Wo wo wo is me.

I have been really "home" sick for my parents and sisters and Mindi lately, and I wish I was rich so I could travel and visit them whenever I want. I want my kids to know their cousins. I want my husband to be able to fish with his brothers. I want family dinners on Sunday night. I want sleepovers with chick flicks! I do love it here, and we have made some good friends, great friends even, but it is so hard. I feel like if I just stopped appearing (at church, on the blog, anywhere) no one would even really notice. Nothing is ever the same as people that have known you your whole life, or even who have known you BEFORE you were a Mrs. No matter how hard I try to be a good friend I still feel like a rejected 15 year old. It makes me sick to my stomach.

It is so hard to get to know people as you get older, the freeness of childhood is a bit lost, and though I have never been good at hiding my true feelings or opinions, it is still scary to just let go and be yourself there is always that fear of being judged. I think Keith and I and the kids need a vacation.

what's up?

Basically I am too busy/lazy/tired to do a real post, so you guys get a list again.

1. We headed over to the Disney store this morning to pick up the Tinkerbell movie that we had preordered. And we watched it 3 times today. It is super cute, and Natalie is over the moon about it! She L-O-V-E-S Tinkerbell, and the movie did not disappoint, it also makes it seem like there will be more, so YAY!

2. I got bangs, loooove them!

3. We went to Boo at the Zoo on Monday. It was super fun, the kids LOOOVED it of course. You get 6 little coupons with your ticket and you can redeem them at the candy booths, that was such a great idea, the kids came home LOADED with candy. They also enjoyed all the little carnival games, and we caught a couple of the silly little shows, and even saw some animals! My favorite part of the whole thing were these lights they had, oh my goodness, I will have them in my garden one day. They were just Christmas lights, but you take off all but every 5th or so light bulb, and then they slipped these round lanterns over the remaining bulbs. It was beautiful at night, like a fairy garden. I tried to get pictures, but they didn't really turn out.

4. It's been cold here, like we are wearing socks and sweats inside! Yay! Keith hates the cold and has to break out the slippers, but I LOVE it! I love being able to blow dry my hair without sweating. I love being able to dress the kids in their warm wintry clothes, boots, coats, and hats. I love the smell of the cold air, and being able to open my windows and let the outside in. I love adding flavored creamers to my grocery list to spice up our hot cocoa, and I love getting sick off drinking too much hot cocoa!

5. I am looking forward to my "weekend". I can catch up on some cleaning, maybe actually see some people and get out of the house.

6. Lately I have been super appreciative of my little family. I am so grateful for Keith and the kids, and the solid foundation that they provide for me here at home. And the fact that they will always love me and want to be with me and spend time with me even if I am being cranky or mean. And the kids ALWAYS want me to lay with them at bedtime, even if the day had rough patches.

Pretty globes of light.
The kids basically rebelled from the camera at the zoo. They were having NONE of it, but I did get a few blurry ones, and this one when they were watching the Halloween Night Fever show, it was pretty silly, but the kids liked it, at least for a little while. Oh, and Brady held on to a sucker literally the whole time we were there, we let him eat his red one after dinner, and then he got this blue one to hold. At one point he had one sucker in his hand, and a girl handed him another one, and he didn't know what to do! He was trying to figure out how to hold both suckers and his pumpkin, and it just wasn't working out for him. Too cute!
Funny video of Natalie dancing, it was hard to get her to do it for the camera, but she was being so silly and cute I wanted to try and get it!

*edited* I too am pretty sad

**not pissed, that is too harsh, I am jsut sad I guess that it wasn't real. I So wanted it to be real. BUT had I known it was not real before I STILL would have loved it!**

I have been reading Cordy, and hoping it was real. Yeah. Jokes on us, we should have known. Check it out. Sorry to all of you who I got hooked on the blog, I actually blame Sue because she linked to it (I mean HERSELF) in the first place! Meanie!

Halloween Catch Up

A lot of small and big things have happened in the last few days, but for some reason I just haven't felt like blogging. But, good news for all my avid readers (hahahaha haha ha), I feel like blogging this morning!

Wednesday night last week we decided to carve our perfect pumpkin, except once we cut the top off we realized that the stem had molded all the way down into the pumpkin. Gross. So we pretty much knew it wasn't going to make it to our Trunk or Treat activity on Saturday night, let alone to Halloween.

