About a week before Halloween, I was feeling a little sad. Normally Halloween is one of the biggest holidays of the year at our house, but due to constant sickness between Josh and Brooke throughout the month of October and me being 8 months pregnant, there just wasn’t much Halloween excitement here.

Luckily the last week of October made up for it, and we actually had a really good Halloween this year. We may not have done as much as we normally would do, but I also don’t feel like we really missed out on anything either.

We started off with a Halloween party with my family. Unfortunately Josh was still sick, so he missed this one, but Brooke and I had a blast. The kids came all dressed in their costumes, my Mom cooked her amazing Chili, and we let the kids decorate pumpkins with stickers, markers and pipe cleaner.

* I love that Tinkerbell is bigger then the Pirates!

Next was Brooke’s Halloween Carnival at her school. Have I said before how much I love her preschool, because I do! They had all sorts of cute little games and activities set up for the kids, where they could win either prizes or candy. They had doughnuts and rootbeer for the whole family. Brooke came home with a huge bag of goodies that she carried around for days.

Then, we had trick-or-treating at Josh’s office. I love that he works for a company that is so family oriented.

Finally, Halloween arrived and she had her first actual door-to-door trick-or-treating adventure. Josh only took her to maybe fifteen houses, but she is addicted. The only way we could get her to come home was by promising to take her trick-or-treating to her grandparents!

The fun is now over, but she is constantly carrying her candy around trying to share it with everyone, not really eating any of it herself (I am sure this will change next year). Every now and then she brings me her pumpkin bucket and says “Trick-or-treat” hoping I just might put some candy in there!

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Yes, I am way behind on my blogging. It’s been a crazy two weeks around here, between Christmas, Josh’s birthday, New Years, and then Rain (the company Josh works for) being the amazing company they are, gave all the employees a week and a half off for the Holidays. So we’ve had a lot of family time, activities, we almost have the basement framed (thank you to everyone that has helped). So as you can see, life has been a little crazy!

Although with all of that craziness, I didn’t want to forget Christmas, since our blog is kind of acting as a family journal. When Brooke looks at this 15 years from now, I want her to see just how spoiled and loved she was.

This picture was taken at the Buhler Christmas party. We were lucky enough to have a visit from Santa. Josh took Brooklynn up to see Santa, but as you can see she was not a huge fan. Since Josh and Santa are very good friends, almost like father and son, Josh sat on Santa’s lap, trying to make it easier for Brooke. It did not help. Although in the middle of cries and pleas to get away from Santa she did say “thank you” after he gave her a gift. I thought it was sweet.

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My family had our traditional “Progressive Dinner”, although this year because of a football game, it was just dinner. All my family came to our house for dinner, which was a lot of fun. My dad and Scott hung out in the family room watching the game, while rest of us played UNO in the kitchen. We setup the playpen for the twins. Brooke was very interested in her two cousins sleeping in the kitchen. I can’t wait for another year or so, when they can finally really play together.

Christmas with Josh’s family was spread out over two nights. Due to schedule conflicts we did our gift exchange Sunday before Christmas and then those who were available got together again on Christmas Eve. This picture is of Josh and all his siblings and their stockings. Josh’s mom made these when the kids were just young and have been an important part of their Christmases ever since. As a final gift, she gave all her children their stockings to keep. This was very shocking and exciting for everyone. Now I need to learn how to make them, so that Brooke and I can have matching stockings with Josh.

This picture is of our family and our Christmas pajamas. This is a tradition Josh and I have done since the first year we were married.

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We attempted to read Brooke the story of the birth of Christ. Unfortunately she was a little wound up and I don’t think she understood any of it, maybe next year!

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Christmas morning, it took us about a half hour to drag Brooke out of bed (she is not a morning person.) When we finally got her up, she just looked around amazed.

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Brooklynn’s favorite gift was her kitchen. It has brought hours of entertainment for her and hours of peace and quiet for us.

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One of her other favorite gifts was a harmonica. She is amazingly pretty good at playing it.

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After opening presents at our house, we joined my family at my parents house for a Christmas brunch. This is a picture of cute little Madi after grandma put a bow on her head.

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Here is Josh with our totally awesome movie mugs. I am so excited about this gift, because now I can get a drink at the movies for only a $1, I can afford that.

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Here is Josh attempting to hold Madi. It’s amazing he ever survived Brooke being a baby.

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Here is Brooke in her new outfit for Christmas. This was the best picture I could get!

Well I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

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