Chuck E Cheese

Where a kid can be a kid.

We went to Chuck E Cheese's one of the days Bo had off last week.

The kids had a ton of fun, of course.

I couldn't resist taking these pictures of Meg and Derrick. Meg kept insisting that Derrick ride with her. Derrick thought it was great.

So cute!

Haunted House!

We've heard lots of good things about the Children's Museum's Haunted House, so we decided to take the kids this week, since Bo has this week off.

We went during the "lights on" time so that the kids wouldn't be scared. They had so much fun and weren't the least bit scared. I think that the workers walking around talking to the kids and handing them candy had something to do with it not being scary. If it were dark, I think it would be another story. Anyways... it was really cool and very detailed. They had it really decorated. It was fun to go around and look at all the things.

The theme was that these two vampires, Vic and Viv, went on vacation, and these were the sights they saw. It makes sense when you see the pictures. We "visited" New Gorleans, Dead Valley, Horrorwood, Count Rushmore, and some other places I can't remember. Meg and I had a fun time being "scared" at the giant bugs. Derrick showed no expression whatsoever. Bo and Carter just loved it all.

It was a fun family activity. We love Halloween!

The kids in front of an ROUS.
I was trying to get Derrick inside the mouth. I love that he's just looking at it like its no big deal, even though there are skeletons in blood on the inside of that thing.

Carter being a zombie.

Count Rushmore

Horrorwood celebrities eating out.

I love that Derrick is reaching for the spider's leg.

After the Haunted House we decided to go upstairs in the museum and end the day with a ride on the carousel.

Pajama Time

Now that we are in an environment where it actually gets cold in the fall and winter, I'm realizing we don't enough cold weather clothing. I've been worried about Meg and Derrick staying warm at night, since neither likes to sleep under the blankets. When we were at Costco on Monday, I found the answer to my worries, footie pajamas!! Carter realized they had some in his size too, so he wanted in on the action, making sure he got ones that matched Derrick.

Here are my babies! Aren't they cute? They LOVE these pjs and would wear them all day if I'd let them. I love most of all that when I put Derrick in one, Carter goes and finds his and puts them on too. So cute.

crafty, crafty

Anything requires paint, googly eyes, pipe cleaners and making a mess is sure to be a fun bet at our house. That's one of the reasons why we love Halloween so much around here. There are so many fun activities to do!

We had a bunch of our new friends over to our house to join in on the crafts, but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the group in action! Oh well, at least I have the end results. And so, without further ado, I present the extent of my creative craft ideas, which thankfully is good enough for the kids:

No, I did not make the pumpkin lights. ;) We can claim, however, the awesome paper pumpkins, the super fun spiders (the orange pipe cleaner on top of the orange spider is Meg's "spider web" for her spider), and super cool bats. We also made some ghosts out of garbage bags. Those are outside hanging from our tree, but since it's raining outside, you don't get a picture. Take my word, they are rad.

Bats!!

This past week we met up with some friends to go to this live Bat show that was going on at the Children's Museum. We got tickets for it like 3 weeks ago and have really been looking forward to it.

This Bat expert came and talked all about bats and even brought four to take around and show everyone. It was a really interesting show. He disclaimed a lot of myths about bats, and really made me appreciate them, once he told me how many bugs these guys eat! :)

He brought 4 different bats to show. None of them could fly because they had been injured. One was super tiny, which apparently most bats are, one what I would've considered a "normal" size, a big furry one that can only be found an island in Asia, and the last bat was, well I can't remember what kind, but it was the largest species of bat. It was HUGE.

Apparently this guy has been on Ellen, Conan O'Brien, David Letterman, and some others. It was really fun and the kids had a great time.

After seeing the bats, we decided to go up a few levels in the museum and go check out the frog exhibit. The frog exhibit was fun. It has probably 20 different kinds of frogs, along with dress ups, computer games, and other things. Carter took the picture of the frog, but I took the other frog pictures that turned out fuzzy.

Carter watching intently.

In the back of this picture you can see the bat guy walking around with a bat. In the middle of the picture, where the girl in the pink shirt is (Layna), is another aisle. The guy would also walk up and down that, so Carter ditched me to go sit over there to be closer to the aisle. You can barely glimpse his head. He's right next to Luke, who's in the green striped shirt.

The bat guy, or is it bat-man? :)
Meg and me. Meg was watching the show, shafting the camera. Derrick was on my lap, you can't see him, but he is pulling the string on my sweater.

Meg dressing up as a frog.

Weird looking frog.

My cuties. There was this skylight that looked like a fly that would "fly" on the ground. The kids had fun trying to step on it. Derrick got really frustrated with it, because as soon as he'd crawl to it, it'd shift away.

Tay-has

Last week the kids and I took a quick trip down to Texas to visit my sister-in-law Bridget and her kids. Oh yeah, I saw Whitney too. ;) They live just outside of Houston.
We had tons of fun. We left after school on Monday and came back late Saturday night. The kids did great traveling, I think that's mostly because it was a non-stop flight.
Bridget and Whitney's kids are close in age to mine. Eli is 4, Dora is 2, and Emmy is 3 months. Our kids played together sooooo well. The boys were either dressing up in costumes and running around the house, or they were off jumping in the pool together. The girls mostly spent their time up in Dora's room playing with stuffed animals, "cooking", or playing mommy and baby. So funny. The babies? They eyed each other, ate their food, and slept.
We had a great time visiting them and were sad to leave.
One random thing about the trip was that I kept getting confused as to where I was. Being there felt like I had never moved to Indy, so when taking to my kids about going back home, I kept mentioning going back to Texas, forgetting that was where we already were, and that home was now Indiana. It was just trippy.
I will say that I'm glad to be back home in the nice fall weather. The trees are all changing colors and its just so fun to have an actual Fall.

Emmy and Derrick. Yes, I posed Derrick. They did hold hands at one time, and with no prompting. So cute.

Whitney and Bridget and a bouncy house the the kids absolutely LOVED playing in. What a fun toy!

All of the gang! We were all able to fit nicely in Bridget's Tahoe.

The last day we were there Bridget took us to Build A Bear. The kids had so much fun making their "best friends." THe guy in the red shirt below with our kids is Bridget's dad, Don. He's our adopted grandpa. My kids love him! We adopted Bridget's parents when we were living in Texas. They are our second family.

Carter made a puppy.

Megan got a cute pink teddy bear that smells like strawberry ice cream.

Playing with their new toys.

First Legit Hair Cut

I took Carter to a hair salon that specializes in kids. I've always cut Carters hair, so this is his first time getting it cut by someone with actual training.
I wanted to get it cut by scissors, not clippers, and I didn't trust myself. He had a great time. Meg was super jealous and wanted hers cut too. Too bad for her, no way on earth is she getting her curls cut off! Bo and I are hanging on to those for as long as we can.

Soccer!

So Carter has been having a good soccer season. The first game he was just trying to figure out the gist of it, but now he has it down! He is loving it and has even scored quite a few goals.

This is us watching Carter at practice. I'm eating some skittles, hence the weird face.

Derrick sitting up for the VERY FIRST TIME!!
Go Carter!!

So handsome in his uniform!