Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, Andy, Isaac, and I went up to Wichita to spend the holiday with my family.  It was a fun break from our day to day life.

The fun started on the way up.  We left right after breakfast on Thursday so that we could get to Wichita in time for dinner (my family eats Thanksgiving dinner early).  Isaac needed a nap, but wasn't really interested in taking one in his carseat.  Thank goodness for the magic properties of my hair.  I reclined my seat all the way back, put my hair across his lap, and we were good to go.  I'm so grateful that Andy got a video of it!

When we got to my parents house, we were greeted by a house full of people!  My Aunt Jodi, Uncle Paul, and their family and Aunt Patti, Uncle Mark, and their family had all come down from Kansas City to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It made for a very busy house, but a really fun dinner!

After dinner we were Skyping my sister Allie who was at our grandparents' house in Utah.  Isaac plopped right down in front of the computer and said hi.  It's so fun that now he's old enough to actually interact with people on Skype!

Since it was pretty cold over Thanksgiving, we didn't go out much.  Isaac did insist on going out to play in the leaves though.  That boy LOVES leaves!

Reunited with his swing.  He was soo happy to play in it again!

Stomping in leaves with my dad.

Raking with my mom.  At first he wasn't so sure about it...

...luckily he warmed up to it pretty quickly. 

It was a really fun weekend and we were happy to be able to see everyone!

Halloween

Halloween this year was a pretty low key affair for our family.  As in, the only celebrating we did was the ward Halloween party... and we hardly dressed up for it.  Halloween is one of those really hard holidays for me to get into.  I hate spending money...especially for something that will only be worn once or twice.  As for the candy?  Easter candy is my downfall (hello all you delicious egg shaped candies!).  Halloween candy holds no allure for me.

Nevertheless, since this was Isaac's first Halloween, we put at least a little effort into his costume.  We looked around at stores, but there's one minor problem with most baby/toddler costumes when you live in Texas... they're too warm!  We don't need to worry about keeping baby toasty down here, we're more worried about them overheating (granted the night of our ward party was the one night that week that the temperatures dropped down into the high 50s/low 60s).  So pre-made costumes were out.

Luckily, we saw a really cute idea in a magazine for a little marathon runner.  Since Isaac had just started running, we thought this was a pretty perfect outfit for him!  Luckily, a quick trip to Target later and we had his outfit all ready!  Andy and I complemented him and went as soccer players

When we showed up for the ward Halloween party, we felt a little silly because NONE of the parents we saw heading into the church had costumes on!  Luckily, one we got inside we saw some people with costumes on, but it's nice to know that of we can't think of something awesome to do as a family there's no pressure for Andy or me to dress up.

One of the best parts of the night was watching Isaac with the balloons at the party.  He (and all the other little kids) LOVED them!  He would run all over after them.  It was adorable!

All in all it was a pretty fun evening.  Hopefully next year we'll get a little more into it, but I'm glad I didn't let myself get stressed out about it!