Thanksgiving 2009!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. Our friend Julie was able to reserve the activities room/commons room at the apartment complex where she works. It was perfect for Thanksgiving.

We ate lots of delicious food, played games, the kids played, and of course we all looked at the ads for Black Friday!! (my favorite Thanksgiving activity!! :)) It was a lot of fun!

Here's some random photos of the kids playing, and our attempt to get a group photo...

Veteran's Day, and a little mischief baby

Jaden's school sent home a star for us to decorate and write the name of a Veteran in our family.

It was a good opportunity to teach Jaden what Veterans are and how important they are to our country. My grandpa was in the Air Force, and although he died before Jaden was born, he knows who Grandpa Bill is.

This is the star after we printed his name on it and a couple little things....

and turn your head sidways for a close up... (forgot to edit the pic before posting...oops)

and here we have the handsome little bugger working on it. He had fun, I put the dots of glue on and he put the rhinestones on...


and here's the finished product.

They got to hang up their stars in the hall at school. They also had a big assembly honoring all the Veterans. How cool!! It was fun teaching Jaden about Veterans and he thought it was SOOO cool that Grandpa Bill flew airplanes!!

I'm constantly taking a little munchkin down off the counters. It's so frustrating that NOTHING is safe in my house. She can open doors, climb on counters, mess up the cupboards... you name it!! This girl can do any kind of mischief imaginable. I thought I had seen it all with Jaden, but he was never a climber...

I usually just groan at her on the counter and put her down. But this time I had to get out the camera! I can't believe I let her do this while I took pics, but it was worth it!! There was already a spoon in the Ovaltine, so I guess I made it too easy for her.

Time to invest in some door locks. We have handle-type door knobs... it would just be too convenient to be able to use the dozens of regular knob covers that we already have. Now if I could just figure out how to bolt the stools to the floor.... hmmmmm.

WICKED

I had the chance to see the musical "Wicked" with a bunch of girlfriends.

IT. WAS. AWESOME.

A few of us met up before and ate at IHOP. FAN-freakin-TASTIC. Gotta love IHOP. :)

I couldn't believe the talent. They all had such awesome voices. I liked Glinda and Elphaba's voices at the theatre better than the ones on the soundtrack. No kidding. It kinda made up for their lack of dance skill... :)

No, there was just a song, "Dancing Through Life" and I was disappointed that there wasn't much dancing during the song. And some of the dancing just wasn't quite polished. But I guess if I wanted more dancing, then I should have gone to a Ballet, right?? :)

Happy Halloween!

The kids had a fantastic Halloween. I kind of feel like they got gypped a little because mom was so sick and miserable we all kind of had to stick close to home. We wanted to take them out where a bunch of our friends were trick-or-treating so they would have some little friends to go with. Oh well, they had fun, and actually our neighborhood was awesome! A few houses were giving out whole candy bars... just what we need, but Jaden thought it was so cool.

Here's the Halloween decor we made this year. Jaden absolutely LOVED the monster on the door! After we got it all done (late at night), we had to go outside and see it from the sidewalk. Then he says, "Let's stay out here all night and watch it scare people!!! That will be funny!!", he cracks me up! Then he wanted to make one for every door in the house, on each side! What a crazy little man...

We were able to make this spooky sign with stuff we had laying around the garage.


The kids were in their costumes all day. Jaden was The Human Torch from the Fantastic 4. He actually had a really good idea for his costume, and thought of it all by himself. He has a little basketball with a rubberband attached to it (for his Build-a-Bear). He put it around his wrist and would throw it, he said "it looks like I'm throwing a FIRE BALL!!!". Don't know where he gets his craziness...

KynnLee was.... (drum roll) ..... STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE, of course!! And the *cutest* one I've ever seen, by far!!. I sprayed her hair red with some glitter. She also had some freckles on her nose and cheeks. Beeda made the hat, so the rest was pretty darn easy.

I wanted to take them out and about to places giving away free stuff for kids in their costumes. A couple restaurants were giving away kid's meals, it would have been fun to go to lunch. But again, mom was too sick to leave, so they ended up at home all day in their costumes.


We weren't sure if KynnLee was going to leave her hat on, but she did really good!!


It was so funny watching her, it didn't take long for her to catch on to the whole trick-or-treating thing. Jaden is such a good brother, he would help her and wait for her.

LOVE all those Fall leaves!

A house down the street always puts out an amazing Halloween display. Every time we would drive by through the month Jaden would ask why we can't have a "scary car and scary people" in our yard. So we made sure to take them down there and get some pics.

(The camera lens fogged up when we came in the warm house) She was so funny!! Just amazed at all the "nummies" she got.

I'm a little disappointed I didn't get any really good pics of them in their costumes. Grrr, wish I could just hire a photographer so I could chill with the kids and then go home to enjoy a bunch of amazing pics. :)

That was Halloween at the Haynes household!

Fall Festivities!

Last week we took the kids to The Patterson Farm about 25min away for some Fall fun! It was so cool!