New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve we partied

We played games

And had rootbeer floats and crackers and dips.  

At midnight we banged pots and made a bunch of noise.  I took a video with my new toy and it's too dark.  Oh well.  Just know that we were noisy both inside and out!  How was your New Year's?

Halloween Fun

Carving the pumpkin...I wonder if my in-laws see who I see in this picture.

Dig in kids!  Get those pumpkin guts out!

Ryan isn't sure how he feels about it.

Let Mama show you how it's done.

Eeeeewww!

Carved By Daddy

Eyes Designed By Kristin

Nose Designed By Emily

Mouth Designed By Ryan

Gutted by Mom and the kids.

A Gothic Fairy

I had lots of fun tweaking this one

True acting skills.  She is not this sullen.

A sweet angel...

Or a rotten devil!  More quality acting!

Is it Ryan?  Or...

Or Spidey!

Nerd!

A blond Morticia?

Scavenger Hunts

Friday Kristin had her friend "Mo" over to spend the night.  It's been an age since she has had a sleep over so she was due.  While I don't remember my mom, forget my Dad ever entertaining me and my friends, I always wonder what I am supposed to do to entertain.

As luck would have it, Kristin did a scavenger hunt with the youth earlier in the week.  It was at the mall.  The kids had to find and do various things.  One was to find a modest outfit and try it on.  They documented their finds with their cell phones. So it was her suggestion to do a family scavenger hunt at Target.  Say it with me now:  Tarjay!  Very good.  Rich was teamed with Emily and Ryan and I was saddled with the tenny twins.  I was smart and made the lists short.  This was a good thing since we were running all over the store.  I was huffing and puffing.  Both teams finished within seconds of each other...or it was a tie.  We never really figured it out.  But it was lots of fun!

A creepy skull.  I think he's kind of cute. 

Mo got the binky

A screwdriver, yo! 

Each team had 5 items to find.  Rich was smart....he just did the items.  We were posing with them---you know cause we rocked it.   Other items included:  a dozen eggs and Jergens Lotion. 

A Resort

This past weekend, we were invited by Emmy and her family to come and stay with them at their time share.  A weekend filled with swimming, fun and laughs.  

Miss Alex playing hide and seek with the kids.

Aside from swimming, holding Ryder was her favorite activity.

Ryan blows bubbles like Daddy taught him.

Taking a break from all that swimming.  She is a dolphin!

Silly boy

View from our balcony.

We wore ourselves out swimming!  It was a lot of fun.

1 Down

2 Down

and 3 fought the good fight.

Family Fun

This weekend I had a houseful!  We had 20 people in our house.  We such party animals!  Seriously we had family visiting from out of state.  Everyone in my house was family and the scary part is, it was only a fraction of us.  We would need to rent a hall!  All of those people, and not one picture!  My camera sat like a lame duck in the corner.  It didn't take one picture!  However, I did get some other pictures of our weekend.

Friday was Apples to Apples

Saturday before family started to arrive, I asked my husband to buy me a "ridiculously large" Diet Coke.  He did.

64 ounces!  No, I was not able to drink it all.  I wanted to blink.

And today the kids had jacuzzi fun.  We finally got it looking normal again.