The past couple of weeks...

We have been super busy the last few weeks, but it's definitely starting to look a lot like Christmas around our house.

We always put our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving.  The kids really are great helpers when we do it, if you don't mind getting ornaments everywhere and have lots of glitter all over your clothes!

Just getting started!

About halfway through...

Maggie's handprint from last year

Oh, and our Elf on the Shelf (Buzz) showed back up again that same weekend.

The kids have a blast finding him in the mornings.

That same weekend, the south KC crew showed up at our house for some turkey dinner.
Brian and I cooked the turkey for the first time by ourselves, and it turned out wonderful!

Too much food, but lots of good conversation...

Silly Tiffey, probably shouldn't be doing that 7 months preggo!!

Shhhhh, I won't tell anybody!

My wonderful family!

St. Nick came to our house on Friday.

He brought us lots of yummy muffins, and some clementines, plus Colin got a ninja turtle figurine and Maggie got the movie Tangled!

In other news...Maggie had a whole week of getting green cards at school (it's a good thing).

She was so proud of herself, she wanted me to take a picture of her with her last green card of the week.

Please excuse the "I've been at school all day" hair.

Speaking of crazy hair, this is what I was dealing with one morning last week.

Her hair is a ratty mess in the mornings.  Any advice on how to control it, I am all ears!

Then, last weekend, we had Tiffey's baby shower at her church in Grandview.

It was a lot of fun and everyone had a great time.

Tiff got lots of thoughtful gifts and Baby Parks is getting spoiled already.

Phoenix (5) and Maggie were the kids at the party.  

They were big helpers when it came to decorating for the shower.

A couple of the glowing preggo ladies at the shower

Our main activity at the shower was for the guests to help create an ABC book for the baby.

Each guest got a page with a letter on it.  They drew something on the page that started with their letter and then wrote out the name of the object.  

They had lots of fun with it and some were very creative with their pages!

Hard at work

Even the kids got involved

A group shot of everyone at the shower

The ladies in the family

We have plans to go visit Santa later on this week, plus we are getting together with our neighbors this weekend for some Christmas fun.

But, on a much bigger note, as of tomorrow, I am officially done with all of my coursework for my PhD degree.  This means, I have my comp exams and my dissertation left to finish, which I hope to be done with by this time next year.

It's been a long road, but totally worth it for my family's future!

Thanks for everyone's love and support! I couldn't have done it without you.

Turkey day 2013

Our family had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

We spent actual Thanksgiving morning around the house, lounging and playing games.  Then we hit up Grammie and Grandad's house for some yummy brunch, followed by a quick trip to the Teson side's get together to see a bunch of family that we don't see all that often.

After that...a quick nap at home followed by more family time at Grammie and Grandads house.

I took Friday off work and got to spend time with the kiddos just the 3 of us while Brian was working.  We got together with my side of the family on Saturday, they all came up for some fabulous turkey dinner with too much food!!

 The best family picture we could get...

not bad for being scrunched into one chair!

I thought the kids looked cute so I tried to get some pics of them sitting on the couch...

Lighting was terrible and I was using my camera on my phone...

thought I got some cute pics though!

Our little Maggie, cheesing it up!

Andrew was sneaking up behind me while I was taking pictures of Maggie, he wanted to join in!

GGRita and the kiddos

Oh, and Colin is just finishing up his antibiotic for a random, weird fluky thing that happened last week.

Colin woke up in the middle of the night saying he had a bug bite that was hurting him.  Being the loving mother that I am, I slapped on a bandaid and told him to head back to bed.

In the morning, he said he had a headache, so I checked his temperature (it was fine) and gave him some medicine and sent him to school.  By the end of the day, he came home from school, with a fever, pale, puny looking, and complaining of a headache.  

We laid low the rest of the night and when we changed him into pajamas, only then did we notice he had a HUGE red, swollen and hot area where the bug bit him, all the way down to his groin.

We did an immediate trip to urgent care and they gave him some antibiotics for the infection.

They are not sure if something dangerous bit him or if he just scratched at it and infected it, but either way, we are on the mend...it looked terrible the next day, he spiked a fever and was vomiting.  The red area spread down his leg and across his belly.  Crazy how the body reacts to things...

Anyway, life's always full of surprises when you've got young kids!

 Nothing that a nice orange popsicle won't fix!

Circus Saturday

I bought tickets to the Ararat Circus about 6 weeks ago and the kids have been super excited about it ever since.  Colin has had a countdown to "circus Saturday" for a while.

We went to the 10 am show and we got there a little over an hour early because we heard they had lots of fun things to do before the show started.

Here we are before going into Municipal auditorium.  Brian went to park the car, it was such a lovely day out the kids didn't even really need their jackets!

 We got suckered into buying a program because you could get the clowns to sign by their pictures...

