Botanical Garden & Aquarium

While Grandma was in town we showed her one of our favorite spots at the Botanical Garden.

It's a spot that has oversized vegetables, ants, buzzing bees, cracked-open eggs...

... and dragons.  It's all within a castle-maze and the kids could stay there all day.

Apparently they're all ready for Christmas.  They've got their decorations and light displays up so we took advantage.

Then, just a short walk away is the aquarium so we skipped on over (literally skipped because it's Grahams favorite thing to do these days).

Such a fun day in the gardens with Grandma.  We love you and already miss you Grandma.  Looking forward to seeing you at Christmas. xoxoxoxo

Halloween Party

We had a small gathering with friends on Halloween.  Below is our spooktacular group.  A froggy (minus his head piece), t-rex (with enough head piece for the two of them), spiderman, pilot, & itty bitty skeleton!

The adults ate hot bubbling "Witches Brew".

The kids at "Mummy Dogs".

Then we devoured marshmallow/yogurt pretzel skeleton cupcakes and candy corn colored cupcakes

"Ghost Poop" (powder donut holes)

"Goblin Eyes" (meatballs in the background) & an assortment of poisons to drink.

Then, luckily Grandma Wade came into town earlier in the day so she was able to join us on our trick-or-treating.  The boys had a better understanding this year about Halloween and all things spooky.  Even days later they are asking to watch "spooky cartoons" and eat their "scary candy".

Carving Pumpkins

They had no reservations about sticking their tiny arms into those goopy pumpkins and pulling out all that glop.  Such boys!

Then out came the power tools and they were in heaven!

They were so proud of themselves with the turnout!

"Spunk or Beat" (Trunk or Treat)

This mommy was super busy with decorating the gym, arranging the food assignments, creating the flyers, and serving the food to fully enjoy the ward activity, but I did get to sneak away for a bit to snap a few shots of my little froggy and buddy (from dinosaur train). Each holiday gets more fun as the kids get older. Our sweet little Graham kept saying, "spunk or beat" and it just made me giggle inside.

The week of Halloween we still had no costumes in hand so we booked it on down to the nearest "Spirit Halloween" store and picked from their overpicked selections.  Graham chose this sweet little (literally too small) get-up and Miles of course chose Buddy the T-Rex from Dinosaur Train.

Checking out each other's candy loot...

Sneaking some candy...

All in all it was a successful evening and everyone enjoyed themselves.  And, no one got "beat" for not "spunking".  :)

Balloon Fiesta Frenzy

The frenzy of the balloon festival came and went.  People from all over the world flock to New Mexico for this fun event.  We couldn't miss it, especially with two balloon loving freaks in our home.

It was such a beautiful morning-- we ate delicious green chile (side note-- did you know NM has their own spelling for "chile" than the rest of the nation, who spell it "chili"-- it's true!) breakfast burritos, took in the brightly colored and fun shaped high flying balloons and walked around taking in all of the festivities.  This was one of my boys' favorite balloons-- spider-pig!