St. Patrick's Day

 Whoa, I have never been so many months behind in blogging before!  Life is crazy with four kids. Blogging has definitely been put on the back burner.

We have a tradition of eating green breakfast foods and smoothies for St. Patrick's Day.  Here we are with our green eggs and waffles and our "shamrock smoothie."

The leprechaun always visits our house, too, and leaves gold chocolate coins for the kids.  It was totally an unintentional tradition, but now the kids talk about it and expect it.

Halloween

We are lucky to have two Halloween parties every year--one with each of our families.  

This year we had a fun chili dinner at my brother's house, ate yummy treats, and sang Pumpkin Carols.  

 I made this spider cake this year.  There was a special surprise inside--green jello guts!

Dishing up delicious chili and cornbread

We lit the candles in our pumpkins while we sang our Halloween songs

These next two pictures are from Jared's Halloween parade at the elementary school. Maggie and I waited so patiently for it to begin...

Jared was going to wear his Mr. Incredible costume to school, but I was worried that he wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom by himself because of the zipper in the back.  So I talked him into wearing last year's skeleton costume to the school parade, and then he could be Mr. Incredible for trick-or-treating.  This year he didn't want any scary face make-up.

The rest of these pictures are from our annual Stout costume party.  It was so fun!  We ate soup and breadsticks, had delicious treats, and played games (donuts on a string, anyone?)

Alan as Napoleon Dynamite.  This was before he gave the wig a trim for his talent show dance.  

Maggie was Dorothy and I was Glinda the Good Witch

Maggie and Uncle Steve went outside for a while to jump on the tramp and find the kitties.

Jared was Mr. Incredible, but I couldn't get him to wear the black gloves or the black eye mask.  Oh, well. 

Jared "helped" make the homemade root beer.

We are already looking forward to next year's Halloween!

Festival of Trees

The movie Up! seemed to be popular this year. Here's a tree...


...and a gingerbread house

Alan and I have loved going to the Festival of Trees with other members of my family every year, but this year Alan wasn't able to come because of a deadline he had at work. I took some pictures of my favorite trees and gingerbread houses for Alan and brought him home one of their delicious cinnamon-sugar scones as a consolation prize.

Peanuts tree

A very classy Mickey and Minnie tree, complete with Minnie bedroom furniture

Heat Miser and Snow Miser from The Year Without a Santa Claus--a holiday classic I grew up with

Cool log cabin

This was supposed to be the Weasley's house

Tangled gingerbread house, complete with Rapunzel and Flint dangling from her hair

December Fun

I took the kids to the Aquarium on the free day they had there. We got there right when it opened, but it was still crazy busy! We enjoyed it, though, and we had fun with our friends the Griffins.

Jared and his friend Bronte. They are the same size as adult penguins!

Jared loved the pool where you could touch the rays.

Playing in the caves

Maggie came to the aquarium, too. She spent most of the time telling me she wanted to get out of the stroller, and I spent most of the time trying to sneak her some snacks so that she'd be happy to stay in it.

We have sort of started a tradition of buying a gingerbread house kit and making it (this was our 2nd year). Jared wanted to do the gingerbread village this year.

And here is our finished product:

Just kidding. I took a picture of this village at the Festival of Trees this year. I wish ours could look this good! Here is our real end product:

Rather than trying to get it to look beautiful, we let Jared be in charge of the decorating after Alan did the assembling. It made Jared's day!