Happy Birthday Beckham!!

After our crazy Halloween and all the prep that required, I was not feeling particularly excited about throwing another birthday party.  However, sweet Beckham had his heart set on a Clifford birthday party and I, of course, wanted him to feel special for his fifth birthday...so, we had a Clifford birthday party!! 

Beckham also got to pick where we went for his special family birthday lunch.  He chose Fenton's!! We had a yummy lunch and topped it off with a HUGE ice cream sundae!!

Since Beckham's birthday is right after Halloween, we decided to make a somewhat healthy snack to bring to his classmates!! These little snack robots turned out so cute!!

I did a lot of planning and prepping for Beckham's birthday.  But, I did help myself out a bit by buying the kids' birthday cakes this year rather than making them.  Beckham was still super excited about his cute Clifford cake.

I always love to decorate for the kids' birthdays!!  They get super excited when they wake up in the morning to see birthday decorations up!!

There are NOT a lot of Clifford decorations for sale anywhere, so I had to improvise!!  It turned out alright.  I got several cute Clifford books to give out as party favors and they made the house look even more festive, too!!

I made this cute Clifford poster for the party!!   the kids tried to kick balls into Clifford's dog house!! It was super fun. Also, Jane and Beckham had a blast going in and out of it all day pretending it was a real dog house :)

Only one of the little friends that Beckham wanted to invite was able to come :(. That is a major disadvantage of  moving around so much. Its hard leaving your good friends and having to make new ones in new places. Once again some sweet new friends from our great ward came to the rescue and joined us for Beckham's party!  With all the crazy party fun I wasn't able to get many pictures of the actual party but we had fun!

We are so proud of our big boy Beckham!!  He still has the biggest heart and is so mindful of others, that is a rare quality in kids these days!!  He is so smart and loves to figure out how everything works! He gives the BEST hugs and kisses and loves his family!!  We love this sweet boy so much!! I cannot believe he is already five :( Happy Birthday Beckham!!

3,000 Trick or Treaters!!!

 We unknowingly moved onto the Halloween street of Vacaville :) Over the months leading up to the big night, we had been told rumors of thousands of trick or treaters coming to our house and every house on the street going all out with decorations!! Naturally, we didn't want to be the only house on the block to not be festive... so Ryan and I brainstormed for neat ideas. We decided to make our yard a creepy graveyard!!  And I think it looked pretty cool!!

Ryan made all the gravestones!!  He is super talented and did an amazing job!! Adding the pumpkins, lanterns and crows and such really made our graveyard look creepy :)

Ryan thought this idea was silly, but I really thought this was a great idea for a creative gravestone name. Plus, it was my idea sooooooo....

 It rained super hard all day  :( but our yard weathered the storm alright !!

 We all had so much fun watching all the neighbors set up and seeing our little Hawk Ct transform into Halloween Town!!  Our neighbors across the street had a huge Nightmare Before Christmas train set that was super cool.  The kids looooved it!

 Elsie was a bit hit as a little old lady...the cutest little old lady EVER!!!!

 Ryan also made the ghost above Myra Mains' gravestone-hehe. Nad our neighbors let us borrow the cute spiders that made the webs all over our yard :)

 Our neighbors cool scarecrow...

 Jane was a cute little witch!!  The kids had so much fun trick or treating around our cul de sac!!  And they were able to see a lot of church friends, school friends and neighborhood friends :)

 Another neighbor did some pretty neat pumpkins...

 This floating head was pretty creepy...

 On the morning of Halloween, I got to see Jane in a little Halloween parade at her school.  She was sweet and let Beckham walk around with her.  They held hands the whole way and it was the sweetest!!

 Another cool pumpkin from our neighborhood!

 Since there are literally thousands of trick or treaters who come to our street, we just set up at the end of our driveway!! We had a nice little set up.

 Another creepy pumpkin...

 This zombie was gross and there was another one inside...

 Here's another graviton from our yard...we had the best graveyard for sure :)

 We filled up this huge cauldron at least 2 and a half times...There were ALOT of trick or treaters!

This was in the yard across the street.

 There is one man on our street who is a Disney imagineer. He has all sorts of Haunted mansion things...including this scary ghost.  She talked to us, too!

 Our house looked super cool at night!!

 The police came to block off our street for Halloween night and they let Beckham sit in the car!! He thought that was super neat!!

 OOOH CREEPY!!

We hope everyone had an amazing Halloween like we did!! What a fun neighborhood we live in!!!

So Much Fall Fun!!!

 It has been too long since I have posted a new blog...but, without my camera, the process just takes so much longer...ugh!! However, we have been having too much California Fall fun! And it just needed to be documented.  Fall in California has been crazy!! The weather has stayed in the 90s all the way until just this week!!  This was not inspiring me to get into the Fall spirit and pull out the fall decorations, make pumpkin deserts, and pull out the Fall scents for the Scentsy warmer...:( However, for the kids' sake I tried to do all that anyway.  And luckily, Fall has kicked in here and we are having beautiful 70 degree weather here!! It is just lovely!!

