...Everything as loss...FOR GREAT GAIN

Our October 31st is just a day to celebrate Harvesting crops and the great thing is our church does a Harvest Carnival and it's a great outreach and free for everyone. It was fun..a bit crazy going alone with three kids and trying to make sure not to loose them when they can't hardly walk with costumes on! It was fun for them. Best part of the night was when Isaiah was sound asleep the door began to ring like crazy...yes our neighborhood is crazy that night...usually about 800 people but last night it died down early. I had the two older kiddos put the candy...mostly pencils... into each bag and they greeted everyone with cheers of "Happy Harvest". Aside from the funny look on faces when they got pencils...most liked...one kid gave it back!...they also were surprised at the greeting. It was fun and sweet and everyone that was older, which seems to shock me every year how many mom's dress up and ask for candy, loved the kids costumes. It was fun to see them eager t...

As crazy as it seems to me, Isaiah has begun to crawl like crazy! So cute. I can't get over how tiny he seems to be moving like that but he really just wants to catch up to his bro and sis. He actually did his first official crawl on October 18 on the web cam chatting with his Nanny and Grampy who live in Hungary and that was awesome to share something with them being so far away! So here's a snip it of video of him crawling and then my crazy older kiddos in the morning and their great imaginations...which lead to no more blocks and no more use of the word "fight".(unless they are talking about being in the Lord's army...Malachi wanted to make sure of that!)

To end my garden this year I had picked a bucket of green tomato's before we cut it out...yes I get a ton of tomato's. But this year quite a few had been eaten by some cute little buggars...mice. So this batch of tomato's ripened quickly inside and just like any good Italian/Jewish gal.....I should make a great tomato base for my pasta's and freeze it. Yum! And one of my childhood fav's, Knox Blocks...the kids loved helping me mix the jello colors before I made each layer. So fun to jiggle in their hands and of course separate every layer and eat each flavor. Just plain fun!

Aaron wanted badly to start taking his daughter on dates....so last week when it was just beautiful outside, Aaron took Rachel mini golfing. They had a blast and she even wore a necklace and dress for her date. Of course...not surprising, Malachi asked for days when he was going to get to go on a date...at least he did want to go on one with Mommy!

After a crazy week with me rushing to Urgent Care and the hospital for a CT scan for some fun kidney stones floating around...but not coming out yet...and Aaron is short staffed...not surprised. We did not get to carve the pumpkins. So to just have fun we painted them since I was single-mom'n' it this week and this was easier. As you can see we started with some cool stencils they painted..then the pumpkins got covered...but what was cool is a few colors we painted glowed in the dark. They loved that! So, one pumpkin with the pink blob on top of blue is Rachel's. It's actually a castle stencil that glows in the dark and then Malachi's had a race car stencil and a bunch of others but he is the only one that can tell you what they are or WHERE they are! The little pumpkin of course had to be Isaiah's...and the kids picked his rattle for me to paint. Mine...uhh..well I went old school and painted a violin...yep. Miss playing it so it was fun painting one!

And the next day...we ventured to our favorite patch...Bartels Farm. It was great. It was not busy at all and of course...it was super cold! But we enjoyed it and got beautiful pumpkins and squash! Look closely..yeh does she look like she wants to be near the big tractor??? Our try to get someone to take our family picture didn't go as well as when we go with my sis and her fam..but oh well we are all in it!

Well, we thought this was a grand idea to take the kids after their two morning classes to the zoo because...well it was a free day! HA! Malachi had had his last Amazing Athlete's class and Rachel had had her first Roly Poly's class(toddler tumbling) and then we took off for Denver. Well...we get near the zoo and ended up parking across the city park and taking the fun 25 minute hike up to the entrance of the zoo...with the stroller! HA! It was fun for us in some ways and fun for the kids in some. We soon realized that Malachi is past the "awe" age where he would stand and enjoy the animals. He now had a map and wanted to hit every single animal he saw on it...yep...he is his father to a tee! So we learned to just pause and enjoy the animals we liked. And if the kids wanted to rush off...oh well! It was tiring but we did have a good time. And we saved over $40 by going free! This is on our trek up the hill... Here begins the funny pics of the kids...behind them is the...