Too Fast

Boy, time keeps getting past me. We've had an eventful month, but as a quick update, we had a lovely Thanksgiving, we bought a new house, and Hudson has learned to crawl. (I'm seriously shocked by this last thing, since at 8 months, he is by far our earliest crawler!)

Here's a little proof. More details on the house to come…

Caring for the Cranes

I had the wonderful opportunity to serve on a community committee to help give aid to a family who we have become friends with over the past couple of years. Two of their 3 children have terminal illnesses. And they are some of the funnest, sweetest and wonderful people. You can read more about their story at www.caringforthecranes.com. 

We held a large fundraising event yesterday. We worked to organize a BBQ dinner, a carnival, concessions, and a silent auction. I'm not going to lie, it was a lot of work. We spent just 6 short weeks preparing for the event. But it was so worth every minute.

Getting set up the night before. I got to work with some seriously amazing people.

I worked at the front table at the event, giving people their will call BBQ tickets, selling carnival tickets, bracelets, T-shirts, and taking donations. It was non-stop busy from 3pm until about 6, when it finally slowed down. We ended the event at 7 pm. I loved talking to everyone who came!

Dickey's BBQ here in Kyle donated all the food for the BBQ plates. We sold over 500 plates.

My kids had a total blast at the carnival. I honestly didn't get to see it in action- but it looked like fun from afar! And can you believe that everything at the carnival was donated!?!

This is Emmalee Crane, who is currently battling cancer. She loves horses, and we were super excited to have the Little Horses of America come to the event.

Local TV station came out to the event to interview the family and publicize their story. We are still getting donations online, thanks to them.

This was our total after the fundraiser. We still have money trickling in, which will not only help the family with their medical bills, but allow the mom, Lisa to quit her job and stay home with her beautiful children. I know you can't buy time, but I think we just did a little.

This was Steven and Lisa Crane getting the total. Pure awesomeness.

There were so many amazing things that happened to us while working on this project. So many people who were SO generous, and so many people who reached out to us to find ways to help. There was always someone crying at our meetings while telling everyone about these amazing experiences (and a lot of times it was all of us).

At our very first "Caring for the Cranes" committee meeting, our chairperson, Michelle, said that not only would we bless this family with our service, but we would feel blessed to have been apart of it. I didn't realize how profoundly true her words would be. I absolutely felt blessed to have been apart of it. 

Halloween Festivities

We had a successful Halloween this year. We really don't do much, other than the standard trick-or-treating, church trunk-or-treating and our Halloween cookie painting party. But now that my kids are getting bigger, we've enjoyed a couple of years of pumpkin carving. It's always a little tricky here in Texas, because it's usually very warm at Halloween, so we can't carve our pumpkins too early. (We learned that the hard way.) This year we timed it pretty well. 

I let all the big boys pick out their own pumpkins this year. It wasn't until after the fact that I realized that Dustin was out of town till just a couple of days before Halloween, so I was going to have to supervise this project on my own. But it worked out well. The boys were awesome about cleaning out the insides of their pumpkins (once I had scraped them down really well inside) and they helped pick out the designs. Carson and Jensen helped transfer the designs and did some of the carving. They turned out great!

 Mason loved his Mickey Mouse pumpkin. (I did too- can we say easy-peasy?)

Jensen has been learning about bats at school recently, so his choice was very obvious.

 Carson actually carved his all on his own! (I just cleaned it up a little for him.) 

 I didn't actually get a picture of the boys on Halloween, so I made sure Dustin took one of us when we did our Trunk-or-Treat the next night. Carson and Jensen loved wearing their ninja costumes again, and Mason and Hudson were SO CUTE in the lion costumes that I made for Carson and Jensen 5 years ago (was it really that long ago?) Plus, it was awesome not to have to "figure out" or make new costumes for everyone this year. It was just what this mama needed. :)

Twin Day

For Red Ribbon Week the school has different themed days. Today was twin day. I kinda hate when they have twin day, because it's a pain sometimes to coordinate with other kids, and I'm always afraid of excluding someone. But, so far, it's been fine. 

Carson and his best friend wore "Caring for the Cranes" shirts (along with a ton of other kids they knew!) That worked out perfectly. (These two boys crack me up- they just love being friends.)

Jensen's was a little harder for me, because I don't actually know any of the other parents in his kindergarden class. So I made a few of these silly little shirts, packaged them in a bag with a note to their parents explaining what it was and left my email address. (Then I hoped that no one was going to think I was a big weirdo.) But pleasantly, all 3 of the other boys Jensen wanted to be "twins" with wore their shirts! I even had several of the moms email me, excited to have been included. In case you're wondering, the shirts have a corn stalk + a dog. His teacher is Ms. Corn and she calls her kids her "corn dogs."

 And this is a picture of Jensen's class pet, a hedge hog named Chester. Mason loves when we occasionally walk Jensen to class because then we get to see Chester. Today we could actually see his face!

Baby Trick

Hudson has been cracking me up with this little lip popping trick. I wanted to get a video of him doing it before he stopped!

Cookie Painting Party

One of my very favorite traditions in October in our Annual Halloween Cookie Painting Party. Even though it's a good deal of work for me, my kids love it, my friends look forward to it, and I enjoy the fun morning of decorating (and eating) yummy sugar cookies. This year we just had Mason's little friends and moms come. 

 Seriously, how cute is this little guy's hat? He had an adorable apron that went with it, but much to his mother's displeasure, he refused to wear it and chose to wear the "paint" instead.

 And I gotta thank my friend Michelle for taking the pictures of us. I go to all the work of making cookies, frosting paint, snacks, cleaning my house, etc, and then I never remember to take pictures!

And I'll say that this group of friends were the cleanest kids we've ever had! Normally there are crushed up cookies and drops of paint all over my kitchen floor by the time we're done, but there was hardly a mess when we were finished. Bonus for me!

Fall Festival

 Like I said before, in Kindergarten, they are constantly having events and special days. This past Friday was the annual Fall Festival. This happened to be one of the few activities that I did with Carson when he was in Kinder. The kids get to have an hour of playing, doing experiments, and eating treats. I helped with Jensen's class's table where they made "Monster Goo" out of cornstarch and green water. The kids got a big kick out of mixing that mess with their fingers and watching it go from liquid to solid to liquid again.

I think Jensen's favorite activity was bowling. He stood in the long line for that one a couple of times. This is Jensen and his cute friend Ash (or Sebastian) standing in line. (Ash is one of the Crane kids- it always cracks me up to see him standing next to Jensen. Can you guess who is the older of the two?)

Jensen guessed how big around that pumpkin was and totally nailed it! He was excited to put his string up on the board under "Just Right."

These are a couple of other kids in Jensen's class. The little girl actually gets babysat by her grandparents who happen to live 3 houses down from us. They are the sweetest neighbors, and lately the boys have had fun playing with Olivia.

I took Mason and Hudson with me when we went to the Fall Festival. Mason was so good about letting the big kids do their stuff, but he was excited about going on the hay ride (which didn't have any hay.) He also got to do a cookie walk with Jensen and left with plenty of chocolate smeared on his cute little face.

And this little cutie was so good for me! I'll admit, I wasn't the biggest helper at the class table, but we had more than our fair share of parents, so I don't think anyone cared. 

And we have been loving our cooling weather! It's kinda refreshing to wear a jacket.