My Halloween 2008

October first kicks off my most favorite time of the year. October, November and December are so much fun. Halloween, followed by Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas are just so much fun. And once you add children to the mix it gets even better.

Our church has a pumpkin patch each year. It is a wonderful time to hang out and play. This year, T and I volunteered in there to sell the pumpkins. It is lite duty. Just collect money from the folks who come by to buy pumpkins. We brought the kids and they could run around while we sat around and hung out. As you can see, we had lots of fun.

Later in the month we played at our monthly poker party. Since it was October, it was a costume party.

Finally, it was time for the actual day of Halloween. The kid were so excited. E was going to be Spiderman, for the second year in a row. Z, in theory, was going to be a dragon. But when it came time to put the costume on, he didn't want to wear it. So we settled for his homemade Halloween shirt. Here, the kids are getting ready to trick or treat.

The kids really loved trick or treating. Luckily they are still little and they really only have the stamina to do our block and our neighbor's block. Some older kids come by and they have a pillowcase filled with candy that must weight ten pounds!

My Seaworld

In October, we took our annual trip to Seaworld. We love going here. I really don't know who loves it more, the parents or the children. And of course this trip was very special, because this was the first time that Z came.

One of T's favorite things to do at Seaworld is feed the dolphins. It is the first thing we do when we walk through the gate. Enter gate, proceed to the left, purchase fish and feed the dolphins. You have to get there early to do it because sometimes they run out of fish. We've actually had people approach us and ask to buy our fish. You can see Z in T's arms. Z is not as excited as T is about feeding the dolphins.





E was excited about watching us feed the dolphins. She didn't really want to feed them.




Then it was off the the aquarium to check out more fish, some sharks, sea horses, lobsters, craw fish, etc. Lots of great fun.

Then, of course, for the big show. Shamu. I'm such a big softie. I actually start to get all teary when I go to these types of things because I get so happy watching my kids have so much fun.

You can see how in to it they are. E in particular in this picture. She is totally into watching the whales perform.

I love this photo.

Here we are at the seal and walrus show. They have the same show every time. And we come to watch it every time. It is a bit of a caper. Very cute. But this time was quite funny because one of the seals wouldn't do what he was supposed to do and the show couldn't quite move forward until he did it. The live actors just went with it and we all laughed. The 30 minute show ended up being about 15 because of it all. Great fun.

The photo of this walrus doesn't really do it justice. He is HUGH!

Seaworld has a playground area. In all our previous visits, we had never been in there. But this trip, we ventured there to see what it was all about. it was quite fun. In this photo, T and E are across the way and Z and I are on a ship. All the areas are connected by rope tunnels. It is quite scary as you have to crawl through the tunnels to get from place to place. The tunnels are two to three stories up. The kids don't mind at all. The adults are frightened!

Here is a very happy little man.

Here is one of those cute little rides that go round and round. I was brave enough to try one out with my kids. I wasn't sure how Z would behave on it, seeing that we were about 20 feet in the air. Would he sit still? Would he get scared? He was fine. He thought it was a blast!

And this is actually the funniest of them all. This is a water ride called Atlantis. This is the splash area. People can wait here and get splashed when the ride comes barreling down. Well, I was on the ride and E convinced T that this was a "safe" area to stay. Note the wet ground. Well, T got the surprise of his life when he got soaked as the ride came down and sprayed him. It was quite funny to come off the ride and see them both soaked.

My October

Well, as usual, my post starts out with an apology for being so delinquent in posting. Here is what happened in late September and October.


I went to Florida for the funeral of my uncle. While there, my other uncle, my dad and I stopped at a restaurant to have lunch that was across from the beach. So we stopped to take a look and saw a man using a metal detector. Every now and then he'd stop and wait for the waves to retreat and dig something up. Nothing big enough for us to see.

After E's late September cardiology appointment, T and I took her to the zoo. There are a few photos of her that I think are "super model" worthy. Of course, I feel this way, I am her mother.

This is one of the photos.

This is another one of them.

Here is a cute one of the two of them on the merri-go-round. Notice she still has her hospital band still on.

