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Blog, Fall, halloween, holidays

Hi-Ho-Halloween


Happy Halloween!! I’m so excited to share our Halloween costumes with you!! When we were thinking up family costume ideas for this year, I couldn’t resist dressing up as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. With 7 children, it just seemed so perfect. After Evangeline got over the fact that she was going to be an old man with a beard instead of a princess, she was excited as well 😉

Every year on Halloween, we go to a fall festival at a church nearby. The kids love playing the games and winning candy. And I love that it’s indoors so we don’t have to worry about the cold weather! They also have a costume contest that we’ve won many times! Unfortunately, this year the fall festival was canceled. And we didn’t find out until after I had already bought half the stuff for our costumes.

I ended up purchasing the rest of the stuff we needed and quickly DIYed our costumes (minus my dress that I happened to find at Goodwill!) Then on a warm day, I had my friend, Maggi, take a few pictures of us all dressed up!

Now don’t go comparing us with the actual movie characters because I didn’t really make the costumes exact. Even so, my kids still decided who was going to play the part of each dwarf.

Liam was Doc and Kai was Sleepy. Kai is our late sleeper so it was very fitting.

Kingston was really set on being Grumpy and he played the part perfectly. I don’t think Evangeline ever decided which one she was going to be so we’ll just go with Happy.

The boys decided that Desmond was Sneezy and Clementine was Bashful.

And then, of course, we have Dopey. Held by Prince Charming.

The most magical shot–ruined by a dress that I was too lazy to iron haha.

We had so much fun with these costumes but decided not to use them on Halloween. The main reason is because without a costume contest, I’m not motivated to put this Snow White dress on again. And I knew the Dwarf costumes wouldn’t be nearly as exciting without a Snow White. So for Halloween tonight, the kids will be digging through our costume box and dressing up with whatever they decide to be (Evangeline is super excited about not having to wear a beard haha.) And for the first time in many years, we’re going to be Trick-or-Treating. It’s going to be chilly and possibly rainy so I sure hope we end the night with a good amount of candy!

In addition to the Snow White theme, we also had a few more opportunities to dress up this month. The cat ears from Target’s dollar spot are always too cute to resist so I had to dress up these 3 sweet girls.

What I learned from this experience–putting whiskers on a baby is definitely not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Evangeline and Clementine absolutely loved it though. I mean, look at Clementine’s smile in the picture above!!

 

And thanks to another Target dollar spot find, a witch’s hat, I got this totally adorable napping photo of Primrose! Looking at it now, it reminds me of the cartoon in the intro of the old TV show, “Bewitched.”

And finally, a couple of pictures of these 3 party animals. Life really is a zoo with them. I think they all plan to wear these costumes tonight as long as we all make it out of the house! Desmond is an entertainer at all times. Can you tell?

And I’m ending this post with this cheesy photo. You’re welcome! One of my favorite parts about Halloween is seeing everyone’s creative costumes! What did you guys dress up as this year?

If you want to see some of costumes from the past years, you can see them all in the links below! (Notice my lack of creativity for a couple years as we repeated the same costumes…twice haha.)

Wizard of Oz, 2017

Star Wars, 2016

Peter Pan, 2015

Star Wars, 2014 and THIS ONE too!

Peter Pan, 2013

holidays

Happy 2018!


Happy New Year!! I hope everyone had a great time celebrating last night! Every year we ring in the new year with our church friends. It’s always a bit of work with kids getting sleepy/crabby long before midnight…especially since Don has always been working or sleeping while I’m on my own with all the kids. But I have always loved it!

This year, however, looked a little different for us. And a little spoiler alert–it didn’t look anything like these pictures 😉 Desmond was diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs on Saturday and everyone else has been coughing all week and taking turns running fevers, so I thought it was best for us to stay home. I was a bit disappointed to miss out but I was also slightly relieved.

Don worked until 11 last night so the thought of hauling 6 kids all by my pregnant self to a party (when the temperatures were in the negatives) just didn’t sound very appealing. I told the kids we’d have our own party for anyone who could manage to stay awake.

We loaded up on homemade pizza and snacks and I told the kids that we’d play games after Desmond and Clementine went to bed. But then they went to bed and I was out of energy. Remember–pregnancy + sickness. I suggested a movie, which they gladly agreed to, and then I crafted with the 3 boys until Don got home. So we never got around to playing any games but I think they actually had more fun crafting with me instead. And the best part is that I got to do it all in my pajamas haha.

When the clock struck midnightish (Don’s countdown app conveniently stopped working at 11:59) we toasted with sparkling grape juice, watched the fireworks from our living room windows, and went to bed. And it was in that moment that I was so very thankful that I was not loading up 6 kids to drive home and shuffle to bed.

And now we’re spending New Year’s Day the same way I think we do every year. Sitting at home while my kids have limitless energy and I’m over here, extremely exhausted. Don is working all day again so we’ll be surviving on Netflix and leftover snacks. Not the most exciting start to 2018 but I know it’s only going to get better.

And that’s because this is the year we’re having baby #7! I’m officially only 6 weeks away from my due date–which seems so crazy to me! I slightly panicked the other night when I realized how close that is. We don’t have a name for our baby girl yet and it’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that we’re about to add another family member. But even though I don’t feel completely ready yet, we are so excited to meet this baby girl! She has a whole houseful of people ready to love on her.

And while “have a baby” may be my only official resolution, I do also have a few other things I’d like to work on over the year. Of course there’s the stereotypical “lose weight” resolution–but that’ll wait until after I have the baby, obviously. I also hope to improve my photography/editing. And there’s always room to work on being more patient with my children and being more hands on/intentional with them. Especially with giving them more one on one attention and encouraging their individual interests.

2017 was a great year for us! I really look forward to seeing what 2018 holds!

Thank you so much to everyone who has followed along on our family’s journey this past year! I’m looking forward to sharing this next year with you all! Happy 2018!

(the above picture is my top 9 instagram posts from 2017. You can find yours by going to this website HERE.)