 Pretty much a waste of $2, but we did get a chance to win a bike...

of course we didn't win...

They had elephant rides before the show started and in the intermission.

We decided it was totally worth the $10 for the kids to ride on an elephant.  I mean, come on, who can say they've riden on an elephant?!

 We thought the kids would chicken out, so we watched from afar for a bit, then promised them cotton candy if they followed through.  

 They had a great time and had no fears getting up there.

 And as promised...enjoying their cotton candy

 We had so much fun at the circus!

Colin's favorite part was the tigers and Maggie liked the motorcycle riders in the circular cage (however, she didn't get to see them because we had an emergency bathroom break!).  They had acrobats and camels and random filler-time stuff like clowns and singing.  

We left at intermission.. it had been a long morning and the kids really needed a rest!

Here's a video of the kids on the elephant

And lastly...

Brian finished staining the deck this week.  Looks great!

Now we can get our grills and furniture back up there for the winter.

Deck staining

Brian and I finally got around to staining the deck last weekend (and randomly throughout this week).  We know it's pretty late in the season to do this, but we have had some unseasonably warm days and we have been waiting for the deck to be ready to stain.  Up until recently, the wood would still repel the water and bead up, so we couldn't stain it. 

But, we picked a beautiful natural color that makes it look wonderful!

Here it is, in the process of staining...

It really looks great, not as dark or red as this picture indicates

This one is more like the actual color (the front part of the railing isn't finished yet in the picture)

I got the wonderful job of hand-painting the railings and Brian and Dave did the surface of the deck.

I will get a better picture of the finished product tomorrow, when we get back from the CIRCUS!

I have some very excited kids!  Can't wait to ride the elephants :)

photo dump

We've had a great last few weekends, doing nothing super important, but getting things done for the fall.

Brian spent last weekend getting the Christmas lights up and ready to go.  It was a beautiful day and he pulled out a bunch of new lights he got on clearance last year.  Can't wait to see what our house looks like all lit up!

Friday of last week we had a great little evening spending time with my childhood best friend's parents.  They live in Chicago but were driving through KC and stopped by to say hello.  They haven't changed at all and we had so much fun catching up and going out for pizza.

I sure missed my friend Erin, but I'm sure we'll cross paths soon (hopefully!)

The ladies after dinner on Friday

 The boys

We've gotten bit by the Christmas bug around here.  Colin just loves "reading" the toy magazines that have come in the mail recently.  He's circled just about everything in there so we have some narrowing down to do!

 Studying hard

 Raiding the Ninja Turtle aisle at Target

Last weekend on Saturday, Grammie and Grandad grabbed Mags and cousin Olivia for a morning of fun.  They signed up for a Tea party with the Princesses and the girls had a blast (so did Grandad, I'm sure!)

 The girls got glitter in their hair and a special tiara and princess cup, and Grammie got them each a pretty bow for their hair.  Maggie even came home with a certificate deeming her Princess of the Court.

It's official...Maggie's a princess!

Our neighbors emailed me some crazy pictures of the boys from a couple of weekends ago...

I had to share!

Can't believe it's November already...

pretty soon it'll be finals week and I'll be posting pictures of Tiff's baby shower!

Halloween 2013

 Halloween 2013 was the best one yet.  Maybe that's because the kids are getting older and having way more fun out trick or treating.  We could hardly keep up with Colin tonight, he was so excited!  We went out with our neighbors the Hall's and ended up meeting up with other neighbors in our cul-de-sac.  We went the same route as last year, and made much better time this year.  Maggie insisted on being held the whole time, maybe next year she'll do some running with Colin.  

It was chilly, but not too bad.  We opted for many layers under the outfits rather than coats on top.  It worked out well and we were plenty warm after our 1 hour trick or treating session.  The kids stayed up and handed out candy for about 45 minutes before we headed to bed.  It was a great time had by all!

Grammie and Grandad came over at the beginning of the evening to say hello and see us all dressed up as Ninja Turtles.  

I love this picture of them!  Too cute!

 We then headed down the street where the Parkville police were there with their command center vehicle.  The kids got some goodies there (non candy stuff, which is always appreciated) and then we stopped by Brian's Aunt Jo and Uncle Ken's house (which was full of all of Brian's cousins and family).

We then headed out trick or treating.

Here's the Teson fam all ready to go...

Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, and Leonardo

Oh yeah!

Love this one...the costumes looked so great and they were ready for some candy!

The kids at the end of the night, in their pajamas, waiting to hand out some candy...

So much fun!

Last weekend we carved some pumpkins (Brian and I did it all, the kids didn't really show any interest at all!)

But we think they turned out pretty cute...

and speaking of cute, here's just a cute picture of Mags fresh from a rosy-cheeked nap...