One Month

Can't believe it's been one month already. He is starting to sleep better at night ( one 5 hour stretch!) and I am starting to feel like maybe I can handle life. Maybe.

Sunday November 4th

Kids Are Cute

Recently Kate and Clark have been all into writing things and learning how to spell and sound stuff out, so naturally I get notes for different things ALL the time. They are constantly drawing us pictures and giving us gifts of their art. And while I would love to keep them all, I just can't. With all the papers and crafts that come home from school, I would have a mountain of papers if I kept it all. But a few days ago Clark gave me a note that I just had to keep. 

It says, "Mom and Dad, when I grow up I will still love you."

Clark is such a sweet loving boy. He is always telling us how much he loves us and even prays that we will know how much he loves us. He writes me "love" notes all the time and for some reason this one stuck with me and I felt like I needed to keep it. He is such an example of unconditional love. I can get mad and yell and be a terrible Mom and just minutes later he'll ask for a hug and tell me he loves me. I learn from him how important it is to show and vocalize love for each other. That wasn't very common in my house growing up- so this is something I am learning to do myself. 

How grateful I am for such great kids who teach me more than I teach them. 

Halloween

Halloween Day with everyone in their "Halloween outfits".
Kate and Clark were not allowed to dress up for school. 

Halloween is usually a pretty big deal for me. In years passed I have prided myself on making the kids' costumes match, but this year I just did not have the mental or physical energy to try. I let the kids decide what they wanted to be ( not that I didn't let them have a say in years passed, it was more like, "Hey wouldn't it be cool if you were....... for Halloween this year?") and bought the costumes way back in September. I knew that with a newborn baby and Kate and Clarks birthday the week before, I wouldn't even have the time to go look for costumes.

Bumblebee from Transformers

I found matching 'fairy' costume for Kate and Charly.

Charly devouring a cupcake at my Mom's Halloween party

They got to dress up in their costumes for my Mom's Halloween party the Friday before Halloween and then Halloween night, we Trick-or-Treated in Ryan's Mom's neighborhood. Ryan's good friend, Chris, came into town and wanted to take his kids around the ol neighborhood- so I guess I can take back that huge bag of candy I bought from Costco- seeing as we didn't hand out anything at our house this year.

A few years ago we started the "Pumpkin Fairy" to help us get rid of all the candy after Halloween- as my kids don't need that much sugar and I get sick of having their Trick or Treat buckets hanging around till New Years. The way it works is the kids get to have a few days to gorge themselves on candy and then the night that the Pumpkin Fairy comes, they put their buckets outside their door and during the night the Pumpkin Fairy trades all their candy for some kind of prize. This year Kate got the new Tinkerbell movie and Clark got a remote control car. I usually don't do such big prizes- it's usually a movie from the $5 bucket at Walmart- but again - with no energy I just sent Ryan to the store and told him to get what they wanted.
I did head to Walmart the day after Halloween and scored on 50% off costumes, and am happy to report that the kids will be matching next year!