The rest of November and lets back it up to October for a couple too....

I need to document the fact that we did make it to the pumpkin patch in 2014....at least I did with the younger two and their preschool class. I've posted before of my love/hate relationship with the pumpkin patch and this year did not disappoint with sweaty warm temps and lots of dust and hay...but the kids had fun and that's what matters!

Brooklyn with some of her friends

Milking the "cow"!

One of the PreK classes of 2014

Hudson and Brooklyn are sitting on the bench with another set of twins in their class. There are three sets of twins in their preK grade!

Halloween...another love/hate for me. As long as we can find free costumes and avoid handing candy out I'm happy and we succeeded in both this year. In fact it rained this year so we got out of a lot of trick or treating with these three and Ethan went with friends. We had a cat, Rapunzel and a baseball player.

Kid's eat free at Chevy's trip with cousins.

Back to Halloween, Ethan went trick or treating with friends and LOVED it!

In November Kevin and I went to Monterey with Eric and Kara and ran the Big Sur half marathon. It was a fabulous weekend. We had lots of good laughs, ate lots of good food and ran a gorgeous race.

And the after....looking a little worn out;)

We got to go to the coast for Thanksgiving. We went to the Aquarium on Thanksgiving. This was the second year we have done that and just like the first it was virtually empty. It was so fun to see everything without huge crowds. A different way to thank God for his creative creation!

The kids are really starting to like listening to the docents explain things. We stayed at this particular station for about 15 minutes listening to the lady and interacting with her computer. We also spent a lot of time on the deck looking through aquarium workers binoculars and getting our questions answered like Hudson's "How long can a sea otter hold his breath?"

We were there most of the week with my parents. We also decided to try 24 hours with the WHOLE family so Eric and Kara and crew joined us one night before we headed home. Something we have never done. We actually had a great time. Everyone had super low expectations so we were all pleasantly surprised. The kids had a blast and memories were made!

This little girl's hair is coming in nicely and she is often quite particular about what she wants done with it. Really she wants nothing more than long, straight, princess hair....May be awhile chicky!

Kara and my friend Janey and I got our craft on and made these gratitude banners. Here are Morgan and Brooklyn explaining gratitude to me:)

Next up....December happenings. I'm going to get caught up yet!

Catch up

Catch up...seems to be the story of my life right now. With all kids in school at least 6 hours a week, no more diapers to change, bottles to mix or baby food to puree you would think I would have oodles of free time. Somehow that is not the case and I still find myself with a to do list that doesn't get done each day, laundry still piled in my room waiting to be folded each night and people "I keep meaning to call". How is that possible? I truly am enjoying the stages the kids are at. Everyone is learning so much in school and I love that. I love seeing Hudson and Brooklyn's worlds open up as they recognize letters and numbers everywhere, I love hearing Morgan read more independently and I love trying to stay ahead of what Ethan is learning....not always the case now! We are busy doing life and trying to make memories and take advantage of the days we are all home together now. I know that will only get crazier so we are trying to slow life down as much as possible. Here are some pictures from November...and then maybe next post we can finish November and start December:)

I searched one of my local friend's blog for things to do in our area in the fall. I came across one of her posts about a trip they made to Calavares Big Trees. I have been wanting to take our kids there, but due to some sensitive tummies we have always put it off. I am happy to report that we made the trip without any puking AND a broken DVD player! We had some classic road trip fun as we played I Spy, I'm going camping and I'm going to bring....as well as shared knock, knock jokes. I think we made some memories and enjoyed some fall colors among the giant trees God has created. Enjoy our pics from the day.

Life

It has been way too long since I posted last. I haven't really taken any pictures... Life is just passing by without anything super interesting happening. Here are a few pictures from my phone that I've taken the last month or so.

Cowboy day at the preschool! I think the boots lasted the first 10 minutes of class:) but they loved riding the ponies!

We had a quick trip to the beach house a few weekends ago. It was way too short... We were all super sad to leave:(

Hudson and Brooklyn and their buddy Talen were working hard on their car!

Morgan has decided she wants to be an artist now. Check out the picture she drew of herself:)

Ethan is in Cadets at our church now... Here he is in full Cadet gear:)

ONE more summer post

Just in case Hudson and Brooklyn look at this blog some day I don't want them to think I forgot their 4th birthday! This year they are really cluing in to the fact that they are TWINS and will share their birthday FOREVER! And that they will be in the same grade FOREVER. It is pretty cute trying to talk them through this fact. They will now tell people they meet that they are twins. I have consciously tried to not refer to them as "the twins". So they don't hear that term a lot, unless we are out and about and people ask if they are twins.

We did a very small playdate birthday party at the water park with a few friends. Unfortunately it looks like only cousins showed up in the pictures, but we had a few others there as well. The kids had a blast as we hadn't spend much time at the water park this summer. It's not as fun for the older two anymore.

These two have way too much fun together and are two peas in a pod. They really love to spend time together and can disappear for hours to play.

Hudson got roller blades for his birthday this year. He is actually doing better than I thought he would.

Brooklyn got a Dr. Kit and baby clothes for her doll.

Here is one of Morgan with the gift we got her...a suitcase and holder for her American Girl Doll. Those dolls are quite a culture of their own. It is nice to  have one place for all the "stuff" to go:)

A few final summer pics from my phone

We are definitely well into the swing of school and finished celebrating birthdays, but I wanted to remember a few more highlights from our summer.

My mom, sister and I took the kids to a Kids Bop concert at the end of July. Kids Bop is a group of tweenagers that sing music from contemporary artists but make some of the words kid friendly. All our kids love to listen and dance to Kids Bop on Pandora so we thought they would love the concert. I'm not sure I would say they loved it, but they did really like it. I think it was all a little overwhelming for our sheltered little ones. No one moved from their seats except Emily. It was a fun night though and I think the kids enjoyed trying something new.

During one of the last weeks of the summer my friend Kelly and I decided to take a trip to Fairfield  to check out the Jelly Belly factory and Jump Highway. I've always wanted to go to the factory and after reading a friends blog about Jump Highway we figured that would be a perfect combination to try with our kids too. We loaded em up on sugar at the Jelly Belly factory and then let them jump for two hours...it was perfect!

While the factory was educational and interesting for us moms I think the kids hilight was definitely the wall to wall trampolines and foam pits at Jump Highway. We will need to make our way back here again sometime!

This summer our library had a program where the kids could read 10 books and get two free tickets to a local minor league baseball team. All our kids did this so we were able to enjoy an evening of free baseball! Thanks for loving reading kiddos!

The next weekend Kevin and I were able to join our friends at a SF Giants game. It was my first time in their stadium and we had a blast.

Morgan got to celebrate her birthday at the end of the first full week of school. She chose to have a pj party without the sleepover. So her friends were invited to come over in their pj's for pizza and a movie and plenty of snacks too. It was a really fun birthday party with a lot of sweet girls.

I made another Barbie cake for Morgan. The last one I made was when she turned 3.

The final baseball game was to see the A's play. We left the girls at home for a sleepover with Annika and Audrey and had a fun night with the boys. They both pooped out by the 8th inning though....

This year we managed to make it out to see the last few balloons take off at the balloon festival. It is always a fun sight to see, but you never know if it's truly worth it to wake up crazy early on a Saturday. This year Ethan happened to be having a sleepover the night before so we didn't wake anyone up, but planned on going if they did wake up early. It was fun to see different friends from school. One of these years I'd love to make it to see the launch from start to finish.