Amanda's soccer team

By the middle of November all three kiddos rec soccer season had ended. I really enjoy my kids playing sports and soccer is probably my fav, but three games every Saturday for a few months gets to be a lot. This is Amanda's team at their last game of the season. She had a really great year and even tried out for the High school soccer team and made it!


Teenage girls being goofy.

Charger Game

Shaun's parents were supposed to come and visit us in November but were not able to. We didn't know they weren't going to be able to come until Shaun had already gotten tickets to a Charger game for Dell to take the kids to. (I don't do Charger games)When we found out they weren't coming the kids were disappointed to not be able to go so I relented and decided to take them. However, I didn't agree to go until my brother Logan agreed to go with us. I did not feel comfortable taking my kids to what I consider a big rowdy drunken party, especially because it was against the Raiders and they are notoriously rowdy. It ended up being a pretty good time. With Shaun's premium parking pass we avoided the crazy tailgaters and the seats were pretty great, very close to the field. The kids loved seeing their dad down on the sidelines and a really nice Raider fan fed me and my kids. I know these are terrible pics, but they are the only ones I snapped that night and I wanted my kids to have proof that I did take them to a Charger game...once.

This made my day

One of the things I LOVE about our new house is how I feel like we are out in the country, even though we are just about 2 minutes from the center of Poway. I love that all of our neighbors have farm animals. We are surrounded by horses chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, peacocks, emus and more. Our next door neighbors have a lot of ducks and some mornings I can see them out my bedroom window waddling up the hill between our houses. I love it!! I told Shaun, just after we moved in that it would totally make my day to come home one day and find ducks swimming in our pool. One day in October Shaun started yelling for me from outside and I went running since he sounded so frantic. This is why he was yelling for me:

I was not disappointed and it totally made my day! Probably even my week. I don't think Shaun was nearly as excited as I was seeing as how they were non-stop, and I mean non-stop pooping in our pool. (He's our pool guy and he knew he would have to be cleaning up after the ducks!) But he humored me a for a few minutes until he went and got our neighbors to come get their ducks.


On a side note one of our neighbors turkeys got in our yard the other day and I was ecstatic! I can't wait to get our own chickens, and don't tell Shaun but I'm now thinking about getting some ducks too!

Halloween at school

On Halloween day Connor's school has a costume parade. The kids have to wear their clothes under their costume so he decided to wear his army guy one instead of skeleton. i think he looks handsome!


As I mentioned in an earlier post our school had a big Halloween Carnival, but it was held the Friday before Halloween. So, on Halloween the kids did not wear their costumes to school, but that was OK with Madison. She loves Hello Kitty so she was excited to wear her Halloween Hello Kitty shirt on Halloween.

Fun Halloween Treats

Last year was such a crazy year with everything going on with the house that I did not get to do hardly any crafting or baking and I missed it so much. neither of these treats are very original or exciting, I just wanted to post them because it felt so good to be back doing something that I love to do. These are caramel apples dipped in white (colored orange) chocolate and rolled in crushed Oreo. I didn't try one but I had so much fun making them and then wrapping them up for a few friends.


I made these eyeball cookie pops for Pack meeting and again for my teacher friends at school. Again, so much fun!

Carving Pumpkins

A couple of nights before Halloween we carved our pumpkins. it has been so fun to celebrate the holiday season in our new house, especially because we didn't get to celebrate much last year at this time because we were in the middle of home buying chaos.









Amanda's masterpiece. We were just glad to have her participate. She has gotten old enough to not find pumpkin carving, gingerbread house making or egg dying with the family as much fun as she used to.


I bet you can guess which one of my kids made this one. I'll give you a hint...it was the boy.


On the front porch ready for Halloween!

PS-I planted new flowers in my planters not long after this picture was taken.

Fun Fest 2011

At the school I work at and that Madison attends they have a Halloween Fun Fest each year. The kids all come in costume and the parents stay and we have a little Costume Parade and then us teachers run a small little carnival. It's very fun! The only problem was that Shaun couldn't get the day off and I had to help at the carnival so that left Madison unaccompanied. Fortunately she has a great bis sister, Samantha, that volunteered to miss school and come with her.


Mads enjoying her cupcake from the cake walk.


Mads playing on the swings