Halloween 2012

On Halloween, I took the girls to the Rio for a party! Anna decided that she wanted to wear her Hello Kitty Halloween shirt instead of her costume for the morning party.

We enjoyed the science performer. Then, after the performance,  they had a few drawings for prizes! I WON 2 entrees and 2 desserts at Joe's Crab Shack! I was super pumped!!  The girls were also proud that their mama won!

All three of the girls decorated pumpkins while we were at the party too!

Their pumpkin creations turned out fantastic!

All three of my girls dressed up: Faith (as Laura), Anna (as Carrie), and Jillian (as Mary) for Halloween 2012. 

Our silly girl, Anna!

Funny Faces! 

Then we made our way to our friends' house! This is a special photo because it is the only photo that we have of Anna wearing her bonnet! 

Then we knocked on the door of our friends! Trick-or-Treat! 

Aunt Michelle and Uncle Reed gave gifts to all three of the girls! Jillian and Faith were especially excited about their new Princess and Popstar dolls. 

"The tickle monster" (given his name by Faith) wanted a hug from Faith, but he first had to give her a good tickle.

Jillian had a good laugh as her little sister was tickled.

A photo of the girls with Lindsey and Erin before trick-or-treating.

Some of the families in the neighborhood left a bowl of candy out for the trick-or-treaters! Anna had fun choosing which candy she wanted.

Faith got a little cold while we were out, so her sweet, gentlemanly daddy gave her his coat.

Before we knew it, we had gone over a couple dozen houses, so we went back to the Smith's house to warm up with some apple cider.  The girls warmed up quickly and in no time at all, they wanted to go out to trick-or-treat again.  Thankfully, we had two volunteers to take the girls, Erin and Lindsey.

Anna and all the grown-ups decided to stay warm in the house.

It was a fun evening, we even ran into some new friends from church, and one of Brad's work colleagues too!

Faith was completely tuckered out by the time we got into the van. She told us on the way home, "I almost started to cry, but then I realized I was just tired, so I didn't."  I thought that was super insightful of Faith to recognize that she was a little more emotional because she was tired.  :-)

Carnival for Life

The Sunday before Hurricane Sandy, we attended a "Carnival for Life" at a local Catholic church. Everyone who attended brought donations to be given to the local pregnancy center.  The people in attendance were very generous and I could tell it was a cause that was close to many people's hearts. 

The kids were encouraged to wear a costume for the carnival.  Our girls this year for Halloween were the Ingalls girls from Little House on the Prairie. Jillian and Faith's matching dresses were inspired by the show in Season 1 "Country Girls" when Ma uses beautiful fabric to surprise Mary and Laura with matching dresses for their presentation.  (Check it out on You Tube. It is a sweet, sweet episode.)

And of course we had to have our own little Carrie too! Our "Carrie" was exhausted and fell asleep on the way to the carnival.

But thankfully Anna perked up once we got there, especially when she realized that there was candy involved in going to a carnival! 

She was a little mesmerized by her fireball (which we did not let her have at ANY time).

The girls played the cake walk a couple of times but didn't win.  Bummer! :-( The good news is the proceeds raised from the cake walk all went to the pregnancy center! 

We ran into some friends from church who were dressed as Bible characters. Brad and I had fun trying to guess the Bible characters by their props and quickly guessed Mary, David, John the Baptist....

Unfortunately, we had a super hard time figuring out the character of the boy with the beard and the green sash.  His props were not nearly as obvious as his brothers, so his mom gave us a clue, his character's name started with a "J".  

Brad and I started down the list..."Jeremiah, Josiah, Joshua, Joel, Job, Jonathan...JONAH!"  With each name Brad and I grew in our confidence and thought to ourselves, "Wow, we are amazing Bible scholars here. We know lots of "J" names!" :-)

Next thing you know, they tell us, "It's a New Testament character".  For some reason, the beard made us think of "old" like the "OLD TESTAMENT".  But that was okay, we we were on the right track now and we could totally do it. So we began again, "John, James, JUDE...." 

They stopped us there, "It's the most obvious Bible character."  

It was both funny and a little humbling that we missed the most important Bible character that begins with the letter "J"....JESUS! 

