27 days of Thankful - day 5

Today I am thankful for cool, fall-like weather. I love the crisp little bite in the air that fall brings in the morning and evening with the toasty sun warming it just enough mid-afternoon. This is one of my favorite seasons, I love breaking out the cooler weather clothes and snuggling under blankets to watch tv. This morning I loved that we were able to comfortably wear long sleeve shirts all day without roasting.

27 Days of Thankful days 1-4

In my blog hopping I have stumbled upon lots of blogs that I thoroughly enjoy and today I found Amanda at Serenity Now and she is doing a project where you blog about something you are thankful each day leading up to Thanksgiving. I LOVE this idea! Check out the reason behind the posts here and join in if you're feeling froggy.

I am 3 days late in starting so I will list 4 things I am thankful for today and get all caught up. Sometimes it's the little things that we forget to be thankful for so I'll be focusing on the small, the silly, and the thing that just brighten my day and my life.

1. I am thankful for my husband. He really compliments me and puts up with my shenanigans. Actually I think he enjoys my shenanigans which makes me all that more thankful! His schedule is hard right now and we don't always take the time we should for one another but when you strip away all the outside pressures, he always supports me and is there for me when I need him.

2. I am thankful for delivery people who deliver hot food to my door. Some days cooking beyond my realm of things I want to do and leaving the house with a toddler seems like just as much of a chore on those super long days. Therefore the delivery guy knocking on my door is truly a blessing!

3. I am thankful for good friends. It is always nice to have friends that you consider family and you don't feel that you have to clean your house for them or put on your "company face". It makes life fun, interesting and whole lot easier.

4. I am thankful for bedtime. I love the snuggles, the wind down and the eventual peace that it brings when the whole house is resting. There was a time not long ago that bedtime was stressful, painful, and gave me so much anxiety that I started dreading it as soon as we sat down to dinner. I am thankful that I am past that and that those demons are silent now. This is probably one of the number one things I am thankful for right now. I am aware of the change every night as I fall asleep and sleep peacefully without hearing and fearing bumps in the night.

What are you thankful for?

Halloween

Crazy Hair!

Getting ready to get lots of candy.
Mother-daughter witches

Even in my big burst of creative energy I just didn't seem to have it in me for a creative Halloween costume so storebought we went. What does it say about me that of the toddler costumes, I found a witch to be the lesser of the evils when compared with overpriced Disney princesses, leopard print kitties, and devils?

We had a great time and Madelyn loved her hat! She was so cute. We went to Pumpkins at the Park and made a treat bag and a spider web with a spider. She waved and talked to everybody as we walked around in the heat. Then we met up with friends to go trick or treating and Madely was a champ! It took her a few houses to get the hang of it, but she ended up doing great and was so excited everytime somebody put candy in her bag. Now Im just afraid that she'll expect candy everytime we go to visit somebody.

Boo at the Zoo

Yesterday we set out to go to Pumpkins at the Park and halfway there we decided that we'd just drive on down to San Diego because Chris had a Marine to visit and I thought that we could just go to Boo at the Zoo.

So off we went. It was a gorgeous day, Madelyn was napping in the car and I used my super duper navigational powers to get us from the 15 right to the zoo. Nothing could stop us.

Notice anything?

Yep. There was no "Boo". We looked everywhere but unfortunately did not find any Boo at the Zoo. I asked the information booth lady and she looked at me like I was crazy...as did the membership lady. Chris is convinced that I just made up Boo at the Zoo in my crazy little brain and we spent the afternoon walking around laughing at the lack of boo at the zoo. We had a good time and played in the childrens zoo and saw the polar bears and rode the skyfari, so it wasn't a total waste.

On our way home we passed the Del Mar Fairgrounds and there was a large tent set up with a pumpkin on top so I aked Chris if he thought that was "Scare at the Fair". I think he's making my reservations in the rubber room this morning.

In my defense, the zoo does have a program called Boo at the Zoo, just not this year...and I think "Scare at the Fair" would be fabulously fun!

Birthday After Party

On Saturday we had a few friends over to celebrate Madelyn's second birthday. We had a great time and here are some of the pictures.

The kids in their birthday Mickey Ear hats

Yummy cupcake!

Opening presents

The gift boxes (and other crafty thing I've been doing)

More presents (blogger is being difficult so the pics are a little out of order)

Yeah, yeah, yeah what's goin on?

As I previously mentioned I have recently caught a crafting bug...unfortunately I also suffer from project startitis so I generally don't finish ANYTHING I set out to do. BUT I am very pleased to say that in the past two weeks I have FINISHED 3 crafting projects that were pretty involved. Two of them are for Madelyns party tomorrow so you don't get to see until the Birthday After Party.

Here is the one I can share: I got this for $3 at the craft store, some 79 cent paint and one sheet of pretty paper for 50 cents. I wanted something to hang our jackets on by the front door so they could stop laying on the sofa table or floor.

Here is the completed project! I finished and got it hung just in time for the temperature to rise to 104 degrees! Woohoo! I'm so glad I have a place to hang our jackets for those chilly 90 degree days.

In other news, almost one year to the day of living in the same area, my dear friend Denise and her family moved out here! We had a great weekend of them staying with us, cooking, laughing, and hanging out. I am so happy that they are out here and are getting settled into their new home. As you can see below though, Madelyn was miserable having two other girls to play with.

It was very cute, she was on the girls heels the whole time and even though she was a little crabby some mornings (she had an ear infection too), she was a trooper with all the people in the house. Plus I made popcorn, so it's all good.

Oh wait, did I say 3 projects? I meant 4 and a little bit, but the little bit isn't on here. Here is number 4, a family pumpkin painting project. If you look closely you can see the face on Madelyn's. She did that pumpkin totally on her own I just steadied it. I'm so proud of her for getting a face on it!

Tomorrow Madelyn turns 2, I can't believe that it's been 2 years already. I'm very excited for her birthday party and seeing her enjoy her friends.

How to enjoy a rainy fall day.

Snack

There's an ongoing tradition with Chris and his need to have food within 5 minutes of us arriving at any type of outdoor attraction, zoo, theme park, fair, pumpkin patch, you get the idea. Usually it's popcorn, but sometimes it needs to be a hot dog or something more substantial. It seriously happens EVERY SINGLE TIME, you would think that there wasn't any food outside the gates the way he sniffs it out and has to get something. I go along with it because if I deny food early on then he focuses only on getting food and we will tour the snack stands before actually enjoying the park. It's ridiculous.


Last week we went down to the Wild Animal park and not 30 feet inside the gate Chris started scouting out a bag of candy in one of the little shops. We were standing in the shop scoffing at the price of a bag of gummies when he looked over at the large glass square machine that was blowing around white fluffy stuff and asked "What's that?" When I told him it was the stuffing to stuff your own critter, he said... "Oh, I thought it was something to eat. I'm not interested any more."