Happy Halloween!

After MUCH debating, we decided to be Mickey and Minnie Mouse this year! The kids LOVED their costumes, as did I! They were SO cute! But not so great at being photogenic! Much TOO silly and TOO busy!

I was SO happy to find these little Mickey Mouse jack-o-lantern candy buckets!
And SO happy when I took a chance and waited to buy them on Halloween and got them for half price!

This was the first year we actually went trick-or-treating. We have always just gone to a Fall Festival at a church somewhere. We were actually planning on doing that again this year, but we realized Saturday morning that all the churches were having their festivals on Friday night.
So we decided to give trick-or-treating a try.
Our friends, Jack and Mary Coleman, came over for dinner and joined us.
When we walked up to the first house, the kids were a little gun shy. They wanted me to come with them and ring the door bell. But as soon as someone put candy in their bucket, they said...."Let's go to the next house!" They got really good at spotting the houses that had lights on, and even got brave enough to start going up to all the doors by themselves. It was a lot of fun!

Just look at them....I SO wish they could stay little forever!

Fall Festival at Lawson's School

Here we are ready to go to the
Fall Festival at Lawson's school.
The weather was perfectly Fall, and the kids had a blast!

When we arrived, the petting zoo caught the kids eyes. Now if you know my kids, you might be shocked to see them inside the fence WITH the animals, NOT being held by an adult, and actually PETTING the animals. My kids LOVE the concept of animals,
but have HUGE fears about approaching the ACTUAL animal.

Robbie and I were shocked when they just walked right in and started petting the animals.
So maybe we have conquered one of our many fears!

Here is Lawson getting her hair painted her favorite color....BLUE!

Here is Lawson doing the limbo! Ha!

Games, Games, Games!!!

Oh, another fear seemingly conquered!
(This was a big night for us!)
Our kids have a pass-out-in-the-floor fear of people in costumes!!! Not an overstatement!
But we have been talking to them about it for the past few months....and maybe it finally sank in! Lawson couldn't wait to run up to Clifford and give him a high-five, and Hudson was cool with it as long as Rob held him. (In the past, they would have wanted to leave the entire carnival and go home immediately.....and they would have been screaming hysterically! Seriously, their fear was THAT bad!)
Again, Robbie and I just looked at each other like "Wow! Maybe we are turning a corner on another fear!"

This is Andre Gurode, the center for the Dallas Cowboys. The kids were excited to meet him because he knows Tony Romo.
(We didn't tell Mr. Gurode that the fact that he knows Tony was mostly what the kids cared about!)
Then Lawson spotted a table filled with packages of cupcakes and cookies. Lawson asked if she could have one. I told her no because they were prizes for the cake walk game. She said, "I want to play!" And play she did. There were 20 people playing at a time and when the music stopped they would call one number. So she had a 1 in 20 chance of winning. Then she had to go to the end of the line and wait to play again. She played this game non-stop probably 20 times. They were just about out of prizes....and Robbie and I were like "bless her heart, she may not win anything." Then they called her number and handed her a dozen cupcakes!
Just look at her little face! It was like an early Christmas!

Lawson's 9 Week Report Card

Here is La's Kindergarten School Pic!
I was really impressed! She did a good job smiling!

We got her report card today....and she is doing great!
I have been really impressed with all she has learned in just 9 short weeks!
(I had always heard that kids really just learned their ABC's in Kindergarten; and it was more for the practice of learning to be in a classroom, away from mom, and following rules. NOT the case!

Here is what she has learned:
* count to 100 and recognize #'s 1-100
* spell all colors and numbers (1-10)
* read 40 new vocabulary words (and, I, me, this, what, by, etc.)
* knows which letters are vowels and consonants
* knows how to count how many syllables a word has
* how to write correctly on dotted line paper
* very difficult patterning
*pledge of allegiance
*Texas pledge
*how to write the date (10-30-09)
*to recognize a sentence (starts with a capital and ends with punctuation)
*the parts of a book (cover, back cover, spine [which she called "spinder" until just recently], title page, author, and illustrator.)
*And about 20 new songs that go with shapes, numbers, letter, etc.
*names all the geometric shapes

I'm sure I am missing something...but that's a lot!
In fact, I just noticed her for the first time today sitting down with a rather wordy book and trying to read it out loud to herself. She knows a lot of the words and was doing a good job trying to sound out the ones she didn't know. I can't believe my baby is reading!

Today was "dress up like what you want to be when you grow up day."
She wants to be a teacher. I was a little stumped on how to dress up like a teacher. I told her to go look in her closet and see if she had any "teacher" clothes. She came back with this dress. She said that teachers look "nice" and this dress looks "nice". Then her daddy made her an awesome teacher name badge (like the teachers at her school wear). She said Ms. Blair has a key on her name badge too, so we found a key to put on hers. She was SO proud to wear her badge to school! It was really cute!

Here is a pic from Picnic with Parents Day a couple of weeks ago. Robbie and Hudson went to eat with La (I was working). It rained so the picnic had to come indoors.

More Hudson Funnies...

Hudson says that "Rony Tomo"

is the Cowboys Quarterback.

And that the football players stand
in a "puddle" before each play!

Funny Hudson Moment...

Hudson came up to me today and said, "Mom watch..."

and this is what he did....

Fun Weekend in Little Rock

We went to Little Rock over the weekend and had lots of fun!
Friday night we went to a Robinson High School football game. Hudson is still all-consumed with sports and had been wanting to see a real football game. We didn't think he would be interested in sitting still for the entire length of the game....but he did.
He wanted to stay until the end. He just sat and took it all in!
On Saturday morning, we went to watch my neice Mary cheer at her middle school football game! The kids liked watching her cheer! She was really cute!
Then Saturday afternoon we went out to visit Gaw (Rob's grandfather). He gave the kids M&M's, strawberry cake, ice cream, candy corn and twix! No wonder they are so crazy about him!
What do you do after you eat your weight in sweets at your Grandpa's house?
Head out to the Arkansas State Fair of course and ride rides!
Here are some pics from the weekend...in no particular order!

The kids LOVED this giant slide! We did it about 15 times!
I have to admit it was really fun! Hudson screamed (for fun) like a little girl every time we came down!

Riding the Ferris Wheel.
Is Hud's face crackin' you up??!!

Now for the Grand Finale....FUNNEL CAKE!

Look at those faces....can you tell it's past bedtime?

This is a Sugar Glider. It's a marsupial.
SO tiny and SO interesting!
Can you believe that one of my kids is actually holding an animal?!

My neice, Mary

World's Best Pumpkin Patch

I have heard about the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch for the past couple of years....but never gone! What a big mistake! This was SUCH a fun place! It was more than a Pumpkin Patch....better described as a Pumpkin Fair.
We rode a train and hayride, Lawson tried out the bounce houses and hay bale maze, enjoyed looking at all the wooden cartoon character decorations, playing in the pumpkin field and eating kettle korn.
In my older age, I have decided that I LOVE pumpkin patches and all things fall ALMOST as much as I love Christmas! And that is saying a lot!

Rob wasn't sure if he would ever get in or out of this barrel train car!

On the hayride....
It was extremely muddy and going mudding on a hayride was quite the adventure! The kids enjoyed watching us drive through crazy deep mud! It has been a long while since I went muddin' like I did today!

I had never seen a pumpkin bounce house before!

You just can't beat kettle korn for a snack!

Snow White seems to like Lawson's hair!

This was a fun day!
There are more pics from today on Shutterfly.
http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=a63e743b1ba91a0e&sid=0EYtWLdu1bsnIw