Wes's Birthday & Halloween

This year Wes' celebrated his birthday a few days early.  We started our date time out by going mini golfing.  It was fun to get out and do something silly together.  

Then we met up with some of his friends for a dinner in down town MV.  Good food with good friends.  Here's a picture of the tipsy whisky cake I made him.  It was a Irish cream chocolate cake, with Irish cream butter cream, topped with Irish cream mascarpone and an Irish whisky ganache drizzle.  Sounds tipsy for sure, but those flavors were all very mild.  ;)

With candles at dinner.  Just celebrating first digits tonight.  

The next couple days were filled with school Halloween parties.  Here's Emeline enjoying hers.  

And here are Adele and Kate all ready for their school festivities.

As usual, Kate opted out of the group photo, but here's the preschool photo with Adele over on the left.

Fun Halloween songs!

On Halloween evening, we did our usual family birthday dinner for Wes, conisiting of our traditional butternut squash raviolis for an easy dinner before trick or treating.


And the family birthday dessert was chocolate cupcakes topped with buttercream and a bacon dark chocolate topper.

Yum!

Trying to take a birthday picture with daddy.

Then we rushed to get ready for the evening.  Adele got some more detailed make up for Yoda.

Here she is!  She kept calling herself 'Soyoda'.  "I'm Soyoda!" she'd say.  It was funny at preschool since everyone speak Spanish they kept thinking she was saying "soy Yoda", meaning "I am Yoda".

And here are the 3 all together.  We tried to convince Emeline to be princess Leia to go with the Star Wars theme Adele and Kate had picked out, but Leia's costume was not fancy enough for Emeline.

And with Papa the King.

Here they are with some neighborhood friends we went around with.

And by the end of the night, the girls were pretty tired.  We had a storm trooper down.

Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday Wes!

Girl Scout Father Daughter Dance

This year Emeline wanted to try out Girl Scouts, and one of the first events of the year was a Father Daughter Halloween dance.  Her costume this year was something of an ice princess, so she and her Papa went as a royal couple.  They were too cute.  Here are some pictures before the dance.

All ready to go with her sisters....

Showing off the whole costume...

The cute couple.

Webb Ranch

This year for our pumpkin patch family fun, we went to Webb ranch.  We opted out of the long trek out to the beach, due to traffic.  Webb ranch was nice, but proved to cost an arm and a leg to let the kids enjoy any of the activities.  So they each got to choose just a couple things to do.

Adele and Emeline chose the pony ride.

Kate chose the bounce house, and I think they all had a chance on a barrel ride, but unfortunately I didn't get pics of that.  But we did enjoy some fun in the hay bales.

Happy Fall!

Kids Love Soccer

Kate has been begging to play soccer for a while now.  Emeline started on a team the fall after she turned 4, but unfortunately the league we play in now doesn't have a team for 4 year olds.  So I decided to sign Kate up for a short session of Kidz Love Soccer which was held during Emeline's soccer practice.  It made for kind of a crazy soccer wednesdays, driving to Emeline's practice, then to Kate's, then back to Emeline's.  But Kate loved every minute of soccer, so it made it all worth it.

Here she is before her first practice, sporting the uniform Emeline wore when she was 4.

And here she is on a water break during her class.  Such joy!

Some photos from during the class...

And then she got her very own soccer shirt.  

And some more action shots.

She can't wait for soccer again next year!

Spina Farms Preschool Field Trip

This year we had lots of fun on our preschool's annual field trip to Spina Farms Pumpkin patch.  We missed last year's trip, so it was really neat to get to take both of our preschool girls, especially since this is Kate's last year of preschool.  Here are some photos!

Fun with the big pumpkin!

Snack time!

Enjoying the hay maze.

On the train ride!

Playing with pumpkins...

The giant chair.

On the hay ride...

Kate begged to do the barrel ride this year.  She and Adele had lots of fun.

Picking our her pumpkin...

Back at home, the girls and their pumpkins.

One of my favorite things about these annual traditions, is getting to look back at all the old pictures. The last time we went, Kate was 2 and Emeline was 4.5.  It was so cool to look back and see how Kate and Emeline looked when they were both 2 with pumpkins, and also so cool to see how much Emeline had grown.

This year, Adele is 2 (getting close to 3) and Kate is 4.  I got to look back at old photos and see how everyone has grown.  Here's Kate's picture from 2 years ago with her current picture.

And here's a sister comparison, Emeline at 4.5 and Kate at 4.

And here's a picture of all the girls when they were 2ish!

I love the nostalgia :)  And kids with pumpkins are too cute to resist!