Halloween: Snow White and the one little Bumble Bee

Getting Princess Hair Ready. Mia kept saying "Beautiful as a Princess" While I was curling her hair!

I've decided that if your Husband has to be gone on a holiday Halloween isn't such a bad one, since it's such a social holiday! Although we missed Lance, Dressing up, and eating lots of Candy is a great distraction! Plus it helped that my friend was also husband-less. We had lots of fun getting ready, eating pizza for dinner, and then heading off to the Ward trunk-or-treat, and then coming home and doing some "Real" trick-0r-treating to a few houses on our street.

Waiting for Preschool to Start

Every week on the days we get ready for Preschool (which starts at 9) Mia says at least 5 times to me.... "How come it takes SO long for the kids to get here!" The week of Halloween we had a Halloween Party and just like every other day she planted herself at the front window "trying" to wait patiently for her preschool friends to get there!

Hep! Hep!

Lance and I were cracking up one day when we heard Maddi screaming bloody murder and yelling HEP! HEP! (translation...help) It's a little harder to maneuver in that big old winter coat and she fell in the toy box and could not get out!

Shake Dem Halloween Bones

We checked out a book at the Library that has become one of our favorite books, it's called "Shake Dem Halloween Bones" (I don't remember the author) and it's just hillarious because it's all about these fairy tale/nursery rhyme characters that are at at the "Hip-Hop Halloween ball" and I just crack up every time I read it because the whole thing is written like a rap song, and so of course hearing me read this to my girls sounds hillarious. Well when Grandpa was here we decided to get him in on the action and Mia asked him to read it to her at bedtime and this has to be one of the funniest renditions I've heard yet! I'm just sad we only got as much as we did. :)

Grandpa Bradbury's Visit

My dad always makes a trip out to see us in October and this year we were excited because we didn't have any sick kids, the weather was actually really nice, and the leaves hadn't changed yet. (We always try and predict when the best fall weather will be). I will post some of his pictures later because he has better ones than I did.

Pre Halloween

Lance was out of town this year on Halloween so we had a little pre-Halloween at our house before he left. We ate pumpkin pancakes in the morning, let the girls wear their Halloween costumes, carved a pumpkin and then we went trick-or-treating in our house. Lance or I would stand behind every door in our house (closests, bathrooms, bedrooms, etc.) and let the girls knock and all of that. We gave them one piece at every door but after looking at their bags when we were finished I realized that we have a lot of doors in our tiny little house!

Trip to the Wisconsin Dells

One of the Kid Size water slides Mia was able to go down by herself. We thought she'd be a little scared but we could barely get her off of them long enough to eat!

At one of the water parks they had a huge Bucket of water that would dump out every few minutes. I tried to get a picture of Lance and Mia getting drenched but this was the best I got.

These little water foutains were one of Maddi's favorite things

This is a picture of part of one of the water parks in our hotel.

At the first water park we went to, they had a good sized water slide that you could ride down with a child, so Maddi got a little taste of things here.

Baby Water swings....great invention

"Enjoying" the ride there

Letting everyone else enjoy the ride there. :)

Taking a snack break at a random park along the way.

During October break Lance had the idea of taking a two day one night trip to the Wisconsin Dells. We had heard about this place from some friends (it's a whole city FULL of outdoor and indoor water parks, amusement parks, boating and water sports, different attractions...basically Las Vegas for Little Kids and Families) and they had some great specials during their off peak times. October break fell on one of these days so we got a great deal on a hotel room at the Wilderness Resort decided to go for it. It was about a 6 hour drive to get there and we were only planning on staying one night so we were a little worried about whether it would worth it, but I have to say it was one of the best little vacations we have ever taken! I can't say enough good about it. The price of your hotel room includes admission for 4 to the water parks. And our hotel had 3 separate indoor waterparks. We left our house at 7 am on Monday took a few stops along the way and got to our hotel around 1:30 Wisconsin time. We were able to check right into our room, change into swimsuits and play at one of the water parks until dinner, then we ate, got back in our suits and played some more until bedtime. One of the best parts of this whole vacation was the fact that we were all SO exhausted after the long day that after bathing the girls and putting them in bed, we turned off the lights and ALL of us fell right to sleep and slept for 10 1/2 hours straight! Lance and I NEVER get that much sleep especially on vacation. Then we woke up ate at the breakfast buffet, changed into swimsuits, checked out of our room and continued playing at the parks until 4pm. After getting in the car the girls were so tired they were both asleep before we left the parking lot and slept for the first 2 hours of the drive home. Then one stop for dinner, one movie in the car, and the girls fell BACK asleep and we got home at 11:30 pm.

So a little more on the actual hotel. The waterparks each had their own water slides, tube water slides, Family water slides where you sit in a raft (although there are NO lights inside...our kids were a little scared), Lazy rivers, Play areas for little kids, Kid's water slides, A Wave Pool, and hot tubs. Each water park has locker rooms, they provide all your towels, and life jackets, have concession areas to eat, etc. The hotel also had one area that is just a HUGE play place/structure (if you've ever hear of Discovery Zone it's kind of like that) with tons of tunnels to climb through, slides to go down.

The whole thing was just pure fun. I felt like our kids were at good ages to be able to enjoy everything and 2 days was PLENTY of time for us to get everything in.

Yeah for Nursery!!!

Maddi had her first day of Nursery at the beginning of October. Lance and I were VERY excited to end our Hall Roaming Days at church, but we weren't sure how Maddi would react. As it turned out, she was the happiest little girl in the world when we picked her up. And we could tell that she was so proud and thought that she was so big.

Family Pics

So I'm TRYING to get caught up on my blog here. So this is my monthly posting. I don't know why there are so many spaces in between all my pictures but its late and I'm too tired to figure it out!

My friend Lindsay always takes family pictures for us and this year she gave me the awesome deal of trading pictures, she takes my family's pictures and I take hers! Well I definately got the better end of the deal on this one since I barely know what I am doing however I had lots of fun using her amazing camera!

It was fun to have both of our families there too Mia loves the Russell boys and they had her cracking up the entire time. In one of the pictures you can see her actually tearing up she was laughing so hard.

Well expect more posts to come!