Fall

 We have had the most beautiful fall. Cool nights and mornings and gorgeous afternoons and evenings. We love to play outside this time of year since it's the perfect temperature and the skies are blue. Here's what we've been up to.

 Miss Brooklyn is becoming quite the ipad guru. She has given up naps most days so after an hour or so of quiet time she gets to play ipad for a while.

Hudson lined up all his dirty outside trucks a few weeks ago and gave them all a good wash. He can occupy himself for quite a while outside.

 A couple weeks ago our town had a morning of activities and vendors out on Main Street. Kevin was golfing so I met some friends downtown and we walked around for a while. The kids got to decorate pumpkins....

 ....and their faces..

It took a lot of scrubbing to get rid of the tiger face!

 I got to go with Morgan's class on a field trip to the pumpkin patch. They all had a great time. It's always fun to watch all the kids interact with each other and listen to their conversations on the bus. She really has a great class.

 A few days later I took Hudson and Brooklyn back to the same pumpkin patch. It's the same one we've gone to for the past several years. I almost didn't take them, I don't always love the pumpkin patch because it's usally so hot and dusty. However the temperatures have cooled off nicely and I'm so glad I took them. We had a great time together. Here we are on the hay ride.

They spend a lot of time jumping on the "hay trampoline" They had it to themselves for quite a while before the preschool field trip was over.

 The pumpkin patch has several of these cutout photo ops and H and B had to stop and pose at each one:)

 Then it was time to carve the pumpkins....it's always a little chaotic....but I reminded Kevin that we are making memories!

                   The finished products.

The library had a special holloween storytime so we headed there with Annika and Audrey in full costume, it was lots of fun!

 Come halloween night Hudson and Brooklyn changed from Spiderman to a dinosaur and from a ballarina to a princess. Then we we had Morgan as a cat and Ethan as a pirate. The picture above is just to give you a little peek into what happened before the cute smiley pictures below:) And we only got those because our neighbor threatened to take away the candy he gave them if they didn't smile:)

We went trick or treating around my parent's neighborhood and then we headed to church for some trunk or treating. My mom was a good sport and dressed up for the kids. Lots of candy and some hyper kiddos!

Life in no particular order

Blogger has been a complete pain as of late. So I am very lazy about posting pictures. Here are a few snapshots of what we have been up to the last month or so.

At the end of August one of my childhood friends Renee got married down south. My amazing husband agreed to let me go down for 3 nights and have lots of fun with high school, college and current friends. Thankfully I also have some dear friends who helped me out with H and B during school hours.

The foursome from highschool, we sure had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs back in the day. It was really fun to catch up these ladies, we sure don't do it often enough.

I also got to see some college friends because Renee and I went to college together as well! Jackie, baby Carly and Molly and I all stayed two nights in  a hotel, it was awesome catching up with them for 2 days straight. We got to see Charissa just at the wedding and it was so good to see her too, but not nearly long enough to chat. Love you girls!

Hudson loves to play trains and trucks if I can get him all set up and he's in the right mood:)

I know this picture will come back to haunt Hudson at some point. What a good brother to play the princess game with sister:) Both my boys actually really like this game:)

A few weeks ago Ethan had cowboy day at school. They had some amazing people come in and set up several centers where they got to stamp leather, watch horse shoes be headed and shaped, lasso a pretend bull and several other things. It was pretty awesome!

 A couple weekends ago Kevin and I were able to get away for a couple nights to go to my cousin's wedding Auburn. It was such a beautiful area and so great to get away for a while. We went hiking on Saturday morning. It was the first time we have been hiking alone since we had kids and we loved it. We really miss having hiking only 20 minutes way like we did in San Jose.

I took Kara's girls to storytime at the library a few weeks ago. Lots of fun!

 Ethan is now  toothless wonder. We are waiting for 4 teeth to come in!

 I have a lot of fun with these two all day. They are great at running errands and keep me company. We get lots of looks and smiles and "are they twins?" comments when we are out.

This past weekend our town had their annual emergency vehicle show and parade. Morgan enjoyed checking out one of the armored SWAT vehicles.

Thats life here in the Schenk house. Life is sure flying by now that school has started. Both Ethan and Morgan are blessed to have amazing teachers and they are doing really well. We are thankful for that!

Morgan's Party.....finally

Here it is nearly a month later and I am finally posting about Morgan's birthday. Life sure has a way of moving rather quickly and all of a sudden I look back and realize that it has been almost a month since my last post! We started Morgan's actual birthday by bringing cupcakes to her classroom and getting to sing to her with her classmates. She was beaming as you can imagine.

After school it was time for Morgan to get her present from mommy and daddy. I took her to the mall to get her ears pierced. She was very excited to get them pierced and super brave the whole time. This picture was right before they squeezed the triggers and after they were done she cried and cried.

It was nothing a few hugs, some lemonade and some ice cream couldn't fix though:) She is pretty proud of her earrings.

Two days later on Friday afternoon Morgan invited 7 girls over for a little play date party. We kept it pretty simple by doing a couple crafts, playing pin the bow on Hello Kitty, playing outside, and eating pizza and cupcakes. Most of the girls had just been through the first week of kindergarten so they were pretty exhausted, but I think they all had fun.

A little pin the bow on Hello Kitty. I'm pretty sure birthday girl was cheating on this one!

5 candles! Morgan's cake request was nice and simple this year, cupcakes with sprinkles and a little plastic Hello Kitty on top. Considering I made 4 batches of cupcakes that week I was happy to have something simple to make!

I love how excited kids get to have friends open their presents. I'm not sure who was more excited, Morgan to open her gifts or her friends to watch her open their gifts. I love that!

Later that weekend we had a little birthday swim party at my parents for Morgan, Hudson and Brooklyn. Morgan got an American Girl Doll which she was totally surprised by and is loving. Doesn't it look like her?

Hudson got his OWN golf clubs and he is in heaven with those! He really thought he should sleep with them that night and every day for a week after he carried the bag to the bus stop to get Ethan and Morgan in the afternoon.

Brooklyn got a little scooter which she too is loving.

Birthday week was a success and I'm happy to have it behind me for another year:)

Not only did school start a few weeks ago, but during the first full week of school we celebrated 3 birthdays! I told Kevin that this week may be the death of me for the next 14 years! We were all tired because school started and excited because there were birthdays to celebrate. It was a fun but long week. I think everyone was celebrated well.

 On their birthday, Brooklyn and Hudson woke up to balloons in the family room and two small presents from us.

Later that day we got the house and yard ready for their little birthday party. It was really more of a playdate with cupcakes and presents. It was my goal to invite kids their age so we had a fun mix of kids and moms who don't normally all hang out together. It was a beautiful morning so we played outside most of the time. We had 4 girls and 3 boys. Days before their birthday H and B were arguing because Huds wanted to invite girls to his party but Brooky said girls could only come to her party;) So fun to listen to their conversations.

We had Superman/Hello Kitty cupcakes. Kara also made adorable superhero masks for all the kids that I forgot to get pictures of. She make yellow and red for the boys and pink and purple for the girls....super cute!

Hudson and friend Talen. They looked like twins that day!

Here's what an awesome mom I am. The lighter ran out of fuel when I went to light the candles, so we sang to each of the kids individually and then they pretended to "blow out" their candles. I'm pretty sure this is the only year I'll get away with that one!

 YUMMY cupcakes. Pretty much the only reason kids like birthday parties right?

Hudson loved his transformer motorcycle.

The kids had never had a birthday party so they never had so many gifts at once. They were perfectly happy with their first gifts and wondered why they had more to open:) Thanks friends for totally spoiling us!