We’re back and ready to rock & roll! It’s been a whirlwind of a summer for us and the fall is equally as busy.  I might try and play catch up, I might not. I haven’t decided quite yet.  ;-)

I thought I would start with a Halloween post.  We were very excited for Halloween this year in our new neighborhood.  At our old house, we would maybe have 30 or so kids and go through about 2 bags of candy.  But the kids in that ‘hood were mostly older elementary age.

But, in our new ‘hood there are a LOT of young families (definitely our favorite thing!) and so we were hopeful that it would be a bit busier.  Well, be careful what you wish for!  We went through TEN bags of candy!!!  It was insane!  The sidewalks were lined with families and cute little kiddos in their costumes and many of the houses were decorated in all their Halloween glory with candy distributors hanging on the front porch.

I think we hit up about 30 houses with the kids, we also had some of our friends over for a small Halloween Party.  The weather was actually quite nice, not too windy and only about 40 degrees, so it was one of our nicer Halloweens (I was a bride the year of the 1991 Halloween Blizzard!)

Bon Jovi

Of course one of the best parts of Halloween is the costumes!  Gone are the days where Tyson lets me choose his costume, so I was very sure when I asked him back in July what he wanted to be, that he was going to say “Batman” or some other commercial character.  But, like he usually does, he surprised me when he said he wanted to be Jon Bon Jovi!  How many five year olds actually know who Bon Jovi even is?  Well, ours has a poster of them up in his room! LOL

So, Bon Jovi he was, and it was so fun to come up with his costume.  I found this great kids faux leather jacket, circa 1980’s and we threw on a pair of skinny jeans and Chucks.  Then we had to figure out the hair.  Because we were going to for the old school rocker Bon Jovi style.  So, I found a kids Mullet’ish wig (which is not an easy task I might add!) and gave it a good trim with some layers and poofed up the top a bit.  Now, I will say, he did look a bit like George Washington with the wig, but it kind of worked out.  :-P

I took a few shots of him up in my studio when I was playing with some off camera flash the other day, these are minus the wig, but I still love them and wanted to share

Hello GQ!

Here are some shots of him in action Trick or Treating.  I made a Bon Jovi playlist and put it on my iPod so he could have a little soundtrack playing.  That seemed to be a big hit with the adults giving out candy!  And then every so often, he would randomly bust out and start singing along, it was so funny!

Here he is busting a move in someone’s driveway, LOL

Tricks or treats?

The T-o-T’ing clan (Bailey was there too, but in the stroller)

Olivia the Pig

If you aren’t familiar with Olivia the Pig, you’re totally missing out!  She is the character in a popular children’s book series and there is also now a show about her on Nick Jr.  Bailey is in LOVE with her.  She lovingly refers to her as “Ee Ah”.  I got the idea for her to be Olivia after we bought her a little stuffed Olivia and she was so excited about it.  But, the problem is that there aren’t really any commercial Olivia costumes out there, so I had to get a bit creative.

I decided to make her a red velvet dress myself, had to dust off the old sewing machine.  I bought a pattern from this Etsy shop and it was actually pretty easy to make the dress!  I might have to make her another one at some point too, I was really happy with how it turned out!  I ended up finding some striped leggings and then this shop on Etsy had Olivia pig ears on a headband and the collar.

So, here she is in all her Ee-Ah glory!  She really loved it once she saw herself in the mirror and realized that she was Olivia.  I might try and get it on her again at some point to take some studio shots of her too.

We had to bring Oliva with us trick or treating as well (total accident that the stroller matched too! LOL)

Ee-Ah managed to sneak into big brothers candy too…yeah, things are SO different with your 2nd child!

Hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween!

Now, onto Halloween night!  We had our first ever Halloween Party for the little ones and some of our good friends from our years of doing ECFE came over for a little pre-trick-or-treaing get together!

Ty and I took on the task of making some cupcakes for our party

I *lurv* purple frosting…yum!

Party favors for playing Pin the Tail on the Cat

Guess who decorated this one? LOL

Shake your sprinkles

And yes, he pretty much used the entire container of sprinkles.

Now, onto the fun!  My new fave pic of him as Spidey!

For some reason this totally cracks me up!

Our fun little party group (sans one member).  The shot is nearly a miracle.  They’re all looking at the camera and *almost* all are smiling!!

Our little Moo Cow <3

There’s our group!  Next year, we will have 2 more babies added to it, yay! And yay for it not being one of ours!   Oh, and please note Tony’s awesome pumpkin bush that he decorated himself!
 

Dead Spiderman…who will save the world now?

Crackin me up some more

One more of the most adorable cow ever!!

Oh wow, I’m SUCH a blog slacker lately. But I’m not going to sit here and make a list of excuses as to why it’s been over 2 weeks since my last post. You all know how insanely busy our life is at the moment, so it is what it is…

Here are some photos from Halloween.  Well, technically this is the day before at Ty’s preschool Halloween party.  I“m planning to post the Halloween photos tomorrow or the next day (I promise!).

Miss B was a little cow. She was SO stinking adorable in her little costume!

Ty had a Halloween parade at preschool too.  They all parade around in their costumes for all of us parents to click our cameras away.  Here he is sporting his Spiderman costume.

His best buddy was in front of him too with his vintage Superman costume, so cool!

I told him to do his “Spidy stance” and this was what resulted, cracks me up!

Part of their class in the group photo!  I have him SO well trained to smile for the camera.  LOL

Another spidey stance!  LOL  They had a little carnival after the parade, so I hung out for a little while and watchen him play some games.

This is Ty’s new girlfriend too!  Aren’t her teeth To Die For?! LOL

Many of you know how obsessed he is with counting things.  Here one of the moms had asked him to do a simple math equation to figure out how many were left after he had eaten some.  He took it quite seriously! LOL