Happy Halloween 2014

We are wrapping up Halloween night 2014.

We did not make it to a pumpkin patch this year - the SHAME! haha We actually planned to go to Remlinger, but the day we chose it rained and rained and rained. So the pumpkin below was perfectly picked - from Fred Meyer. My little gal didn't seem to mind.

She is still not into carving, so painting again it was.

Pumpkin painting is serious business.

She wanted to take her shirt off - the girl is tidy.

Messy hair makes for better painting.

Halloween came.

Our girl was Elsa (surprise!). Crystal in my office braided her hair - so cute. Elyse drew a picture on my whiteboard of her family - plus Lucien.

I took the afternoon off and Aunt Soup came over. Elyse was scared - for about one nanosecond.

Love the face.

Deanna, Shawn and Lucien came too and we had pizza and salad before hitting the neighborhood. She was was over the top excited to trick-or-treat with Lucien again.

This one is my favorite.

I told Deanna and Sue this needs to be us when the kids stop trick-or-treating. They had their hot beverages and the fire - good stuff.

Next are lots of trick or treating pictures. Just because.

Some of the decorations were very scary - Medusa's snakes moved!

These neighbors were dying over the kids. Good stuff.

So scary. He was roasting mice for a snack. The kids were mildly fazed.

We had to go see Kim. She made special surprises for Lucien and Elyse. So very sweet.

I'm going to blink and my baby is going to be too old for this. What precious memories. The weather was so perfect tonight and it wasn't even that cold. Amazing night with family and friends. Feeling blessed.

Oh, and if I need to be reminded how fast they grow up - check this out. Sniff, sniff.

Love these kids.

Happy Halloween.

The Party that was Almost Canceled. Story of a Sad Birthday Girl.

This was our little pumpkin the day before her birthday party. YIKES!

Backing up.

That Wednesday when Bill picked Elyse up from daycare, she had a low fever - nothing serious. We kept her home from daycare the next day. She seemed OK - just low energy. Her birthday was that Friday and Bill and I were going to spend the day with her. We had planned to take her to the fair, but with still a minor fever, we thought that would be too much.

We took her to make her first Build-a-Bear. She excitedly chose a unicorn.

She gave her unicorn a bath.

 

And picked out a dress and shoes.

And she and Daddy printed her birth certificate and chose a name (wow, that was a deliberation). We settled on Sparkle.

We went to lunch at the Spaghetti Factory. Soon, we had this. Uh-oh.

But, she sparked up.

We picked up some cupcakes at Hello Cupcake and got some to take home.

She and Sparkle napped on the way home and she slept several hours when we got home.

When she she woke up, we met up with OJ for dinner and took her to the movies, Dolphin Tale 2. She said she didn't feel good a few times and we ended up leaving the movie earlier (sorry, OJ). She ended up getting sicker and sicker and we were up most of the night with her crying and crying. What a sad ending to her birthday.

Thankfully, fever and other ickies stopped by Saturday morning. She was still sluggish all day. Saturday night I decided to email the parents and warn them of her symptoms.

Happy to say, she clicked in gear when her friends arrived and as you saw from the pictures, the party was a success.

Seriously, I can make big decisions at work, but I found myself Google'ing - "When to cancel a child's party".

Oh my.