A Witching Good Time at Gardener Village

We decided this year while Ashley was still in town we would go see our beloved Gardener Village witch display in September instead of October and I can't tell you how much more I LOVED it that way. The last few years it has been a nightmare with THOUSANDS of kids out. This year the weather was perfect and the crowds were near non-existent! I also loved that they added a pavilion so we could eat a nice lunch in the shade before walking around.

We had fun looking at all the fall displays and got a photo opportunity at nearly every set-up due to it not being so crowded.

Julie and I had to stop and get a pic of us in front of the witch on her EYE-phone since our nieces mock us for always being on our phones.

Cami really enjoyed this creepy butler that talked when you pressed his hand, she kept pressing the button and watching him over and over and over. She also loved watching the ducks swim in the river, I was nervous I was going to lose her over the edge with how far she kept leaning over.

It was fun to have cousins with us this year to enjoy the display.

Phoebe really loved this Elvira style witch, I think it was her sparly lippy that won her over.

This pumpkin photo shoot area was new and we fully took advantage of it taking pics of all the different family options we had: family, individuals, grandma with grand kids...

My girls tried kissing this frog as they do every year hoping it will turn into a prince, NUTS another year it didn't work.

Of course this new breast cancer awareness pink witch attracted these two pink loving cousins!

We also found a fun hut filled with pumpkins which we went in only to find out 4 mins later that we aren't suppose to go in they just hadn't gotten the barricade up yet; yeah for us to get a fun sneak in before the bales of hay went up a couple mins later.

While 2 of the aunts ran in a shop to look for a few minutes we sat on the bench and got a few cute cousin pics, Afton and my twiners LOVE to take pics hugging, they are the closest to siblings of all their cousins.

The girls loved these hay bails outside the store and just wanted to sit and pose on them for a long while.

The witches in September was a big hit and I believe a new tradition for us! The only problem I had this year was they took away the Witch-y poo in her outhouse. Hopefully next year they bring her back!

Thanks for Coming Madsen Cousins

In the beginning of Sept we got the privilege of watching the Madsen cousins for a whole weekend. This was truly a treat for my kiddos, they were in heaven! We started off our party with homemade pizzas which turned out was a HUGE hit.

We then went to aunt Meggie & Blake's gender reveal party. We had fun busting open the pinata to find out that they are having a blue flavored babe.

I admit the kiddos got to bed a bit late on Friday but it didn't dent any of the early morning Saturday fun. We had 5 out of 7 up before 7am the next morning.

On Saturday we had several fun things planned, but most of it involved going out in the rainy day so instead we mainly played x-box, memory and snuggled up to watch shows on the computer.

Saturday later afternoon however we taught our fun cousins what it means to be in our house on a Duck game day! We had cheerleaders, fun go duck drawings, Lego Trophies for the Duck being winners... 

...& of course LOTS and LOTS of touchdown push-ups!

Upon special request/demand we had pizza again on Saturday night and homemade caramel corn while we watched our movie!

The next morning we went to church where we all got to enjoy my kiddos primary program. 

Josh and Kye were the funnest little potty buddies, they never went once the whole weekend with out the buddy, in fact I heard them more than one ask if the other wanted to go potty together. It was super fun for Josh to finally have another little boy in the house, he is always surrounded by girls. We all had a ton of fun with the Madsen kiddos and I have to say I was actually sad when they finally had to leave for home. Hopefully, we will get to have more fun cousin sleep overs in the future!

The Twiners First Day '13

So right after Labor day the our two crazy twiners finally got to start at their preschool. We had a fathers blessing for them the night before which they are super excited about since they just had seen Phoebe get one to start her school the week before.

The next morning , bright and early we started in on picture time. These two kiddos were MUCH more difficult to work with than the older Phoebs.  I was jumping and yelling(a lot of yelling) and everything else short of standing on my head to get cute pics.

The dude had a really short attention span for this and I had a hard time getting cute pics with him not trying to cross his eye, yes just one eye, in the pics.

Right as we were getting in the van to leave I remembered the cute back to school pencil sharpeners grandma Fergy gave me to give the kiddos.

When we got to the school all the kiddos lined up for first day of school pics in Mrs. Becky's house. I missed Cami, but here is a pic of Josh holding his sign.

After school Mrs. Becky gave all the kiddos fun and VERY messy cupcakes with a card that said my first day of school was a piece of cake!  Too cute, the kids absolutely adore their teacher and LOVE LOVE LOVE school!