Halloween Birthday Party

Cora turned 7 yesterday and we had her much anticipated Halloween birthday party.

It turned out so fun!

We played games, had pizza & cake, opened presents, bobbed for apples & roasted marshmallows.

Fortunately it stayed warm enabling us to have the whole party outside. Unfortunately no one got to see my cute set up on the table. However, I'd rather not have 16 first grade girls running amok in my house with chocolate cake!

Party this way!

Bean Bag Toss Babes

Naomi getting mummified.

The final product!

Happy Birthday Cora!

The girls loved bobbing for apples. Most of them figured out how to grab the apples by the stems. Cora had a rough time since she has no front teeth!

The best part of the party: Impromptu Dance Party!

S'mores!

We had a great night last Friday roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.

Not all these pics turned out great, but they show what a good time we had.

Thanks Hendricksons for letting us borrow your fire pit!

Notre Dame Fly Over

Kevin's squadron did the flyover at a Notre Dame game a few weeks ago.

It was the chance of a lifetime, and Kevin had the time of his life!

The night before the game the pilots had the chance to tour parts of the campus and attend the pep rally.

On game day six pilots set off to fly the jets and Kevin and one other pilot headed to the field to work as the ground crew. The ground crew calls the planes in, trying to make sure they flyover right at the end of The National Anthem. Pretty sure that is my dumbed down explanation of what they do.
After the flyover the pilots were able to watch the game from the field.

Kevin is the one who didn't get the "blue shirt" memo.

When he emailed me this pic the caption was "I thought you'd enjoy this picture (maybe)."

He's always had a weakness for cheerleaders!

After the game they walked around the different tail gate parties and ended up hanging out with the Irish Leprechaun and his family. Kev thought they were pretty cool and had good time chillin' and watching more football.

God Bless the USA

and their Air Force

for giving our family such amazing opportunities and experiences.

Boo!

Each year when October hits I feel as if a little ghost pops around the corner and says,

"Boo! It's here!"

And what is it that's here you might ask?

Every major event in a mother's life that causes her to work her tail off in the hopes that all attending have the most wonderful experience they can possibly imagine for each of these special days.

Including: 6 Birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and a Wedding Anniversary.

Starting off our marathon of celebration is Cora.

She's turning 7 this year and is having a Halloween party. These are the cute invites we made for her party.

As crazy as this time of year gets, I love it! There's so much excitement and so many reasons to think about each person in my family and what will make them happy.

However, to save my sanity we only do parties every other year. Now I'm re-thinking whether we should all be having parties on the same year!

Red River Rivalry

The Red River Rivalry between OU & Texas is the biggest rivalry in college football and has been played for 105 years. Kevin had tickets this year and we took the whole family.

(Just so you don't think we are pathetic, it should be noted that Kevin bought extra tickets with the intent of selling them. When they wouldn't sale at the price we wanted we decided to use them instead)

This really is quite the event. The game is played at the Cotton Bowl stadium in Dallas, TX. It is held on the grounds of the Texas State Fair. Your ticket to the game is also your ticket to the fair. So fun!

You can barely see it in this picture, but the stadium is split at the 50 yd line (arrow) with OU fans (red) on one side of the stadium, and Texas fans (orange) on the other.

We rode the train into the city, and took a bus to the stadium. Played at the fair, went to the game and played at the fair some more. Despite the obvious challenges that come with dragging four kids around in the heat, trying to do what everyone wants to do, and sitting through 4 quarters of a very loud football game where no one sits, execpt during time outs, we had a great time.

Maggie is hitting her parental defiance phase and refused to wear on OU shirt. She even goes as far as claiming to be a Texas Longhorns fan. We're going with it.

Another oddity of the OU experience is standing in a crowd of hundreds of people and having one person yell "Boomer," and those hundreds of people answer back with "Sooner!"

On a smaller scale, this is something that happens at our house quite frequently. This was Marlee's first OU experience and she was in the spirit of it all. While walking through a crowd a the fair, she was on Kevin's shoulders and yelled out "Boomer!" as loud as she could. She was thrilled when the crowd answered back, "Sooner!"

In the end Oklahoma won 28 - 20.

Go OU!

Texas State Fair

We had a great time at the Texas State Fair. Ignoring the fact that there were so many people walking around it was like trying to get somewhere while everyone is waiting in line. Once we got to where we were going it was a blast!

Happy Helpers Farm.

The kids loved this little farm, where they got to walk through and be the farmers.

I love this pic of Cooper & Cora.


Little Farmer

Tractor Pull!

The Barnyard

This was the best petting Zoo I have ever been to!

Here's a list of some of the animals they had: Giraffe, Zebras, Yaks, Llamas, Cows, All kinds of Goats, Kangaroos, Camels, and the list goes on.

Kevin and I could barely keep track of the kids they were so excited to see, pet, and feed so many awesome animals.

Marlee was especially in her element. I couldn't even get a picture of her because she couldn't stand still for more then 10 seconds, literally.

Cora & Cooper petting the goats.

Marlee feeding a baby Llama

This was the highlight of the visit.

We watched these tiny baby piglets with their enormous mama for quite awhile.

Piglets are one of the cutest baby animals.

Yet, one day they will all look like this!

Here piggy, piggy!

Speaking of pigs. One of the funnest things we did was watch the pig races.

The little piglets race around a track into a cage that has a platter in it with one Oreo, and some crumbs for the losers. It was hilarious.

Unfortunately I couldn't get a good pic and this video didn't turn out too great either.

But we all loved it!

Suey!!!!