But we carved it anyway. And once the inside was fully green speckled and disgusting by Friday night we tossed it. Poor pumpkin never even got to be lit with a candle. More lessons learned in the Bowers house, don't pay 22 bucks for a moldy pumpkin!
Thursday morning was Natalie's Grandparents day at school. I wasn't going to have her be the only kid there without a partner for the craft they had planned so I got someone to watch Brady (thanks Betsy!!) and Natalie and I headed over to Shipley's (way, way, way better than Krisy Kreme, I am a total believer now!) for a special breakfast. Then it was off to school, and we had a lot of fun. We made a quilt square/wall hanging thingy, sang some songs, and had some cute nutter butter ghosts. I am super glad I went though because every single kid had a grown up there with them!

Friday night I worked.

Then Saturday night we went to the church Halloween party. They had all sorts of fun carnivally stuff inside and then were having a trunk or treat (where you trick or treat around the circle of cars, going from trunk to trunk) at the end of the night. The kids had fun, the loved the cotton candy.

They even won a cupcake (made by Me!) from the cakewalk. It was funny though because Brady was one number off 4 times before they actually won, when Natalie actually chose her own number out of the basket! Hopefully my kids are lucky, and win things like I do! Woot! But rather than take home a huge cake, Natalie wanted one of Mommy's cupcakes, that made me feel good!
Then the kids sat on the floor for awhile. I am not sure why, turns out we missed a bunch of stuff set up around the church, but they are happy in their ignorance! What they don't know won't hurt them!
Brady loved his "cannies". Oh yeah, here is his costume! He is the UPS man! He chose it himself, and all night people were asking for their packages, Brady was a bit confused and just replied with his typical, "I don't know...".
Close to the end of the activity inside they had a little "parade" where the kids walked across the stage and showed off their costumes. Both kids did this and said their names REALLY LOUD into the mic. It was pretty funny. Then we headed outside to trunk or treat, and that is when I got pretty pissed because obviously people had been out there doing it for awhile before all the people inside made it out because when the kids went around, half the cars were out of candy allready! Ugg, I hate bad planning like that, because the kids get dissapointed. Plus it pissed me off to see little kids with WalMart bags OVERFLOWING with candy, and here are my poor kids with barely anything in their little pumpkins. Ugg! I hate that! But they had fun (I need to come up with some new descriptive words!). Natalie was so pretty as a fluffy ballerina. Brady loved his costume. Natalie got to see lots of her friends (she told me she had been missing Ewan...how sad is that!), and she also got to see her school teacher there, that was a nice surprise!
My camera died or I would have more pictures. But we are going to try and hit up Boo at the Zoo tonight, so that should be super fun/great/exciting...anywho. I don't really like Halloween myself, but the kids do, and that makes it fun for me!

Big Boy

Brady is constantly insisting that he is a Big Boy. Not a cutie pants, a Big Boy. Not a pumpkin, a Big Boy. Not a monkey butt, a Big Boy. Or a "Big Boy and a UPS, Mama." (Yes, he is in L-O-V-E with anything mail delivery related right now.)

Anywho, he let me snap his picture while we were watching squirrels and waiting to pick up Natalie from school on Tuesday.

Love this Big Boy!

Spontaneous Picnic

Monday night was another wonderful night off for me, so Keith and I decided we would head to the park as a family. We stopped off and got some Subway, which I always forget how good that is (why don't they have a drive through??), and then headed to the park. I am pretty sure that eating outside on a picnic blanket ranks pretty high up there on my list of things I love. The weather was that perfect weather that you can't even feel on your skin. The park was empty, and the food was good. I tried to snap a few pictures, but the kids are always pretty reluctant, I have no idea where they got that from.

But I did get a little video, Yay! Even though my camera died at the end so it cuts off, but I did finally figure out how to get it to upload without giving me errors! Woot!

Dancing Princesses

Natalie's friend Bella came over to play Monday morning so her Mama could take little sister to the doctor and out for a special birthday lunch. We were happy to have her, and Natalie was so excited to have someone to play Princess with. They got all dressed up and danced and danced and danced.
Um, this picture cracks me up! Natalie just loves all of her friends so much.

