Goblin Walk, Twin Party and Happy Diwali!

The Halloween craze has hit a fever pitch here in our house.  Friday night was our city's annual Goblin Walk, where the stores downtown all hand out candy for two hours the Friday before Halloween.  Every year it gets more and more crowded, and we promise that we won't go back next year.  But, we went back again this year.  Of course, the girls took quite a few stores to warm up to the crowds, and really leaned on Jake to lead them up to those handing out candy.  But by the end, little nervous Addy was marching right up on her own though.   For the Goblin Walk, Addy worn Buzz Lightyear, Colbie was Batman and Jake was the same Fireman he has been for the last two years.

 

 

 

 

This morning was our annual twin Halloween bash.  This year I had two other Moms to help me put it on, and they are much more low key than I, but I went with it (too many other things going on to organize it like last year!) .  The crowd was much larger, the budget much smaller, which resulted in a much more simple but fun party.

Tonight we went to our friend's house for our first Diwali party.  It was such fun, with delicious food, and the highlight was playing with sparklers once it got dark outside.  

 The result of two days of extreme excitement (weekend nights they request to sleep together these days!)

Walk-A-Jog

Our school's largest annual fundraiser the Walk-A-Jog was yesterday.  It is always a long day, but I always forget just how long it is until we're in it.  The kids and I ended up being at the little festival for FIVE whole hours.  Jake ran a huge 56 laps in the 45 minutes allowed for the second grade.  Incredibly, after the crazy day, Jake had to go to a birthday party too.  Needless to say, we all were pooped and went to bed early last night.

Circus and being "BOOed"

Yesterday was quite a day!  The kids slept in as Friday night was full of excitement- our doorbell rang and we found an amazing basket of goodies on our doorstep with a sign stating that we had been "BOOed".  I've seen this online for a couple of years, but we've never received one nor given one- but basically you secretly drop off a basket of Halloween goodies, and then the recipient is supposed to do the same to two more people within two days, so by the time Halloween arrives, the neighborhood is "spread with good cheer".   Well- whoever dropped ours off (we honestly have no idea) went above and beyond and the kids were SO excited.  Josh and I were even "BOO-zed" with some tequila!  So, we're packing up three buckets today and hope to deliver them to three great neighbors today.  

 

Anyways, after Jake's soccer game (where he scored TWO goals), we headed over to Red Morton Park.   For my Dad's birthday we gave him tickets to this family circus that I had heard about from many friends, called Zoppe.  Before the circus though, there happened to be a little Halloween carnival happening with games that I thought we'd stop into first.  Well, Jake and Colbie loved the little carnival- think enormous gym with games lined up along the side, run by Sequoia High School students, and craft tables in the middle.   There were hundreds of kids there, which made little Addy quite nervous, but Jake and Colbie marched right up to the miniature doors to trick or treat and played along with the games.  All three kids walked away with a bag of treats and toys, and we walked right across the park to the circus.  It is literally a one tent circus, with bleachers set up for 500 guests.  But, it was a real circus, with clowns, animal shows, acrobats, tumblers, vaulters and more.   Grandma Lee Lee joined us too, so we all got to enjoy the fun.  Unfortunately when I took my camera out at intermission, Lee was kind enough to go and buy the kids popcorn so I missed snapping a picture with her and Josh!

 

It's also been a week of baking Halloween treats- for both a Teacher Appreciation lunch and for our big Walk-A-Jog event today.

A and C are 4 and a Half Today!

The girls have been VERY excited about their half birthday for the first time this year.  It seems that being 5 makes them "big girls" officially in their minds, so 4.5 is getting them significantly closer.  This past rainy Sunday all of the kids made half of a cake and decorated it in preparation for today (I was running out of things to do being stuck inside!).  The girls are home from preschool today, and we had planned on having a real adventure, but I just could not convince them to get out of their jammies and out of the house today.  So, we've had a lot of pretend, role playing time, coloring, and costume time.  We also played with their new Koala Crates that arrived in the mail- just one of the coolest monthly subscriptions out there parents!
Pics from the week:
Jumpy house pumpkin patch with Grandma Lee Lee:

 Puddle jumping:

 Hard to see, but both girls fell asleep in the middle of their floor last night, and slept there all night long.

