It's going to be hard to top this Halloween!

Our Halloween has been going on for two days straight.  Nana Mimi came in on Tuesday night and went to school with the girls on Wednesday for their Halloween party/parade! The girls had so much fun and it was so adorable...maybe a little over the top for a 2 year old class Halloween party....but, pretty amazing nonetheless and the girls loved it! Then today, on Halloween we drove to Hilton Head to celebrate Gigi's birthday! We had an absolute blast! We got to go out to lunch, have cake and ice cream and open presents and the girls wore their costumes to lunch, which was pretty adorable if you ask me! After lunch, the girls practiced trick or treating (since last year we only made it to one house...) at Ron and Conni's and they did great! (video below...). Tonight was trick or treating in our neighborhood and we got to go with our best buddy, Joshua "Joshy" and our best buddies, Kay and Christian. We made it to about 10 houses and Riley wanted to keep going. They loved it SO much...Riley kept running up to all of the houses (even without Reagan, which is HUGE for her) and as soon as she was done getting candy would say "We can go to another house, ok?"! It was too much fun. The girls were on candy overload after 3 M and M's and a lollipop, but are officially passed out already and Matt and I are close behind! It was an awesome couple of days, a great birthday with GiGi and a fantastic Halloween 2013!!!!

Carving Pumpkins

When Matt got home from work tonight we carved the big pumpkin we got from the pumpkin patch this weekend (not the ones from Publix!)! We did it outside since our weather is unreal...80 and sunny today! The girls were really into it for about 5 minutes and then Matt and I were really into just trying to get it done! So...here are a few pictures (yes, our driveway looks awful...it's getting pressure washed on Friday) and a couple of videos from the beginning of the carving. I didn't get a picture of the finished product (will get one on Halloween) but no one got hurt and we have a jack-o-lantern, so all in all, a successful night! 

Fabulous Fall Weekend!

The weather has finally changed a bit so that it sort of feels like fall around here! It was an absolutely gorgeous weekend and we were SO busy that it's now Sunday night and Matt and I just put the girls to bed and both of us just looked at each other and said "Where did the weekend go?"! It was an awesome weekend and here are the highlights....
We went to the beach Friday night with our sweet friends, Kay and Christian and their son Joshua. It was definitely chilly! There was a cool breeze and as the sun went down it got pretty cold. The kids didn't seem to be bothered by it at all though and had fun playing and digging in the sand and just running around! We met up with some of our other friends who have boy/girl twins (Luke and Kinsey) and all of us ended up having dinner together. It was quite the crew! The kids had a blast together and the girls were up until almost 9:00...Matt and I actually thought that might mean they'd let us sleep in on Saturday morning. Ha! Riley was up at 5:30 ready to go. I give up.
Saturday we took the girls to a "pumpkin patch". I use the term loosely, because for our friends and family in Ohio and other places up north, a pumpkin patch means an actual patch, or at least a place with hundreds of pumpkins and corn mazes and hayrides etc....but our pumpkin patch was in a church parking lot and while the girls had fun there, we ended up only finding one pumpkin that wasn't rotten and ended up buying the rest of our pumpkins at Publix. Does that make us Halloween Grinches?! Reagan and Riley didn't seem to mind...it did make Matt and I miss Patterson's in Cleveland though...maybe we'll need to take a fall vacation to Cleveland next year to give the girls a real pumpkin patch experience! Saturday afternoon we all went to a birthday party for the girl's friends, Addy and Emma (4 year old twins) and it was super cute and so much fun! Makes me a little nervous though about how much seems to go into planning a little kid's birthday party these days! I'm hoping the girl's don't have their expectations too high come April! Finally....today, we spent the majority of the day outside. It was amazing. The mornings are starting out chilly and it's 75 and sunny by the afternoon...perfect! We picked up the girl's best buddy from school, Nathan and took him to the playground with us this afternoon (his mom just had a baby last week so we gave them a bit of a break!) and then grabbed some ice cream after the playground.
I told you we had a big weekend!!!!! It was great though...and we're looking forward to this week! Halloween, a visit from Nana and a trip to Hilton Head for GiGi's birthday so we'll get to see GiGi, Grandpa, Uncle Ron and Aunt Conni too! Yay! Can't wait!!!! Here are some pictures and one video from our weekend!

Beach Ghost

This video just makes me laugh...I could watch it over and over. While we were at the beach yesterday, Reagan decided she wanted to be a beach ghost. She put the towel over her head and just ran around and around. It was hilarious and she was having such a great time. Until I decided to grab my phone and try and get it on video. I stopped paying attention to the direction she was going and...you'll see.....oops!
*Don't worry...she was fine! The guy's fishing poles might not be the same again.....

Happy Heart Day, sweet Riley girl!!!!!

