Halloween '12

It was a good evening for trick or treating in the neighborhood. Biggest sister opted to go around with her friends in a neighborhood north of our place. We lasted a whole hour going from house to house outdoors. The girls now have enough candy until Easter.

Last night we headed downtown to the children's museum for trick or treating indoors. The new "town" exhibits were recently renovated so we got to walk through it for the first time! We don't make it there nearly as much since I'm back to working full-time days, but it's extra special when we do get to go.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Children's Museum Loot

The chicken and the princess

Chicken crossing the road :)

Nice weather for Halloween - someone didn't need a jacket

Trick or treating on Terrace

Trick or treating with cowgirl neighbor friend

One tired chick...the moon looked pretty cool tonight

Lifting Prayers

A busy weekend celebrating birthdays and our anniversary has come and gone.

This morning I received some saddening news related to E's dear teacher at daycare. Ms. B is now courageously fighting more cancer. She just finished battling another round of cancer this past year. Then last week she was diagnosed with brain cancer, which is a metastasis from her ovarian primary. Ms. B has truly been a huge blessing to our family as she has helped raise our two youngest daughters during their 2's. She is adored by all the children, especially our little E which I know for sure. She clings to Ms. B every morning as I leave her.

Speaking of daycare, E started a new classroom today with the older 2's lead by Ms. E (who has assisted in her classroom for the past several months) after transitioning last week. There are quite a few 2-year olds right now, so they have decided to have two classrooms of them.

Please keep this brave, positive, amazing lady and her family in your prayers. She means so much to our family and to the daycare center. She plans to return to the kiddos after her 14 rounds of chemotherapy are finished and her strength returns. I love her attitude and selflessness.

Keep fighting...E can't wait to squeeze you, Ms. B!!

Birthday Celebration x 2!

A double birthday celebration was held at Mom and Dad's place in the country. Aunt M turned the big 30 today! Happy birthday to both of these lovely ladies!!

And So Begins the Teenage Years...

Happy 13th birthday to the sweetest teenager we know!

Surprise!

Pumpkin Patch 2012

Our annual Gates family trip to the pumpkin patch has come and gone. The weather was FANTASTIC at 80 degrees! We actually wished we had worn shorts as it got rather toasty among the thousands of people. Of course nice weather = overcrowding, but we survived.

Another family photo at Vala's

Hayrack ride

Love!

Tractor ride

E enjoying the pedal cart ride

Fall Break

Happy 36th anniversary today to my parents!!!!
Love you guys!

Today is the last day of "fall break" for the public schools in town. And the weather has been a-mazing!! I even took an extended weekend to enjoy the time home with the family. We've accomplished a lot around the house and spent time outdoors as well. We can only hope that we have decent weather for our annual Gates family pumpkin patch excursion scheduled for this coming Sunday. The kids are really looking forward to going. Fingers crossed that the weather holds true to the current forecast!

Also, I'm researching laptops and a new digital camera. Both my PC and camera are 7+ years old and very outdated. Going back to school has made me realize this even more so than before. With Doane being a liberal arts college, I am required to take two "art" classes, one of which I know will be Intro to Digital Photography. What better time to invest in a digital camera? They can teach me how to work the thing!

Here is what I'm currently researching:







Or just stick with a point and shoot?? Not in any hurry at this point but stalking the weekly ads for a good deal. As for laptops, I haven't got a clue...

18 Days and Counting...

It's official!! Our Kansas City weekend is booked!

Actually, it has been booked for a few weeks, but the countdown is on. We're not excited or anything :) Staying for two nights this time and have the list of priorities already made. But who are we kidding...we don't go by schedules when we are child free. Though we do have a couple of things we'd like to do while hanging out in the Plaza. October is such a busy month for us that we decided to delay our anniversary festivities for a week so we can just relax.

I really do hope we can find a Christmas gift or two. I've started my shopping and would like to finish it before Thanksgiving this year (do I say that every year?). With two classes on the horizon for next term, I'm not going to have a whole lot of free time.

Super excited!!

Movies!

A couple theaters in town (actually several Marcus Theaters across the nation) are having $3 family 3D movie weekends in October. This weekend Dolphin Tale was playing, so the girls and I headed to the south part of town while Chris had his monthly all-day Sunday class. It was a heart-warming movie based on a true story about an injured dolphin captured from the wild and had to have her damaged tail amputated.

This is literally the second movie I've been to since being married. Ha! Chris has taken Ava to a movie in the past (Kung Fu Panda 2), but this was my baby's first movie theater experience! She was really good during the movie, but didn't like that it was so loud and got a tad fidgety towards the end (after all it was just shy of two hours in length!). She wore the glasses the whole time...big surprise as she loves wearing sunglasses. The 3D aspect was pretty cool and a new experience for me. There was also discounted popcorn and soda...yum!!

It was a good Sunday :)

Pumpkin Run

Guess who got to run her first pumpkin run this morning?? And she graciously allowed her mom to run along side. :) There was so much excitement for this event that she (loudly) chattered nonstop from our house all the way to Pioneer Park. That was exhausting! But we had fun and she was even pleasantly surprised to see several kids she knew. (Not to mention all the people daddy knew...three schools later, we can't go in public without him knowing someone). The weather was perfect too!!

Last 100 yards!

In other news... Alexis is at an all-day Campus Life trip to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City. The city-wide event included over 200 middle school and high school students. They left town before 7am and arrived back at about midnight. Besides being wet, cold and tired by the time they left KC, she seemed to have had fun. She even braved her first roller coaster, the Timberwolf, which ironically was my first roller coaster!!

Class. Done.

My first Doane class is officially over, and I survived!!!

Now it's a two-week break and planning to tackle two classes next term. I'm a little nervous, and I'm sure that I'll be looking forward to Christmas more so than usual! Thanks to my hubby for being so supportive and to my girls for giving me space when I need it... :)