A couple months in review

It's been a couple of months since I did this. So I'm not really going to say much. Just a little here and there. As always I post all my pics on facebook for anyone who wants to look.
Back in the beginning of October we went to a Day Out with Thomas. The kids loved it. They got to ride on Thomas and do activities. A few being a maze, bouncy house, and, of course, toy trains. It was worth doing, and hopefully we can do it again someday. We carved our pumpkins early. Too early. They weren't any good by the time Halloween rolled around. But I think Jake did a great job carving them. And the glow sticks made them look great.

The kids picked out their own costumes. Brylee picked Jesse (from Toy Story) and Zach picked Iron Man. Their costumes made me laugh. Brylee's hat makes her look like an Amigo and Zach isn't an Iron Man fan. He has no interest in watching Iron Man. But he likes pretending to be him. Kids are weird. But all that matters is that they enjoyed their costumes.

We had fun trick-or-treating. We had the ward trunk-or-treat on Friday the 29th and the base only allowed trick-or-treating on Saturday the 30th. After about an hour and a half on Saturday the kids were wiped out. But when Sunday night rolled around they were ready to head out again.

We decided to decorate the tree early this year. The kids are so excited for Christmas we couldn't put it off for long. We let the kids decorate the tree then we redecorated it a few days later. If you look at the tree you'll notice big bunches of ornaments. We tried to get the kids to decorate higher and more spread out, but they didn't want to. What they ended up doing was loading up a few branches with as many ornaments as they could fit. They didn't move on to another branch until they couldn't fit anymore on. But as you can see on Brylee's face, they LOVED it.

This past Monday for FHE we did ginger bread houses (that's right. We're in Christmas full steam) . They aren't real ginger bread houses. Just kits we got from walmart. But they had fun watching me and Jake suffer trying to get these things together. And they love playing with them. Not bad for $5.

Today Jake and I had our very first Thanksgiving on our own. We had a couple of Jake's friends from work over and enjoyed grown-up conversation. Atleast I did seeing as I don't get much. The turkey turned out great. We were so nervous. We used a turkey bag and the directions on it were different from Butterball's instructions, so we guessed. But it was absolutely perfect. The only thing missing was family.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Our September

We've had a pretty fun September. Jake had a full month off starting the end of august. So here are just a few pics of some of the fun we had. I actually have all pics (excluding pics taken with a waterproof camera) on my facebook page for those who want to see.

Brylee had her 2nd birthday on the 17th. I think Jake was happy to finally be around for one. We didn't do anything spectacular, but we did have fun. We started with birthday syrup in the morning. Then let Bry open her birthday presents after breakfast. She got a Dora scooter and a bunch of dress up stuff. She actually wouldn't take off the wings for a couple of days. She even wore them while she napped. In the evening we had cupcakes and played at Chuck E Cheese for an hour. As I said, we kept it simple but had a lot of fun.

Earlier in the month we went to one of the Aquariums. The kids had a blast looking at the otters while Jake and I were spooked by one of their sharks. The thing looked mean. It was almost a 3 hour drive to get there though. So we figure if we do this again we're gonna budget it so that we could make a day of it and visit the beach while we're there. And the final thing we did this month was go on a family retreat paid for by the US Army. It was once again at the Great Wolf Lodge. It was originally supposed to be in Myrtle Beach but for whatever reason it got changed at the last minute. It worked out though. We knew what to expect for prices and was thus able to stay within the budget given to us by those paying for everything.

We had lots of fun. Brylee was old enough to do her own thing in the kiddie pool in the waterpark so I didn't have to hold her the whole time. Zach went down one of the adult slides with Jake giggling the whole way and Jake and I even had time to ourselves to enjoy the mini golf and the adult waterslides without the kids. One slide, called the Tornado, was especially fun. Jake had a freaked out look on his face the whole way. But that was probably because he was going backwards down a dark tube that has an incredibly steep drop at one point.

The Lodge also had an animatronics show every night at 8 followed by story time. I was actually surprised that the kids enjoyed it. Well, not Zach, but Brylee. I thought she'd freak out, but she enjoyed it as much as Zach did.