Nutcraker Weekend

This past weekend Faith danced in her second Nutcracker ballet! Once again it was a crazy, magical, wild, fun, exhausting, beautiful weekend!  This was a picture of Faith before we left for the first show on Saturday afternoon!  There were three shows this weekend!

Faith is one of the midnight mice in this year's production!  It's an adorable role!!

 

Here she is with most of her mice friends! (Faith is on the far right!)  All the dancers did a wonderful job, and if you missed the show, there are four more the first weekend of December in Ventura!  Even as I was driving home a very tired dancer Sunday evening, she was already looking forward to the December shows!

Halloween and more!

Even though I didn't take many pictures on Halloween, I had to post a few shots that I do have!  The above picture was from Trunk-or-Treat and was taken by my friend Cindy!  Shane just loved bobbing for apples! 

 

One more from Friday night!  Faith is playing our witch toss game! This is also concrete proof that I was not a cowgirl again this year.  The kids helped me venture out into the superhero world! 

 

Because Halloween was on a Saturday, our day started out with ballet and soccer!  Shane's season is almost over. It's fun to see how much he has improved over the season!  He really hustles and seems to understand the game more each game!

 

This is the lone picture I have of all three from Halloween!  Faith was disappointed that she was going to miss out on the first part of the party we were going to because of Nutcracker rehearsal!  As it turns out, the mice were let out early and she and Steve arrived at the party just as we were starting dinner!

 

The highlight of the night for these two was passing out candy!  They were so cute and so excited!

 

Monday morning arrived, and the weather had finally changed after the summer that would not end!  It was finally cool, cloudy, and comfortable!  I was inspired to tackle a challenge, so I offered to buy Olivia a toy on our trip to Target if she threw away all of her pacis!  We usually take them away at age three, but since we will be out of town, I was wanting to do it either before or after our trip.  She actually took me up on my offer, threw them away, and picked out the toy she's playing with in the above picture!  It's a Doc McStuffins Pet Vet kit.  She loves it!  And I'm shocked once again how easily one of our kids has given up the beloved pacifier!  They all seemed so attached that it was going to be a terrible even for all involved, but each of them did fine after a few tears on the first day.  Yeah for Olivia and yeah for us not having to keep track of that thing anymore!

 

Later Monday afternoon it actually rained for about 20 minutes!  These two seized the moment and went to play while it lasted! 

Trunk or Treat!

Tonight was the annual Trunk or Treat at our church!  Of course the kids were excited to wear their costumes, receive some candy, and also play games!  This year the kids are going as a cat, Ultron, and Minnie Mouse (again!). 

 

Since the kids were looking forward to the event all day, it was nice that we had a good excuse to get ready and head over early since we had two trunks to get ready!  Faith found another cat friend right away!  Jaylee, one of her friends from Better Together!

 

The festivities started at 5pm.  The van hosted the game "Witch Toss" where the kids had to toss rings on witch hats!  It was a huge hit!  Probably because we were very generous with the candy!

 

Steve's truck had a bowling game!  It was a huge hit, and he even won best trunk!  It looked really neat when it was dark and the bowling pins glowed!

 

Shane had fun bobbing for apples!  He ended up winning three of them!  I was happy to let him eat as much of the apples as he wanted!  In addition to the trunk or treating, there was also a chili cook-off!  Steve's special chili won first prize!!!!   That made the kids extra excited!

 

One final picture of our cat, Faith!  The sweet girl is learning one of those hard lessons of life tomorrow night!  Her rehearsal for the Nutcracker ballet is from 5-6:30pm!  While she is sad to be late to the Halloween party we will attend and subsequently miss out on some trick-or-treating, it's a good lesson in life in keeping to commitments and doing what is required as opposed to what you might want to do!  Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Patch

Since it's just two days away from Halloween, the kids thought it was time we went to the pumpkin patch!  As we were driving home from the workout this morning, we passed by a pumpkin patch that was open for business!  The kids were thrilled!

