Fall Festivities

Ripe with crisp mornings, gorgeous color and memories for the making, Fall is surely my favorite season. Sandwiched in between the state Fair and Halloween, October has been packed with plenty of fun family festivals, beautiful days and wayyy too much sugar. It's our first year celebrating Halloween in Apex and on top of a few community and church events we attended, we hit the jackpot trick or treating in our neighborhood. The boys are really blessed to be living in such a safe, family friendly hood where many of the houses went all out decorating. For me, I'll call it a day with my pretty purple mum and save the real decorating for Christmas. :-)

Here's a few pics from our church's annual "Reformation Day" party, Chris' work sponsored family Fall Festival and a local trunk or treat. The boy's were swimming in candy even before the 31st! What can I say, we do it up...

Our red power ranger, transformer and little monkey had a blast walking around with friends on Halloween night after pre-gaming the night with a pizza party in our shared cul-de-sac.

Seriously, this year shall go down as "Candy-geddon"! So.much.candy. I have to note here that 2017 was our first year to actually carve pumpkins with the boys. In the past we've decorated them with sticker faces and other kid friendly craft kids(much to mom's delight!), but this year the boys were super excited to carve their own jack-o-lanterns. Where reality met the road, they were excellent at scooping out the insides, and left daddy to do the rest. Good job honey!

On the downside, having kiddos with allergies and asthma is no fun when the seasons change, especially in a state that can't quite make up it's mind about what season it is! It's been a rough patch dealing with chronic coughs, colds and scary asthma flare ups. In any case, I'll choose to be grateful in this new month of November for the gift of modern medicine and again, all the joys awaiting us still this Fall-Asher's second birthday and the arrival of baby girl just to name a few!

Fourth fun

We had a great time celebrating the fourth of July in downtown Raleigh this year. Fayetteville street was lined with oodles of fair food, smokey barbecue, live music and all kinds of red white and blue hulabaloo. 

After walking around in the crowd we stopped for some patriotic fun in front of the Capital building. The boys signed a copy of the Declaration of Independence with a real feather pen(turns out it's a bit harder than one would think and a lot messier!) and Bennett got to "pie a redcoat."

Next we beat the heat with a trip through the NC museum of history. The story of our state and country is a rich but heavy one, and I look forward to taking our boys back when they're older and can bear the weight of it on stronger, more mature shoulders. Until then, Evan is very proud to know that the the state vegetable of North Carolina is the sweet potato(really, he won a pencil to prove it!).

The highlight of our Raleigh afternoon was of course, the wet and wild water zone. This activity was made even cooler by A)endless bottles of dawn soap and B)the fact that we were not prepared with bathing suits and so the boys got to get wet in their regular shorts, a childhood right of passage if you ask me.

SO much fun!

Later that night we made our traditional ice cream flag cake and had a hodge podge of an on the fly dinner that included of Mexican leftovers, Chinese food and local deli meats. Chris and I agreed that this was indeed a very American dinner, melting pot style. :-) No fireworks this year due to babies and bedtime, but we look forward to them in the future-perhaps even next year. Nonetheless, we are so proud and thankful every day for the blood bought freedoms we enjoy as Americans.

Happy Independence Day!!!

A very merry Christmas

This Christmas was especially special as it was Asher's very first. 

December 25th has come and gone in a flurry this year, and was jam packed full of family fun, summer sun and good deal of cough medicine.

First up: pre-Chrismas/wintery fun! Before the unseasonably warm weather flew through, the four-ahem FIVE- of us enjoyed a cool ride on the Wilson train of lights followed by a Polar Express themed night of fun for the boys. Also making Scott family headlines that weekend was dinner with "Santa Cow" at Chic-fil-a.

Oh and did I mention we went to see Disney on Ice with our local homeschool group? It was magical, and so so much fun! I can't wait to go back next year.

Grandma arrived the week of Christmas and loved getting some extra quality time with her. With shopping and presents mostly wrapped up and not much on the agenda, it was a great week to slow down, relax and enjoy extra snuggles with all the boys.

Presenting the Grinch draw off-of course Chris won "the grinchiest."

We also took our annual drive around town to look at Christmas lights. On strike against the warm weather, we dressed up the boys in their fleece pajamas and bought hot chocolate a la starbucks-all to the tune of Charlie Brown's Christmas music. We saw a good number of great houses and took many a mental note for our own bright lights and outside decorations next year. 

And now for the big event... On Christmas Eve we opened gifts with Grandma and Grandpa Tim. Star wars, stuffys and legos oh my! So many gifts! I pray our boys grow up to know how lucky and loved they are.

We did our own family Christmas the next morning. Delicious cinnamon rolls from a friend and a reading from our Jesus Storybook bible made for a perfect prelude to presents.

 

Our big gifts to the boys this year were Kindle Fires. Consider Pandora's box open.

Excuse the underoos-did I mention is was near 80 degrees?