Pumpkin Patch

The rest of our busy Friday ended with a family outing to the pumpkin patch. I love it because it is free, and the kids just LOVE to go! I think I may take them back later in the week so they can just play and we aren't rushing due to extreme hunger!

Brady and his new hat.
This girl had the best case of bedhead. Her bangs WOULDN'T stay down, cracked me up. Running off to play after the hayride. Of course since we got there right at sundown the pictures on the hayride were horrible. Ah well, you go when you can! They love this jail. This was their "sad" faces.
Yeah, sun in the eyes does not make for a great family picture. Plus Brady is determined to give the goofiest craziest faces in any picture he is in!
Natalie with the golden pumpkin. We fell in love with it in the patch and when we got up to pay for it she was like, "Oh it is priced", oh you mean these little black numbers on the pumpkin? GAH! These little black numbers that say 22? WHAT? YIKES! It was too late to put it back because it was so perfect, so yes we got suckered into a 22 dollar pumpkin! No wonder the patch is free! So if you go to the pumpkin patch look out for the pricey ones.

Catching up

One nice thing about having days off is that I can actually do stuff with my family, which means I have more things to blog about. It also means that I don't want to sit down and blog because either 1) I am too lazy or 2) I want to go to bed earlier than 12 for once. So, that means I have lots and lots of pictures to share, 3days later!

Friday was my only night off last week so I wanted to make it good. With the lack of an available play date I got a wild hair and took the kids up to the Wiggly Play Center (link has sound). I am pretty sure there is nothing like that near where we live (which stinks) and the kids love the atmosphere there AND it is near IKEA, so it is totally worth the drive. Also nice now that 121N is completed and you don't have to drive on the frontage road the whole time. Of course none of the pictures I got turned out, but oh well! We had a blast. This was the first time that BOTH of the kids felt brave enough to go up into the toys on their own. I went down the bumpy slides a few times with Brady and then he was off! I think it scared him at first with how fast it was, but once he realized that the bottom slowed him down he was good to go! I love just letting them PLAY, really run around and climb and slide and dance and all sorts of things. Yes, we can do this at the park, but it was so fun to go here! And they got to participate in Wiggle with Wags, which was hilarious. Wags the dog is one of the characters from the Wiggles and he came out and they all danced to some of the more popular songs and then took pictures. I thought the kids would be as freaked out by the giant costume, but they loved it! Brady even went in for a hug!

Going down the big slidesDancing with Wags! Watching the dancers. He wasn't thrilled about the dancing, but he liked watching. Its Wags!
After all this excitement we headed over to IKEA for a cheap lunch (even though they raised their prices), and to check out the toy section. I also picked up a chair for Natalie that I have been eyeing for months but they haven't had in every single time I have gone up there, and I was afraid to leave it till next time! There are tons of new things but I didn't want to look TOO much because we are going to go up again soon with Sarah & Co.(I promise I didn't forget!) and anyone else that wants to join us for that matter!

*sniffle*

Natalie came home from school with a little paper announcing Grandparents Day on October 23rd. The Grandparents are invitied to come for an hour, make a craft and have a snack. That STINKS. She also added that parents can come, but still, it isn't the same. I hate living away from family. I mean Natalie has 8, yes EIGHT grandparents and none live close and NONE will be there. STINKS.

Lists

Things I should have done today:
1. Grocery shopping
2. Finished the laundry
3. Vacuumed
4. Cleaned the bathroom
5. Sat down with the kids and had quality learning/crafting time


Things I did instead:
1. Crafted on Quiet books with my friend Betsy
2. Took a nap with Brady
3. Let the kids watch two movies
4. Cried a bit over my 40 hour work week
5. Made a chocolate cake

Day Dreamin'

At church a few of us were joking around about what we might do if we had piles of cash laying around (yeah...right, LOL). I started thinking about what would I do with a big chunk o' change to spend on me, since right now pretty much any money I spend I spend on the kids. I decided I would make myself a special reading/relaxing place.

I would start with this cute but pricey rug.

Then add this chair and a half. Love it!

Then this fabulous lamp I have been drooling over since the Pottery Barn catalogue arrived weeks ago.

This handy side table/storage cube for my treasures.

And a pretty little throw pillow,

and a comfy blanket to cuddle with to top it off.

Add a great book, some pitter pattering rain outside, and I've got myself a dream afternoon!