After the hurricane, we piled our debris at the foot of our driveway, just like all the other neighbors. We were told that it could be up to six months until FEMA came to take it away. Our regular recycling folks weren't able to pick it up. Luckily it was just a few weeks until this huge crane came by one day with a huge truck to haul it away. Of course we took pictures. Unfortunately, the one person who is absolutely crazy about trucks in our family was taking a nap, Mr. Z.

We also took time out of our October to celebrate J's first birthday!

He had wonderful weather for his birthday. The kids took turns beating a pinata in the back yard. Notice, E's hair a-flying.

Once it broke, all the kids scattered to grab the candy.

Z grabbed some too.

E also performed with the children's choir at church.

Later that month we found a small lizard in our front hall. Miss adventurous grabbed it by the tail and took it outside. Note the devilish grin.

She giggled heaps when the tail broke off and still flipped around on the floor of our hall.

Back to the zoo we went in October with both kids and my mom. We love the meercats. Or "meerchats" as Z calls them. I love the pose this one is striking.

Another supermodel pose.

Z and E were enthralled with the zoo keeper who was giving a demonstration on a particular bird.

The nest sitters had lots of fun that day, but sure were pooped by the end of the day.

Towards the end of the month we went to our congenital heart defects support group's fund raiser carnival. The kids had a great time!

T entered a pie eating contest. He didn't win, but had a great time!

E got her face painted and hair sprayed.

Later that day we made a skeleton out of old milk jugs as Halloween was rapidly approaching.

My September (mostly)

As you can see, I'm catching up on my blogging. Here is what we did in September (these photos are in the right order!).


We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary by renewing our vows. This is our Pastor, Marc at our church. We had some of our friends with us.

Here is a photos of all of us after the ceremony.

The vow renewal was on a Friday. Then, on Saturday, we had a party with a theme of: Marriage, Mexican and Margaritas.

You guessed it: we had Mexican food and Margaritas. It was lots of fun and we had lots of people show up. We also ate Mexican food for about a week!

My mom got us a new TV and here is the box. Of course, which do the children find more fun? The box, of course!

In fact, E liked the box so much that one day she decided to take a nap in it! Yes, she even went upstairs and got her pillow and blanket herself.

Then in late August, we finally got our windows replaced and siding replaced. Here you can see that the workers have removed the old kitchen window in preparation for installing the new window. The children thought this was funny (and so did mom).

At the beginning of September, Z had to have ear tubes inserted and his adenoids removed. Here we are in the surgical pre-op area. We decided to include E as a good experience.

Here is our friend, P, taking Z away for his anesthesia.

And here is Dr. N, who did the surgery. Some of you will remember that Dr. N gave us our dog Sydney. Yes, Z is asleep there.

And here we are in recovery, not an hour later. The post-op folks always want to get the kids out quickly because they scream and cry and bother the other patients. Yes, Z was doing both of those.

And here is another picture of E sleeping in another funny spot. This is the folding changing table that used to sit on top of the pack-n-play.

This is the Saturday of Hurricane Ike. We lost a tree that fell into the street. But all else was OK.

The children played in the rain afterwards.

However, we lost our electricity on Saturday morning at 4am. The electricity company was saying that it would be as long as 4 weeks to get it back. So by Sunday evening, we decided to leave town. Our dear friends, the M's let us come to their country house about 2 hours from our own house. It was a bit harrowing as we left our home to travel to the country house. We didn't know if there would be traffic or if we'd have enough gas to get there. With no electricity, you can't pump gas. We packed up the contents of our freezer and emptied our our fridge and hauled the dog, husband, two kids, my mother and two cats to the country. And as you'll see from our photos, we had a WONDERFUL time:

Driving around the 40 acres in a golf cart.

Looking at the cows.

Sydney loved it there. He really liked running next to the golf cart when we went out in it.

We fished on the lake....but didn't catch anything.

E, the bug loving girl that she is, handled the night crawlers.

And the M's have a huge inflatable jumpy jump that squirts water. So we played on that too!

Z got a haircut at a local barber. Z cried and wriggled so much that the barber didn't want to charge me the 7 dollars. I told him I couldn't not pay him, so he settled for $5.

Here is what our trip home was like. Z was sleeping and Buster was climbing all over Z.

Buster really didn't like the car and Z really didn't like Buster climbing all over him.