly things like math and how to read and write...I guess those will be important skills to know...


Anyways, I can't wait for the girls' first Halloween!  They've been wearing their pumpkin hats almost everyday, have been wearing Halloween outfits to daycare, visited the pumpkin patch, and now we are putting on the finishing touches to their costumes.  I'm not sharing what they are going to be just yet but you'll see soon!


My school's PTA is putting on a Trunk or Treat this Friday so we will be going to that and hopefully that will be the first time they get to be in their costume, if I finish everything in time.  I grew up making our Halloween costumes each year.  My mom would craft and sew the costume from a pattern and my dad would help build it.  I am also very competitive and my goal was to win Most Original each year at the costume parade and I did win several years!  I've been a witch, a bride, the Tooth Fairy, an M&M, Raggidy Ann, a butterfly, a lady bug, a lollipop, a slice of pizza, a box of popcorn, a peppermint (notice the food theme??) half of a PB&J sandwich, and others that I can't think of at the moment.  I really enjoy dressing up for Halloween and I'm hoping to do some themed family costumes in the future!

 

Here we are, me as Raggidy Ann and my brother as Raggidy Andy.  I think I was in kindergarten.

 

First grade was a bride for me and a cow for my brother.

 

Me in my first grade classroom

 

Sophomore year of college I was BatGirl

Those were the only pictures I could find on my computer but I know my parents have a lot more.  Stay tuned for the girls' debut!!

We're Off to the Pumpkin Patch!

Ever since we decided to start our family, I looked forward to starting traditions with our family, one of them being the pumpkin patch in the fall!  We had plans to go two weeks ago with Ben's sister, Chessie, but Hurricane Joaquin ruined our plans.  Noelle ended up being sick so we would have had to cancel anyways.  We decided to go this past weekend and it of course was in the 50s!  It was sunny at our house when we left and by the time we got to the pumpkin patch it was cloudy and sprinkling here and there.  I was determined to get our pumpkins and pictures even if we got soaked!  Thankfully it didn't rain and Ben got some great pictures of the girls.

 

It's hard trying to hold up two babies while crouching!  Noelle on the left, Natalie on the right.

 

Natalie, Mommy, and Noelle

 

Natalie

 

Noelle

 

Natalie

 

Natalie and Noelle

 

They were way to interested in the pumpkin to look at the camera.

 

Noelle kept trying to eat the straw

 

Natalie

 

Noelle

 

Noelle and Natalie

 

Noelle and Natalie

 

Daddy and his girls!

 

Finally got both to look and Daddy closes his eyes

 

3/4 looking ain't bad...Mommy and Natalie, Daddy and Noelle

 

Nat Attack

 

Natalie and Noelle

 

Noelle

 

Natalie

 

Well, we got Natalie to look!

 

"Whatcha doing Mommy?"

It was cold, cloudy, and windy, but we made it!  Each girl got a pumpkin and then we got a third pumpkin to paint teal for the Teal Pumpkin Project. The Teal Pumpkin Project is for food allergy awareness.  What you do is you paint a pumpkin teal and sit it on your steps on Halloween night and it tells families that you have non-food items for trick-or-treaters, like pencils, erasers, glow sticks, etc.  That way families who have food allergies know it's safe to trick-or-treat there.  I still have to decide what I want to have for my non-food items but I have my pumpkin and paint at least!

I already look forward to next year's trip and watching two 20 month olds toddle around!

 

8 month pictures

I know I say this every month but how are they already 8 months old?!?!  It is unreal that they are 3/4ths of the way to one year old.  This is all happening too fast!  They were 8 months old last week but they are their smiliest in the morning so I usually wait until the weekend to take them.

At 8 months, Natalie and Noelle:

•  eat three meals a day 
• drink 4 bottles a day
• have two teeth each
• are up on all fours rocking but no crawling yet
• can stand holding onto something but no pulling up yet
• like lots of jumping
• talk and talk and talk
• are trying to pull each others hair
• have lots of smiles and giggles
• went to their first pumpkin patch

 

All they wanted to do the entire time was eat the sticker.  It's getting much harder to get good pictures of them!  Is it too soon to start planning their first birthday?!

 

Friday Favorites: One year ago today...

 I only have one Friday Favorite to share today!  Linking up with my wanna-be friends Andrea, Narci, and Erika!  One year ago today we went to our doctor's appointment to find out the gender of our baby!  We were going to have the technician seal it in an envelope and reveal it at a gender reveal party two days later.  While we were walking into the appointment, I jokingly told Ben, "Well, I guess this is our last chance to find out if there are twins!"  He replied, "That's not funny!"  See, the entire pregnancy so far I kept feeling like there were two babies in there.  Two sonogram appointments and one heartbeat appointment showed that there was only one, healthy baby, so I thought my mother's intuition was waaayyy off.  About 30 minutes later, we found out that my intuition was correct!  We were expecting identical twins!  And a few days later, we found out they were identical twin girls.  You can read more about our gender reveal party here.


Since we knew we had a BIG secret to share, I set up a camera to video tape the audience's reaction and asked one of my best friends to video tape us with the video camera.  I finally put both of them together in a little video to share.  I tried to put the video right on here from YouTube but it kept telling me it was private, which it's not!  So click Gender Reveal Party to see it.

 

7 weeks...only one baby (I asked a nurse about the second shady blob after we knew there were two, and she said that was something else, not the second baby, because they weren't close enough together)

 

11 weeks...still only one baby...

15 weeks we had a heartbeat appointment and only one heart beat was heard...

 

19.5 weeks...and BAM!  Then there were two :) This is the first picture of our little aliens together.  Noelle (Baby A) is on the left, Natalie (Baby B) is on the right.

 

Natalie on top, Noelle's head on the bottom.

This is definitely a day I'll never forget.  Happy Friday!