Gobble-Gobble

For Thanksgiving this year, we headed down south to Galveston. My parents rented a beach house, and we were able to stay there half the week. With a lot of planning, we got to see LOTS of family! We started out at the beach, hung out with aunts/uncles, cousins, and both grandpas made it down! Then Jared & Jenn came down, had a great Thanksgiving meal sitting outside on the balcony/deck with the view of the ocean. Friday morning, Bob's parents, Sandra & family, and Martha drove down for a day in the sand. The kids had so much fun with everyone, and we had another great meal outside. (the weather sure was nice for us this trip!). Next day, drove to Houston to meet Bob's family and Christina who had just flown in - everyone was in town at once!! :) Had a delicious feijoada that Bob's mom made, and we ate... and ate... and ate... all day. Sunday came, we woke up... loaded the car again and headed back home to get our Christmas tree. (this has become a tradition now, so Bob and I made sure to hold to it) :) Whew! We got some great pictures over the weekend... enjoy!

first stop: Shrimp 'n Stuff! (a family tradition)

the Beach!

Casey showing Aiden some crabs

Playing around with Papoo! The kids loved teasing him,

making him "cry", and having him steal their hats!

Aunt Jenn & Uncle Jared arrived!

Turkey cookies with Holly & Maddy

the Bloems arrive!!

the kids started in their clothes, and ended up in undies!

the grandmothers enjoying some love from the boys

the dads don't look like they're having fun, huh!? :)

Sibling Love

I'm loving the kids ages right now (err, ok most of the time... they are 2 and 3 afterall!) ;) But they are finally at an age where they play together. And it's super sweet to see them look out for one another, protect each other, and love on each other at such an early age. Now, it doesn't happen all the time... but when it does, it warms my heart like no other! Here are a few moments I've gotten on camera lately... 

The Paint Store Incident

I'm finally getting around to blogging about this. The day was Thursday, October 25. It was a school day. I had picked out paint for Bridgette's room, but didn't have time to pick it up before I got the kids. I called the paint store and asked if it could be ready so we could just run in and pay. (thinking I'm being a smart mommy by minimizing time in store with 2 toddlers) We got there, and of course the kids are wanting to touch all the paint, colors, supplies. I picked up Aiden (who was fighting me in my arms) and tried to give the guy my information to pay. At one point, I turned around to Bridgette to tell her to stand close to mommy and stop picking up everything from the shelf... that's when Aiden reached towards the counter, grabbed a paint can, and yanked it off the counter! It fell. It exploded. It covered mommy. I was in shock! I couldn't believe I was standing there in a puddle of paint! I looked up at the guys behind the counter and was speechless. I didn't know whether to cry or laugh. They grabbed rags for me, and showed me to the bathroom. You could not even see the color of my shoes... and being flats, paint was all inside... so here we went... squishing paint and leaving footprints to the bathroom. Once we got there I put the kids along the wall, and said "Do NOT touch anything"... you should have seen how big Aiden's eyes were. There were no paper towels of course, so I used the 5 little rags wisely. And just FYI... when you try to wipe paint, it just smears - ha! I took off my shoes one at a time and ran them under the water. I was just trying to get as much paint off as I could to be able to walk out of the store without leaving more footprints. We walked out, and Aiden said "sorry" to the nice men cleaning up our paint spill on the floor by the register. I kept apologizing while they mixed another can of paint for us. They didn't make us pay for the spilled paint, and one of the guys helped us out to the car with our supplies. As he put the paint in, he said "don't worry, it's just paint... we were just cleaning up extra well because we have out CEO coming in the store tomorrow"... ummm!??? I'm still laughing at this now. It will definitely go down as one of those stories I tell when the kids are teenagers! Here's a picture I took after I cleaned up ... 

Trick or Treat

This year for Halloween, the kids got plenty of chances to dress up. They got to wear once costume to their school's "Fall Festival" - which I unfortunately didn't take pictures that morning... but Aiden was a monkey and Bridgette a princess. Then, Bridgette got to wear another costume to her dance class - Texas A&M cheerleader {WHOOP!}. 

And then of course Halloween night. We got together with neighbors first to hang out, bbq, and let the kids run around. Aiden was planning on wearing a zebra costume, but changed to "huck finn" at the last minute because it was too HOT! And Bridgette started out in her Cinderella costume for the neighborhood party, and changed into her pink princess dress for trick or treating. (such a girl!)  I stayed back and passed out candy with my friend Jill, while the boys took the kids door to door. The kids had a blast! And Bob and I fell in love with our neighborhood a little bit more. Everybody was out with their kids, one house was passing out balloons, Jill was passing out jello shots to the adults, there was even a golf cart driving around playing fun music. It was just really neat to see everyone get so involved. And, of course, now we have way too much candy! Happy Halloween! Hope everyone had a fun night.