Five on Friday

I'm actually posting on a FRIDAY!  But that's really only been made possible by Anna Reaghan's partying and shenanigans all through rest time at such a volume that I could not nap. ;)  Soooo, you can thank AR. :)  And she can thank herself for the early bedtime that is headed her way.

1.  Going back to last weekend, we accomplished a huge goal--both of our cars are parked in the garage!  My car has been in the garage for awhile, but we had this, ahem, wall of boxes in other parts of the garage preventing us from fitting two cars (in a 3 car garage.... kind of crazy, but that's how it worked while I have had to find time (aaaand energy... probably the more rare commodity in this stage/pregnancy) here and there to go through the contents of every box in its entirety).  It's GREAT!  And our garage has insulated doors, so it has not even been cold in the garage when Matt leaves for work in the morning.  It's a rather pleasant temperature, actually. :)

2.  Our trees have quickly approached peak color over the last week.  If not for a wind storm last night, this weekend's trees might have been too beautiful to look at! But here's a little bit of glory right in our own front yard.

And may I just take a  moment to reflect on the leaves we dealt with last year.  I'm so thankful we had a safe, convenient, functional, and affordable place to live when we moved here.... but all those leaves are NOT something I will miss about that house. ;)  At our own house, we have enough trees we can make a few fun piles for the kids.  But we won't have to devote every waking moment to raking and bagging.  RELIEF!! :)

(last year's leaves... this was round two.  Round one was at least equally as large.  At this point we'd bagged about 75 bags--mostly the huge contractor size--and we had 4 more piles to bag.  We could NOT have done it without my parents' help!!)

3.  I was not planning anything "big" for Halloween.  I want to be a welcoming neighbor so I am happy to create a festive front porch of pumpkins and mums, happy to pass out candy to the neighborhood kids, and enjoy taking our kids to the pumpkin patch for a hayride, but it's not really a day/season I prefer to play up or emphasize with our children... especially at these young ages when they are so sensitive and also the line between real and pretend is pretty fuzzy for them at times--that makes for tricky conversations about scary things they have seen at stores and in yards when trying to convince very impressionable and vivid imaginations that said decorations are not real.

BUT, Asa figured out Thursday was Halloween thanks to chatter at school that day.  He told me matter of factly that me you *carve* pumpkins for Halloween.  So he and I spent rest time carving pumpkins.  He chose a minion stencil (from Despicable Me--he has not seen the movies but LOVES the "yellow guys"), and he and I selected a Cinderella stencil for Anna Reaghan's pumpkin.  He loved sitting on the back porch talking to me and pretending to hack away (with a very small and relatively safe knife) at chunks of pumpkin as I cut them out.  I thought the minion would be easier, but I actually made 2 mistakes carving it.  They helped me improve my technique for the Cinderella pumpkin though.  I didn't have a "proper" pumpkin knife, so I was trying to cut with a steak knife and paring knife, but we made it work. :)  Asa and Anna Reaghan were both THRILLED with the finished product!

After rest time, Matt asked us to come to his company for the kids to go from office to office collecting candy.  Anna Reaghan was a princess and Asa was a frog (trying to play off the frog prince).  They had a BLAST!  On our way home we stopped at G-Pa and G-Ma's to show off their costumes.  I'm glad the kids had fun and made fun memories.  Today, Asa told me he wanted to dress back up and he and Anna Reaghan could run around the back yard pretending they were at Daddy's office getting candy.  It obviously made an impression upon him. ;)

Do you think she liked the chocolate she ate on the way to G-Pa and G-Ma's??

4.  Today I was very happily surprised that some photo prints I ordered arrived a day early! I finished our photo wall and hung our current family photo in between the kids' one year portraits. I also finished the kids' first year gallery walls in the upstairs hallway.  Several frames need some sticky tack to hold them level, but I love having these finishing touches done around the house.  And just to assuage the minds of any third-borns out there, we have plans for how to include Lila equally in each grouping once we have portraits of her at the various stages.  I even bought a matching frame for the kids' bathroom pictures awhile back so she'll match after we have a bath picture of her to hang.  I am a third born myself, after all. ;)

We've been able to incorporate in our photo wall all of the kids' cousins, all the living great-grandparents, baby pictures of Asa and Anna Reaghan, two sweet current pictures of Asa & AR together, engagement and wedding photos of us, maternity photos from Asa and AR's pregnancies (with an alternate 3 photo frame on on hold for Lila), a photo of my parents, and there's a spot waiting for Matt's parents. :)

Anna Reaghan's one year portrait, our currently family photo, and Asa's one year portrait. 

These are hanging over the couch.

5.  This weekend I am hoping to browse a craft show, finish putting baby and holiday boxes in the attic (well, Matt will do the "putting," I'm repacking the boxes that are too big for the attic access door), hang AR's name letters above her crib, and hopefully hang some art above our bed.  It's all in the details. ;)