October's Over

October is over. What? How did that happen? The holidays are right around the corner!

In my mind October is Fall. In Texas, it is not.

We were still red-faced, tank topped and short shorted!

October was a hot one, but we managed!

Brian did get to experience a little bit of Fall when he went to Rochester for another conference-

 

At least one of us got to see those yellows, oranges and reds!

We did start our month out with one of the best weekends of the year: General Conference-

 We tried this new jar system where they boys get one of these treats if they heard the word and it was awesome for one whole session! That's actually a pretty big deal. They listened to the whole two hours on Sunday morning. Parent win.

These babies kept us all going, too!
This general conference was pretty darn amazing. I wanted to soak up and internalize every. single. word. The world is becoming a crazy place and I'm so grateful for the clarity the prophet, apostles and church leaders bring.

October was a good month for books at our house, or at least capturing them on camera!

It makes my heart happy to see my babies turning page after page in book after book!

Thad had a fun project at school and made an arcade game out of cardboard-

He named it "Touchdown"

It was kind of a mix between basketball and football. 

He was pretty proud of this creation and loved being apart of the first grade cardboard arcade. 

Our Eve FINALLY started walking this month! I have no pictures of her doing this because she is not cooperative when the camera comes out, but our 13 month old is a walker!!

The Saturday that the Doyle girls flew in the kids and I headed to Austin to meet up with Diane, Katie and Janee, all girls that I went to high school with, and were in the area. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch date at the park and then headed straight to the airport.

We will definitely be going back to this park!

And here are some random, fun moments between it all-

Happy Halloween

This past weekend was full of Halloween fun! We would have had even more at the city party, but the weather was CRAZY! We got some tropical rainfall on Friday and I didn't dare venture out in it. I'm pretty brave when it comes to weather, but the rains and flash floods are too much for me. There were also some tornado warnings and being outside just wasn't the thing for me. Luckily the ward's Fall Carnival/Trunk-or-Treat still happened and we had a really good time at that on Friday evening when Brian was with us to venture out in the crazy weather! We were on the committee so we showed up early to do some set up and kept an eye on food and activities throughout the night.

We had an awesome, creative committee that pulled this off with flying colors even after having to scramble at the last minute to make things work inside instead of out. 

The kids had a blast with all of our ward members and loved being in their costumes an extra night. 

I love this picture of my Thad being so big. 

He stood in line all by himself and got his food. I know it's not a big deal, but it is a reminder of how big he is getting! He is becoming so independent and has a mind of his own and I love to see him blossoming into a big kid! 

Maybe Eve didn't like the extra night for costumes. 

Grandma Teresa made this cutest Pikachu beanie and we tried to practice over the month before Halloween, but she still hated it. I was just crossing my fingers I could get one cute picture of her with it on! 

After our fun night at the church we were ready for the real deal the next day!

I even had all the kids ready early to get pictures of them before all the hoopla began. I let Thad pick the theme this year and he was so excited when I agreed to the Pokemon theme. I'm not sure the themed Halloweens will last much longer (Brian and I were boring and didn't join in this year), but it has been pretty amazing while it has lasted!

[Ash Ketchum: Pokemon Trainer]

[Charizard]

[Pikachu]

  

 And we could NOT believe our Eve left her hat on with no problems! She literally screamed and tore it off every single time we put it on her before Halloween and then all of the sudden she loved it and wore it all night. The stars aligned that night and she was the perfect Pikachu!  

Before heading out for Trick-or-Treating, we played, had dinner at our awesome neighbors across the street and waited for the sun to start to go down. It was really such a fun night filled with friends, candy and three of my favorite kids in all the world!

The kids were so excited when it was finally time to hit the road and get those treats!

 Eve didn't care too much about going door to door, so she hung out with daddy in the stroller for the two hours of trick-or-treating we did. They sure make a cute pair.

And Sevi was just the CUTEST Nemo I have ever seen! We have three little girls in the cul de sac all within a year of each other and I know they are going to be besties over the next couple years! 

 They boys had a BLAST filling their buckets and being with friends. After about an hour and a half we parted ways with our group and headed towards home because our boys were lagging behind. They were initially bummed, but I told them we could Whip and Nae Nae when we got home and that cheered Thad right up! Haha! It was actually fun to just be our family for the last thirty minutes or so. We ran into some of Thad's friends from school too and stopped and chatted with parents that we would have done otherwise, so it was a good move. 

I sure love this family of mine so much and holidays are always better with them. As simple as this Pokemon theme was, it was so much fun to see it all come together. 

"Gotta catch 'em all!"

Happy Halloween 2015!