Unfortunately Chris was pretty under the weather, but still managed to eat a piece of the traditional birthday cake for Jesus-this year decorated with the little people nativity scene.

That afternoon we headed to Gigi and Poppy's house and were as always thoroughly blessed-ahem spoiled- with gifts! My parent's have always done Christmas big and I'm sure I will always feel like a kid on Christmas day in their home. :-) The boys especially loved their star wars gear and first remote control cars. As much as they've been playing with them these past few days I'm amazed they are still in one piece! Once the rain settles down a bit we can't wait to get outside with them more.

Finally the day after Christmas we enjoyed a big lunch at Cracker Barrel with Chris' extended family. And I'm happy to say that daddy is feeling much better with the help of some antibiotics and other rx meds-let's pray that's the last of the season's sickness around here!

Asher meets cousin Faith for the first time-thanks for the picture Elissa!

I don't have enough words and certainly haven't posted all the pictures to do it justice, but there it is-another great Christmas for the books. Now to ring in the happy New Year. :-)

Wilson Christmas Parade

This past weekend we brought our new family of five out to see one of our small town favorites-the annual Wilson Christmas parade. It was a beautiful, crisp morning and the perfect outing for us, complete with with a Best-N-Burger on top. 

I spy an Evan!

 One day they will both look at the camera at the same time!

Asher was a doll and slept through the whole thing, drum line, police sirens and all.

 And with that, let the season's festivities begin!

Boo-tacular fun!

It's Halloween week, and while we don't necessarily celebrate the "spooky" side of this holiday, you just can't deny the pumpkin bucket full of sugary, Fall fun it brings.

In spite of our lingering sicknesses, we started off the week with our traditional Halloween playdate with my mom's group. It's amazing to see how this group picture changes every year! Yoda and the storm trooper had a ton of fun with their friends and came home with rosy and crisp, icing encrusted faces and pockets full of starburst.

I made the best of my efforts getting them dressed to take their individual costume pics. Star Wars for the win this year! Without a doubt the light sabers bring it home.

This face?!!! Oh my Bennett...

That's more like it...

In school news we've done quite a few Halloween/Fall inspired crafts. I found this awesome little project on the skeletal system from "teachers pay teachers" for free and it fit perfectly into the start of our human body study. Not to mention what goes better with Halloween than skeletons? We've also discovered the world of color by number, which at this point may or may not be a Pandoras box of wasted computer paper. Note to self-just say no!

Speaking of just saying no, I couldn't resist these inspired donuts a la Dunkin this morning...yet another perk of homeschooling to share a special breakfast with my big boy over handwriting and phonics work.

 Below is a picture straight from Evan's own artistic juices-he colored this 100% unassisted during his "quiet time" and was so proud to show it off. This is his "jackolantern" face. Hehe.

And the fun's not over yet. We have many tricks and treats(okay more treats) planned for the weekend...have a safe and happy Halloween friends!

Looking back at Christmas, and forward to the new year

Are you there blog? It's me, your writer!

Ok so I'm fully aware that I have fallen off of this whole blog wheel. But, Lord willing we have a lot of excited things slated for 2015, and I hope to jump back on the blog train to share them all. As our seasons change, I expect the taste of this blog will grow with us. Namely, one of the most exciting things I'm looking forward to in 2015 is starting Kindergarten with Evan-at home! The sail is set, adventures in HOMESCHOOLING await. If only capital letters could contain my excitement...can I get an exclamation point?! There you have it, one not so small change that will inevitably take over this blog should I be faithful to chronicle our journey-and I plan to. :-)

But before we jump into the new year, I just couldn't skip Christmas!

Without further adieu, I present the parade of Christmas 2014...

We celebrated this Christmas over several different family gatherings, and so it went on and on and on! Man, January has been a let down... :-) First we enjoyed time with Chris' family in Raleigh and then with us here in Wilson. It was a special treat to share some extended time with Grandma and Aunt Paige. We spent Christmas Eve in Raleigh with them opening presents, eating at Panera and outrunning power outages before a special church service.

On Christmas day it was just the four of us. It was the perfect cozy day, starting with cinnamon rolls and a Christmas story and ending with  a special happy birthday Jesus dinner and cake, followed by a nighttime pajama ride to check out Christmas lights.

 

My parents spent the week of Christmas in Florida this year, so we had our Christmas on New Years. As always we had a great time and are still enjoying our presents. I got a much needed new coat, which was absolutely perfect because, to top off our holiday celebrations, Chris' sweet aunt and uncle invited us up to Boone the following weekend for a wonderful mountain getaway.

Our Christmas on New Years in Goldsberry with Gigi and Poppy...

 

Yes, this is me hugging my new set of lamps-it's amazing how much you appreciate home decor as you get older! We hope to totally makeover our master bedroom this year, and Christmas brought us two big steps closer with a fabric headboard from Chris' mom and these beautiful lamps from Gigi.

Boone bound...

And while this is random, I couldn't help but sprinkle it in-Evan's preschool Christmas program was just too adorable not to post!