They wasted no time finding what they each deemed to be the perfect pumpkin!

 

The soon to be twins!

 

After the kids finished their school work, we worked on carving them!  They each enjoyed designing their own jack-o-lantern!  No surprise, Shane chose to make the most scary pumpkin!

 

Olivia is not a fan on being photographed!  This was her most recent defense mechanism!

Havasu Trip!

We are back home and back into our regular routine of life once again!  Here is a glimpse into a our week at the lake!  It came at a great time (in the middle of a chaotic fall!), and was a much needed time of relaxation and family fun!  Thankfully we didn't see the sun rise each day (the kids actually slept in! Olivia even slept until 8am one day!), but on Friday we were given this gift on our final morning there!

 

The trip was full of wonderful moments.  We had some great weather - very pleasant for what we wanted to do, and even a few storms, which of course I love!  We took this on a morning right before we had a bit of rain!  I think this is a great picture of the kids, adequately capturing our current stage of life!

 

Shane enjoyed using his birthday gift from Uncle Russell!  He mostly enjoyed that it had a squirt gun on the steering wheel, and he could use it to torment his sisters!

 

Olivia enjoyed the water!  She didn't venture out very far, but she had fun collecting rocks and "swimming" in the shallow water!

 

One of the goals of the trip was to do some water skiing!  Steve learned the basics of how to pull a skier behind the boat, and the two older kids tried to ski!  Neither Faith nor Shane were able to get up on the skies, but they were close!  I tried too, but getting up on one ski is not easy for someone as inexperienced at skiing as I am!  Maybe next trip form me too!

 

 

On the most beautiful day we had we took the boat onto the river.  Topak gorge is just gorgeous!

 

Since we were going slow in the no wake zone, Olivia wanted to move up to the front of the boat with Shane!

 

Our handsome little guy! 

 

Shane lost his third tooth on the trip!  It was fun for him to lose another tooth at the lake since that is where he lost his first tooth!

 

The kids all love the Jacuzzi tub!  Olivia wanted to take a bath at least twice a day!  And most days we let her since we were on vacation!  When else can you take a bath and watch tv at the same time?!?

 

The girls wearing the same dress at the same place!  Faith is a little older (a few months over 3 in this picture!), but it's fun for me to see them and how different they are!

 

In addition to the Jacuzzi tub, all of the kids also really liked the king size bed!  A couple nights all three of them fell asleep together, but usually we found both girls in there when we went to bed!  So sweet to see them all together! 

Bring out those dancing shoes...it's time for cotillion!

Faith was very excited to go to her first cotillion of the year!  Going as a fourth grader was nice as she knew exactly what to expect, was familiar with many of the kids, and could help out the new third graders!

Similar to last year, the first dance that they worked on was the Cha Cha! There wasn't as much dancing in this first meeting of the year as all the new students needed to learn all the basic manners for introductions, sitting down, talking to the host and hostess, and so forth!

 

This is from the end of the game that was played.  Faith and her partner were in the final round, but soon exited to their punch and cookie snack, in which they worked on properly eating and drinking, of course!

Friday Field Trip!

Our field trip this week took us to the Ventura County Agriculture Museum!  While it may not sound all that interesting, it actually was fascinating!  We all learned things about the county in which we live, and the kids especially enjoyed the interactive aspects!

 

After learning what the top ten crops are in the county (strawberries, avocados, and lemons are the top three!), the docent took time to talk to the kids about plants and how we eat different parts of the plant, depending on what plant it is! Faith was our model plant!

 

The kids were all able to go outside and plant their own seeds to take home!  Since it was 100 degrees outside of the museum yesterday, we didn't stay outside too long!

 

There were many old tractors in the museum, and the kids were able to sit on one of them!

 

Farmer Shane is using a pulley to lift hay from the ground to the upper level of a barn!

 

All the kids were able to take a turn sitting on this pretend horse!

 

Shane is such a good brother!  He made sure to help Olivia with anything that she needed, and kept her focused while listening to the different talks.