birthday party at the farm!

Today, despite the fact that we've had rain for three days straight and whipping winds...we went to a farm for a birthday party!  The kids had a great time but it was VERY muddy and wet and messy.  The car warranted a full detailing after the fact but we had fun!  Jackson's classmate Aimee, who he has been with since he was 8 weeks old, turned 5 so we headed out to this local horse farm that hosts b-day parties on the side and it was quite fun.  Jack enjoyed a pony ride, corn maze, hay ride, lunch, and running around with his class mates in and out of the various horse stables and they also had rabbits, goats, chickens, and cows!  Sarabeth was also along for the ride, she was not too keen on any of the animals other than from afar.  When I was holding her and came towards the pony to pet him, I asked if she wanted to pet the pony and she immediately said "no no no"....maybe next year!!

Tonight Jon and I are going to a Halloween party...pictures tomorrow of our costumes!

p.s.

It's NOT SB's first halloween...but her shirt says it is, haha!  Jon went and found this for her at the store and was so proud at how cute it is, after I pointed out how cute she was in it, but that is not in fact her first halloween...we decided just to keep it...just wanted everyone to know that I have not been so busy to have over-looked THAT detail!!

week and weekend in review

I feel like I keep saying this, but it has been another busy week and weekend AND it turned out to be a bit of an unanticipated expensive last week as well!  We've known for a while now we were on borrowed time with Jon's car.  We owned it outright but he had nearly 150k miles on it (he drives so much for work it is insane) and it was starting to act up last week so rather than push our luck and warrant a huge repair and less trade in value, we did one quick internet search, I found a black Tahoe which was exactly what Jon has always wanted, with only 38k miles on it and he drove down, it was at a Honda dealership and had been traded in two days before and just posted and voila, he got the car and at a deal as they had mis-posted and mis-priced it as the bottom of the line stock model with cloth seats, etc....he got there to find the middle of the line car with leather and other nice extra features!  He needs a safe, reliable car as he drives a lot of highway miles so that worked out well.  Our refrigerator also decided to half die last week so we also had to deal with that.  The seal on the door decided not to want to stay shut so this weekend, we went refrigerator shopping and we had been kicking around buying a new washer and dryer too and figured we would roll it all into one so the new appliances arrive tomorrow, phew.  I've got some serious extra work to do in the coming month now but I'm thankful my office is as busy as it is!!  We got a nice new fridge with the bottom french door freezer in stainless and a set of red new steam washer and dryer set from samsung.  We've never actually bought any appliances before, we've always used the bottom grade junk that came with the house so this is a real treat!!!  Ann does 99% of the laundry these days so she feels like it is Christmas for her too with all of this stuff coming tomorrow!!

Besides buying appliances, we also went to soccer, a double birthday party, Sams, Lowe's and the Pumpkin Patch this weekend!  Saturday was soccer and the parties, Sunday was our home work day with the first day of cooler fall temps with highs in the upper 70's.  AMAZING weather and we will have this for the next 6 months, phew.  That summer heat will not be back until May and cooler temperate weather abounds now.  We completely cleaned out and reorganized the garage, we stripped the front beds with the raggedy looking summer flowers and planted mums, we added to our Halloween decorations and put our pumpkins out and just enjoyed being outside and not having to be in the pool to tolerate it.  It was a luxury to sit on the patio for a bit Sunday morning and read the paper and drink coffee...I mean chase my kids...and enjoy the breeze and not sweat!

Here are some pictures from the trip to the pumpkin patch and also to the park tonight. 

Not So Scary Halloween Party

Here are some pictures from our Disney Weekend to celebrate Halloween!  We have never been to the Not So Scary Halloween Party as it is an extra expense on top of a regular admission, or in our case on top of our pass but it was really fun and worth it.  We got to trick or treat all over the Magic Kingdom, they had large glowing Halloween pumpkin lanterns lit up all over the park which denoted a trick or treat stop.  They also had trick or treat trails set up in places you normally cannot go in the park with lots of candy stops throughout the trail.  When we were finished trick or treating they had a special Halloween Parade which started with silence and then out of nowhere, a real headless horseman riding a horse throughout the parade route throught the park, it was really cool and definitely got us in the Halloween spirit for the coming weeks!!

