Loving Life

To celebrate Ethan's third birthday (which is actually tomorrow), we threw him a "big red Clifford" party, per his request.  I had fun decorating and preparing fun red treats.  We had friends come over and had a great party.  Being that we love to entertain, I am loving that we now have a house that is big enough to host a large group of people, and does not feel cramped.  I have tons of pictures from our fun day....

This morning I took the kids for the annual Halloween costume parade at a cute little retirement home near our church.  Our mom's group meets up there during coffee time.  We get to trick or treat around the table and all of the Papas and Grandmas give the kiddos candy.  It's such a cute little event, and fun to have a way to celebrate during the day.

This year I had a cowboy and Tinkerbell. 
They were so cute.
Ethan didn't want to wear his costume at first (despite having picked it out himself).  Once I told him there was candy involved, he decided to cooperate.
He was very excited to go get some candy for his bucket.

After spending most of our remodeling budget on the tile and kitchen counters, we weren't left with much for decorating or fun "extras".  Thankfully I have tons of great ideas that I've come across on the internet and at friend's houses that don't cost much.  I copied these two projects after visiting this lovely ladie's home.  She has a gift for decorating on a shoestring budget, and I think I just want to copy everything she does :)  Mimicry is the highest form of flattery, right?

Remember all of the frames I've been collecting?
Well, I finally got to use one of them (and I will be using most all of the rest, as soon as I have time).
I was going to use the chalkboard paint I had purchased and paint some plywood to fit into the frame, however after visiting Leslie's home and seeing what she had done, I ordered this awesome product.  Peel and stick chalkboard is my new friend.
I love the stuff.




All I did was paint my frame white,
cut out some chal…

This past Tuesday we had our annual Hallo-Wii party with our Tuesday night dinner group.
We all dress up and play Wii.
We're dorks like that :)
As always Matt and I threw together our costumes at the very last minute.
Can you guess what we are????

The other week we went up to Oak Glen three times in one week.  One of those outings was for a picnic with our mom's group at church.  We packed up some food, brought some blankets, and hung out on the lawn at Los Rios for a couple of hours.  The weather was gorgeous up there that day, and it was fun to be out enjoying the beauty.

We were blessed to have my dad's parents (my grandparents ) and one of his sister's (my Aunt Kami) come out to visit us from Colorado last week.  We were excited to finally be able to host them, as we have enough space in our house.

Being that we have two little ones who nap at various times, we didn't go too many places.  We went up to Oak Glen one day and had a picnic at our favorite park up there.  We also got to tour the old historic schoolhouse, which was fun.  Mostly, we hung out at home.  We ate lots of good food and really just enjoyed one another.

Kami took Ethan and Cookie for a walk nearly every morning.
My Papa spent a lot of time during the week cutting up three dead trees in our jungle of a front yard (thank you Papa!).
We played some games, watches sports (well my Papa and Matt watched them.... I find it impossible to pay attention to sports).
It was a fun week.












 My Aunt Kami has a rat terrier named Jackson, so when she comes out here she loves to see Cookie.…