We had Fall celebrations to attend for each of the kids' schools!!  This was the very first year that Jane wanted to be anything other than some sort of Disney princess for Halloween...I feel like that is kind of a big milestone :)!!!  She is growing up!!  She chose to be a darling witch instead.  Beckham was so excited to be a "Daddy" and wear his cool ABUs we found that are exactly like the ones Ryan wears!! He just looks so cute in them!!

 

 Initially, Jane wanted to have a green witch face.  Aaaaand I gave it my best shot...but the cream make-up I found was very uncooperative-hehe.  Here was the sorry result of my efforts. Jane was not pleased!!! After many attempts, we opted to forgo the green face :)

 Little miss Elsie zonks out by 6:30 these days so she has not been attending the Fall festivals.  She will get to wear her DARLING Halloween costume on Halloween, however.  She is going to be a little old lady!!  Elsie is 6 months old already!! Time is zooming by way too fast :( She is so funny- and has to be the most wiggly baby in the entire world.  She does not want to sit still anymore.  She is already starting to crawl and scootch all over the house.  I am not ready for that phase- boo hoo!!  Here she is trying to wiggle out of the Bumbo during dinner by bending over backwards!! 

 She tried the swing for the very first time the other day and thought it was just the greatest thing in the world!! We just love this sweet little lady!!

 Ryan took the kids to Jane's school "Hoot and Howl". Sooooo, the result is we have very few pictures of that :) But from what I hear, the kids had a blast!!

  The next weekend, it was my turn to take the kids to Beckham's school "Fall Festival". We sure had a lot of fun!!  Here are Jane and Beckham participating in the "cake walk"- a sort of musical chairs game where the prizes were whole cakes, trays of cooking or pastries of many kinds!! We played twice.  The kids were determined to will a treat!!

 I was in charge of running Beckham's class booth at the fair for a half an hour that night. The kids helped me do it :) We had fun running the "pin the spider on the web" game!! This is Beckham's first time having his very own school and school activities to attend and be proud of, and I love that is was just beaming with school pride the whole night!!  I am so happy he loves his wonderful school and class :)

 One of the things I miss the most about Delaware is the wonderful neighborhood we lived in!!  Every year around Halloween we would get "Boo-ed"!  This means, we would get Halloween surprises left on our doorstep from some mystery person who was usually a sweet neighbor or friend.  We in turn, would "Boo" several other neighbors or friends. And eventually everyone in the neighborhood would have some Halloween surprises left on their doorstep :) I was missing that tradition here until we got a sweet package in the mail from our dear, dear Delaware friends, the Woodlands!! They "Boo-ed" us even from all the way across the country!! We love and miss them sooooo much!!!  Here we are enjoying some of our Halloween prizes :)

 Days after moving here, we were informed that we live on this city's "Halloween Street"!!!  Apparently, we should plan on 2,000-3,000 trick or treaters.  And everyone in our neighborhood goes crazy with Halloween decor and the police block off our street due to the insane number of people who come from all over to our street on Halloween!!! We didn't want to be the only ones on the street to not participate, so we have been preparing for weeks!!  Here are the AMAZING tomb stones that Ryan made!!  We have big plans for our house and it is going to look fabulous!! Halloween is going to be so much fun, we can't wait!!  Watch for pictures to come of that amazing night, and of our house all done up for Halloween :)

 We heard that we needed to try to make it to "Apple Hill" while we were here.  So, one weekend we made the trip.  Even though it was packed and we hit crazy traffic, we had some fun!! Due to how busy it was, we only made it to one of the apple orchards even though there are many!!

 This was the favorite activity at the apple orchard!!  The kids just thought this was the coolest thing ever.  If they would have allowed adults to try this...I totally would have tried it!!

 Here is Beckham inside the ball as it was getting blown up!!  Apparently, it's pretty loud in there!!

 And Jane...

Our ward here in Vacaville has been truly wonderful and so welcoming!!  One weekend we were invited by some ward friends to their traditional "Apple Fest"!! Tons of ward and non ward friends were there.  It was such a neat tradition that I may need to steal.  There were 20 different types of apples to try with and without caramel.  Then we all rated the apples and an overall winner was chosen.  I had no idea there were so many types of apples!! It was neat to try so many of them.  There were also many apple games  and challenges!!  I won the "minute to win it" apple stacking game :) It was so much fun!!! Beckham was so happy I won.  My prize was a golden apple!

 

Though Fall in California has been different, we have had to much fun!!  Fall is truly the BEST time of the year!!!