Happy Halloween and Happy birthday Heston!

Birthday dirt cupcakes! Worms and all!

All tuckered out!

Presents were opened before we left for other festivities. Happy 3rd birthday Heston! Love you! Hard to believe it has been 3 years. 

Fall fun with the youngins plus updates, etc.

Loving this beautiful fall weather! Will be sad to see it go. 

And some updates...

My oldest ran his last cross country race of the season this past Tuesday. It was conference and he got to move up to the Freshman team, which was a great honor for an 8th grader. He ran 2 miles in 11 minutes 50 seconds. One of his best of the season. This next Saturday he will be running 7 miles in a race he just wanted to do for fun. Yeah that boy is crazy! He is also trying to gear up for Track next semester. He wants to beat the school record for the mile run. 

We are all gearing up for Halloween as usual but I am struggling to find time to finish everything for costumes and Heston's birthday on Friday. I am also helping Ryker's teacher set up for the party that day at his school. And with evening clients in addition I have no clue when I will get Heston's dirt cupcakes made. Sounds like I will have a late night tomorrow. 

I have set a date for Kieran and Zoe's (niece) birthday party the last part of November. We are doing a vintage them this year and have decided to forgo cake and have various types of pies. This was Kieran's idea after I was having a hard time finding someone to do the cake on Black Friday. Yeah poor planning in that regard. But the pie idea was genius!

Ryker has been chosen for Gifted and Talented and will be going to the same TREC center that Kieran goes to. His day is different than her's though so they will not be seeing each other. He was very excited to get picked!

And for another huge update... Ridlee took her first steps on 10/27! I swear she just started crawling the other day. I was sure she would be more in the 10 month range, but nope she followed in her sister's, Heston's, and Ryker's foot steps and did it at 9. Actually Ryker was at 8 months, that kid was a beast!

Crafty Halloween costumes phase 1 complete!

I am trying a new approach this year to actually making as much as I can. So far it's not too bad. 

Stuffed animals as models! 

Still have a lot more to go though. Hoping to get through the rest in the next week. 

The Family that shares together...

You know what they sat about sharing and staying together. Last week Heston came down with a fever (Saturday before last). After two back to back trips to two different clinics, he was diagnosed with strep and ear infections. One in Springdale wouldn't even look at him and said it was viral. Yeah, no! 2 days later, Ridlee gets the fever. Take her and and one ear infection and probable strep as well. I come down with fever the next morning and go in immediately. Caught mine early. Ryker came down late Friday while grocery shopping. Clinics were closed so we drove to Talequah to the Indian hospital. They took his seriously as he has a tendency to get it bad. Within a couple of hours he went from normal to 103. We were in and out in an hour. So as of now we are all on the mend. Steven was already on antibiotics for a pulled tooth so he was unscathed. Crossing my fingers and praying it stays away. I hate weeks like this. Big families suffer when one gets sick.  Sunday Ridlee and I went to the annual Women's Retreat at Lake Ft. Smith with the ladies from our church. It was the first time babies came and there were three there. It was rainy but nice. We had to come back Sunday night because I had to take the kids to school Monday morning. Then we drove back for the day. I always look forward to going. I think this is my 5th or 6th year to go.  Here she is crawling around. That concrete floor made me so nervous. She is into everything now. Already trying to stand on her own. Slow down already.  And some shots from this week.

9 months old!

Heston has strep throat and we had to stay home from church. He actually sat calmly with Ridlee and watched tv. This is a rare moment indeed.

And my 9 month postpartum progress shot. Progress marked on my official fitness blog.