October 20th will always be a super special day at our house! Yesterday marked 2 whole years since Riley's big surgery! Matt and I still re-live the day all of the time...and remember almost every single detail/second and just how awful and wonderful it was at the same time! We are so blessed that we had such an amazing team of doctors and nurses looking our for our girl (and still looking out for her!). We are so proud of her and how well she is doing! She is our Energizer Bunny and so full of life and smiles and laughter and happiness! We celebrated the day yesterday by going to the beach and swimming and she got to have lemonade sitting at the pool and she chose breakfast for dinner last night! What a day! Ha! Here is a picture we took at the beach of our healthy and happy girl! Here's to many, many, many more healthy and happy October 20th's!!!!

Beach Birthday!

Once again I had the BEST birthday ever! Everyone spoiled me rotten...especially Matt and the girls! We spent pretty much the entire weekend at the beach. It was perfect fall weather...80's and not a cloud in the sky all weekend. We were all so happy! Friday night we met Matt after work for swimming and dinner at the beach, we spent Saturday there with friends and the girls played and played and played on the beach and in the pool all day and then on Sunday we went all morning and again after naps! (Matt even took the girls for their naps that day and let me stay at the beach ALONE for almost 2 hours. It. Was. Heaven.). I'm such a lucky girl and so blessed by such amazing family and friends! Here is a great video from dinner Friday night. There was a band there singing and the girls were LOVING the music!!!!

Practicing up for Halloween....

So the girls definitely have had opinions as to what they want to be for Halloween this year. The problem has been, that every single day they want to be something different. Here is a list of some of the things they've told me that they want to be....a pig, a monkey, a banana, a boot (yes, a boot), a cowgirl, a lightbulb and a ladybug.  I figured that as soon as I went more than a couple of days with hearing the same thing...that's what they would be. Well, that never happened and I was already starting to see the shelves become empty of costumes so I made an executive decision and they are thrilled with it. Think that will still happen when they're 16?! Ha! The girls are going to be giraffes with tutus! The costumes are adorable and the girls love spinning around and around. That was the one part of dance class we never had an issue with! And I told them they can wear their ballet slippers so they're really happy about that too!
Last night Matt had tennis so I let the girls try on their costumes and they had so much fun that it ended up not being such a great idea! They didn't want to take them off wand wanted to sleep in them so that Matt could see them when he got home. Once again, Mommy overruled and we hung them up until Halloween! I did manage to get a couple of pictures and a video of them spinning around. I had told my mom I'd send her a video of them when they tried them on.  I hesitated putting the video on here....you'll see why. Although, I figured that this blog is supposed to represent real life and the end of this video is about as real as my life gets these days. (excuse my voice...getting over a cold). Enjoy....Matt and I have already decided we'll play this video at Reagan's wedding. You may want to turn up the volume, but you might be sorry that you did!

Halfway to 3!

Sunday was Reagan and Riley's half birthday....no, we didn't celebrate, but it just blows my mind that they are 2 1/2 already!!! Crazy! We've been so busy lately with school and playdates with friends and going to the beach and just life in general....I haven't had much time to update the blog! Here is just a snippet of what's new in their world!
The girls continue to just LOVE school so much. They ask me every morning if it's a school day! We are on Sabbatical from dance class. Yes, the first one was a huge success but I think we may have used up all of their excitement for it on the first class.  The typical dance class tended to go like this....everything would be fine for about 5 minutes and then Riley would look and see all of the moms staring through the window and then scream her head off for me the rest of the class until the teacher couldn't take it anymore and brought her out to sit on the bench with all of the moms.  Reagan could have cared less that I wasn't there or that Riley left, she also however, could have cared less about dancing. She pretty much spent the majority of the class staring at herself in the mirror and making kissy faces and funny faces at herself. While it was entertaining and hilarious to watch, it also made me question why I was paying money to have her check herself out in the mirror for an hour when we have lots of mirrors at home that work just fine. So....Matt and I decided we'll reevaluate in January and maybe try again. Or not. We'll see....soccer might be our thing instead. Ha!
We are in the midst of potty training. Some days I feel like they've really got it and we're seeing the light at the end of the diaper tunnel...other days (most days) they have absolutely no interest in attempting it. It's definitely a frustrating experience! I think it may be that I'm ready for them to be potty trained and they just aren't yet. Who knows?!?  A lot of my friends have suggested that one great way to insure that the girls won't have accidents is to just let them be naked whenever we're around the house. And it works. They love it but it's just such a weird thing to see the girls playing in their plastic princess high heels with no clothes on (see below...some day they'll kill me for putting that on here! At least Reagan has her pullup on!).  We'll get the hang of it one of these days...until then, just be prepared if you ring the doorbell!
In other news...the Browns are in first place so Matt and the girls are really excited about it (Grandpa David and Stephanie sent the girls new Browns shirts that they never want to take off)! We still go to the beach a few times a week (we've been getting a lot of rain lately though...) and the girls are just as fun as ever. Their favorite thing to do at the beach is make sandcastles with Daddy (anything with Daddy, really) and run and dive in the tidal pools...here's a video of Reagan doing it last weekend! All in all, LIFE IS GOOD!!!!!