But our kind friend made us feel better when she said to us, "It would have been more obvious if he was holding a cross!" 

Jillian told me the cutest thing, "Mommy, we are the ONLY prairie girls any place that we go...that's pretty neat."

The girls had fun playing the bean toss.

Anna being the clever girl that she is, just walked right up to the game...

And threw them in!

The girls had fun doing some fishing too! It honestly reminded me of a scene from Little House on the Prairie! 

The Carnival of Life was a sweet time of fun for our family and for a very worthy cause!

Our Pumpkin Princess

Every year, AWANA Sparks have a pumpkin "contest" (everyone is a winner)! 

So this year, we made a special potato head pumpkin princess!

Faith spontaneously laid down on the yard in front of our house and I was very pleased to get this super sweet photo of our 5 year old! :-)

We wanted to keep our pumpkin safe while it rode to church, so we put the seat belt on her in the front seat of the car.

This pumpkin received a lot of enthusiasm

and lovin' too from three little girls at our house! 

The National Zoo in Fall

On the second to last weekend of October, we enjoyed the most beautiful weather and we decided it was the perfect time to go visit the National Zoo!
Anna and I enjoyed the pigs in the kids' farm of the zoo.

While in the kids'  farm, we ran into some new friends from church! It was fun to hang out with Shelby, Tyler, and their kiddos for a little bit. The bad news was our new friends were nearly done with their visit the zoo and we were just beginning ours.  So our fun together at the zoo lasted only a little bit. The good news is a couple weekends after our time at the zoo, they invited us to dinner at their house. We played a game of Settlers of Catan with the Cities and Knights expansion! It was a close, nail-biting game and we had so much fun! We were super pumped to find new friends who are game lovers, like us!

In this photo, we have a photo of two of our news friends' two older kids, and our "old" friends' daughter Annie with the goats in the kids' farm.  Lindsey and Brian and their three kids met us the kids' farm and then we all began our zoo adventure together.

Brad with his three little girls with the waterfall and the bright shining sun in their eyes! I am telling you it was a gorgeous day even if we had trouble getting any photos of the kids looking at us for the photos.

First, we checked out the Think Tank. Here Jillian is trying out one of the "enrichment" exhibits.

It has been so cute how Annie and Faith have bonded over being "twins" (with their glasses)!

Then we stopped for a picnic at some benches, Anna shared with her little friend Bennett!

Then we visited the cheetahs. Brad helped the girls see the cheetahs a little better! 

The little baby cheetahs were adorable and enjoyed snuggling with one another.

Mr. Brad enjoyed demonstrating how his absolutely BIGGEST stride is so much smaller than a cheetah's stride!!!

Ellie wanted to race Mr. Brad and see if she could do a little better. :-) I love her competitive spirit.

Then Faith had a try against Ellie! She is a smart cookie taking on someone who is her own size! :-)

Then we went to visit the bears. We discovered this sleeping black on the hay.

When all of a sudden...the bear WOKE UP!

 Little Anna was a little scared and quickly decided to leave the platform.

Thankfully, Mr. Brian (aka Indian Jones) was there to give her a big hug! And everything was all better.  

Then we saw the elephants in their new big, expansive enclosure! It was super nice to see the elephants with so much room to move around.  It was a bit ironic that this one elephant wanted so desperately to go back to his small enclosure.

On our way to the Invertebrates to see our favorite exhibit of all, the gigantic spider hanging from multiple webs with no glass around it!! Brian and Lindsey did not believe us (and thought we were just fibbing), so we were excited to prove them wrong! LOL! (You know how those things always work out for us, don't you?)

But before going into the invertebrates exhibit, we saw the fascinating Komodo dragon. The dragon is the largest of living lizards and is extremely rare to be able to see in zoos.

We also saw a beautiful orange octopus. 

Then we went outside to see if we could get some butterflies to land on us. 

We were unsuccessful in our attempts (not one butterfly landed on us)  but at least we got a cute photo of all the kiddos and the dads together. 

The butterflies were in abundance and were fun to see.  

Unfortunately, our spider exhibit was CLOSED!!  We still very much enjoyed the Invertebrate Exhibit and we look forward to showing our fun friends the spider exhibit next time we are at the zoo!