 Koala Crate fun:

Preschool Picture

School pictures petrify my super shy girls.  Last year, they stood in the corner of their classroom scared to death during the entire process of class and individual pictures were being taken.  I was pretty disappointed to have bought a class picture, and not have either of my girls in the picture.  But, I hung up the picture anyway, and throughout the year, the girls would stop and look at it, and giggle to themselves that they were so silly to not have taken the picture.  I was bracing for the same sort of worry for this year's pictures, but Colbie quickly made me a deal: "I'll be in the class picture but I don't want any pictures just by myself".  That works just fine for me....knowing my girls, there would literally be 0% chance of getting any sort of smile out of them from some random photographer whom they had never met before, so individual pictures did seem a waste of time and money.  Addy took a bit of convincing, but she soon came around.  On the morning of picture day, the anxiety started, and there was no way that I was going to try to push them to wear "picture day pretty clothes".  It just wasn't going to happen- I didn't really care what they wore, just that they would actually get into the picture.  So, once we got to school, the girls and I spoke with one of the teachers and explained our plan about the class picture, and I was SO happy to hear at pick up that they DID actually get into the class picture.  It seems odd that the photographer would have picked this shot as the "good" class shot, as the majority of children look dead serious, and supposedly the photographer was being really silly and making them all say silly things....but oh well.   C and A are IN their class picture for their last year of preschool!  yippee!  Who knows what will happen next year when class pictures are mandatory in elementary school!

Playdate Day

The rainy weekend means no soccer, so yesterday we had kids over at our house all day.  
Around 9:30am we heard a little knock on our door, and C & A's favorite friends from school (brother and sister) were at the door!  Their Dad had taken them on a walk, and they didn't want to do anything but walk by Colbie and Addy's house apparently.  Well, the door opened, and all of a sudden shoes were being taken off, and kids were running around squealing with excitement!  So the two stayed all morning and played, which was actually super fun and nice to see our girls so excited.   When their Dad came to pick them up, Jake's play date arrived, so more chaos and fun for the rest of the day.  We did end up taking all of the kids to Chuck E Cheese (we'll never go again on a weekend!!), but otherwise, it was play, play and more playtime at our house all day long.  Let's see what today will bring!

 

Second Grade School Picture

Here are the latest Jakey pictures:

Second Grade:

and here is his goofy soccer picture for this year:

Pumpkin Patch

We've had endless hurt feelings in our house this week, with two against one type arguments occurring every other minute.  I did capture the moment that they did especially get along, and Jake had just asked Colbie if he could marry her someday :)

 We tried to run over to Half Moon Bay this morning before Jake's basketball, but it was hardly "running"- it took us an hour with the horrific traffic and we couldn't even get into the Arata Farms that we so love due to traffic.  So we stopped at Bob's and let the kids jump off the hay bails for a bit and had to get back....pretty much a failure of a trip, so hopefully we'll get back another weekend soon.  Oh, the highlight was running into a childhood friend who I went to school with from K-8th grade, but have very much lost touch with, so that was wonderful.

 the small pumpkins that the kids did pick out, were promptly made into bowling balls throw into the soccer goal when we got home!

I put together our twin groups halloween costume swap event this weekend.  It's such a great idea that our club put together years ago.  For all of our families, we have to buy at least two costumes every year, if not more...so over the years, our members have just started donating their costumes that their kids have outgrown, and now anyone can borrow them, save some money, and swap them out the following year.  We have hundreds of costumes to pick from at this point...pretty incredible.  My kids got first dibs since I hauled the costumes around, and of course, C & A picked batman costumes!

Haunted Houses

It's October...so it's one of our FAVORITE times of year in our house!   It's never too early to visit pumpkin patches, decorate or to make haunted houses!  

Mama Race

I've found a great group of second grade moms who like to run, so we all decided to do the Bridge to Bridge 12K run this weekend together.  All six of us piled into a car and headed up early, and had a great race day.   I realized as I was getting ready, I haven't run a real race since I was pregnant with Jake for the San Jose 1/2 marathon.   So, it it was quite intimidating signing up for this race.  Have a great group of moms to run with was fantastic though, as we literally just chatted along the entire run, and it just flew by!  Seriously!   We all felt great at the end, and we're ready to sign up for more.