chris.reese.girls1.2.3.4

One day when I look back I'm sure all my Halloween posts will sound the same: birthday madness,  costume gathering, crazy weather, no time for a trip to the pumpkin patch, so many activities, so much to do, etc. etc. So I will spare the blog this year's back story, and only say that it was October 30th and our regular festivities hadn't been completed yet. So that day I picked up pumpkins from our local QFC (grocery store) and that evening I set up a round-robin of activities and let the kids loose: cookie decorating in the kitchen, dinner at the kitchen table, pumpkin carving in the garage, hot cider at the bar when you're all done! I also made a strict set of carving rules: no crying, no stencils, time limits, and [mostly] do it on your own. I blasted the Halloween Pandora station and...it worked!! Look at these happy kiddos after our crazy evening!  Cookie decorating...homemade sugar cookies with buttercream frosting are a must. This is a corner I just can't...

Paige is 12!! It blows my mind that I have a child that is 12! This is a big milestone birthday (with loads of milestone activities)!! And as you can see below, we tried to blow it out of the water with the celebrating. She was pretty spoiled, but I'm grateful she keeps a pretty level head, because at this time of year there are about a dozen other activities interspersed with the birthday fun, so she adapts well to the chaos of it all. ;) This photo shoot for instance, came about as we were driving home from church and the sun started to peak out a bit from the clouds and I said, "Let's run and take a few birthday pics on the trail by our house, right NOW!" And she rolls with it. These were taken on her actual birthday with some new clothes - she asked specifically for a pencil skirt! The day before her actual birthday we had her friend party, which she mostly planned! We decided on the party with a bit of late notice (our standard OP these days), so a f...

This little lady turned nine this month!! This  was her "off" year for a party, but we still took the opportunity to spoil and shower her with love..   We celebrated Brynn turning another year older over a few days... Friday night (the 13th) we gathered with her Dalley cousins for a big birthday bash. We have a pretty heavy birthday group this month, so while simultaneously sending off the Warnings to Australia, we enjoyed some birthday festivities too! We met at the hotel for swimming...we completely took over the entire pool and it was soooo loud. If you can find Meg in the pic below you can see her with her hands over her ears and a binky to keep her from screaming [sidenote: binky is on its way out, but I reserve the right to bring it along for emergency purposes.]  We went up to my mom's hotel room and played some games (the dice, candy unwrapping game), had cake and unwrapped presents. It was pretty wild and we may owe housekeeping some extra cash... ...