Jackson and Sarabeth went as Mickey and Minnie this year and it was really funny because I had forgotten, like two years ago I got this CUTE Mickey costume at the consignment shop of all places and it was of course too big but so cute, I had to buy it for him and I saved it.  This year, before I got our bins out of storage for Halloween, having totally forgotten about hte MIckey costume that of course fits perfectly this year, I ordered the kids their costumes, Jackson wanted to be a police man ("just like papa") and for Sarabeth I chose a cute Minnie costume.  Then we were going throug the bins and voila, the Mickey costume that I had forgotten about re-surfaced so we decided for Disney's Halloween party he would be Mickey and for trick or treat at home, he will be the police man!  So, we had Minnie and Mickey trick or treating this weekend, here are some pictures.

soccer, birthday parties, football, hot

Soccer, birthday parties, football and hot, that sums up our weekend in ONE sentence!!!

Soccer games start at 10 on Saturdays, that sounds nice, but really it is NOT because while I have been reading about how COLD it is up north, it is still nearly 90 here and humid, ugh.  SO HOT for soccer from 10-11.  The good news is Jack really likes it and he is turning out to be one of the better ones on the team and even scored the first goal for his team on Saturday!  After soccer we had a birthday party that we stopped in for the second half because we had been at soccer.  We went home for what I surely thought would be nap time for us all after that but wrong, Sarabeth despite the fact that she takes  3 hour naps for Ann each day, decided to sleep only 20 minutes, I had laid down for like 5 minutes when she was up for the rest of the day.  Last night we had three tvs going in our family room (Jon is a little nuts) and a bunch of friends over to watch the Ohio State, Miami Florida and Florida State games!  It was fun but we were up a bit late last night so we did not venture out today other than to take a walk around the neighborhood and play in the backyard  despite the nasty humidity.

Tomorrow we start another busy week but it is a 4 day week becasue Friday after my 9am real estate closing at the office, we are heading out to take the kids to a special treat, Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party.  We have special passes that we purchased to trick or treat around Magic Kingdom Friday night.  We got a nice hotel and it should be a nice weekend.  It is supposed to cool off a bit too, highs in the LOW 80's they are saying!!  They only sell a certain number of tickets for this Halloween event so the park won't be over crowded and you get all sorts of special treats and a special Halloween parade.  We've heard about this from others and heard it is worth the splurge and Jackson is REALLY into Halloween and really anything to do with a holiday this year so we decided to try it out. They also do a Christmas event similar to this but we decided we thought he would like trick or treating around Magic Kingdom more so decided to try it this year.   You will see a sneak peek of their costumes for the Disney Halloween party, we decided to try things on today!! Hope everyone has a good and productive week ahead!!

It's October..and boy am I glad September is OVER

Phew, It's October, I'm so glad becasue September was a MEAN month down here with the office move and the final hurrah of temps surging past 90 EVERY SINGLE DAY.  October is still warm, but with the days growing shorter, the pool is cooling off and the humidity is cutting out and the fall and winter days which are GLORIOUS here are a coming.  We are still battling some IT issues in the office, I still hate my printer, I think it is going bye bye, back to XEROX and they are sending a new replacement, basically I got a lemon.  Other than that though, we are settled, functioning and very busy!  All good things after I set my life on the line (or so it feels) and spent a lot of my company profits to expand.  Thankfully, I had the BEST month ever collection wise in my entire time as an attorney!  Somehow things always work out like that for me, the more I put on my plate, the more I am able to accomplish whereas when I have lots of time, I seem to just putz around and be less productive...crazy.

Hopefully I will return soon with some new pictures of the kids, we've been busy with soccer, enjoying the last few weeks of our "summer" 6 month membership at The Moorings, and finally enjoying the beach again now that it is not so beastly hot!!