It's the most wonderful time of the year!

There are several reasons why I love the Christmas Holiday season. I love the fact that it starts to get cold, and for some there's snow. I love decorating the Christmas Tree and putting up lights on the house. I love shopping for presents, and then I love to wrap them. Oh, and the number one reason why I love this time of year? I can use the phrase, "Remember: Santa is watching!"

Just yesterday I was being hasseled by William because he didn't want to put his dirty clothes in the dirty clothes bin. Instead of making him do it, I simply said, "That's fine if you don't want to, but remember: Santa is watching," and then went back to what I was doing. It's glorious how well this works! With a second to contemplate what that meant, William rushed to put his dirty clothes where they belonged. He just wasn't willing to risk Santa seeing him be disobedient.

If only this worked year-round...but it doesn't. You just can't pull this in May! "Do your chores or in seven months you might not get all the presents you want!" Nope-it's really only good for that time between Thanksgiving all the way up to Christmas Eve. The rest of the year, I actually have to use real parenting skills. So, for that month, it's the greatest "threat" there is!

So remember: Do your chores, clean your room, eat your vegetables...cause Santa's watching!

Photo Shoot!

The Children's Place (My favorite store in the whole wide world!!) starts their Thanksgiving sale early on Wednesday, so I took the kids in to pick out rugby sweaters for the cousins for Christmas. Well, we walked out with a lot more sweaters than we planned on! Ok, so it was 80 degrees outside today, not exactly sweater weather, but we just couldn't pass these up with the matching accessories! We decided it was time for a PHOTO SHOOT!!

This is obviously William doing his best impression of Derek Zoolander's "blue steel" move.

Natalie is such a ham! I have no idea where she gets that from...

Oh, yeah...did I mention that the hats in the older girl section fit my head? Well, they do. So, I got in on the rugby action. Natalie was all over that!

A Fall Blog...

As we were outside tonight taking down the Halloween decorations, Tom commented to me that it was actually starting to feel like fall here in Houma, so I decided it was finally time to sit down and create my fall blog. Fall is my favorite season, or at least it was when I lived in a state that actually had the four seasons! Here in Houma we don't get a real fall. Sure, the leaves fall off some of the trees, but you don't get that glorious burst of color that you do up north. And there just isn't that crispness in the evenings that I love. I also find it rather strange to be raking leaves when it is in the mid nineties...oh, well! This picture of Binkey (Natalie) was taken on one of the first nights that we raked leaves back in mid-September. She really liked the idea behind leaf jumping, especially being buried in them!

I had to include this picture of William because I was blown away by how high he could actually jump! Knowing that Tom can't get too high off the ground, I think I finally get to claim these genes as mine. He is my son!

There are about 20 more pictures just like this on my camera, but I'll just include this last one. He just loved jumping in the leaves and posing for the camera!

Mid-October we went to the local pumpkin patch for our Family Home Evening activity. The kids loved walking through all the pumpkin clusters until they found the perfect pumpkin. Of course they wanted to rush home and start carving the pumpkins, but we just can't do that here! I swear when we lived in Ohio we could have carved pumpkins in September and they would have lasted till Halloween because of the cool weather. Can't do that here! We ended up carving them on the Sunday night before Halloween. They barely made it...

Here are the four jack-o-lanterns in all their glowing splendor! From left to right: Christa's, Natalie's, William's, and Tom's.

The Saturday before Halloween we attended a charity event held at the New Orleans Zoo called "Boo at the Zoo." It benefits the local children's hospital. We had to buy our tickets back in August because this is such a popular event here. They open the zoo in the evening with all sorts of Halloween activities. There was a non-scary haunted house, all sorts of little activity booths, big bounce houses, a trick-or-treating alley, and a haunted train ride. The kids (and adults) had such a blast! William and Natalie have completely fallen in love with Peter Pan, so naturally our costumes reflected that. William was, of course, Peter Pan. Tom was his Captain Hook. Natalie was Tinkerbell, and I was Wendy. It was the first time in the history of our marriage that Tom didn't dress as a World War II soldier. I was very excited! It was fun for all of us to be in costume together!

Just another of us all in costume together!

On Halloween night, I stayed home and handed out candy to all the local trick-or-treaters and Tom took the kids around a few blocks. He was such a good sport, he even dressed up again! One interesting thing here in Houma; on Halloween, kids only go to houses where people sit outside in their driveways. Last year, I didn't know this. I had purchased all this candy and the kids and I waited to hand it all out in our living room. No one rang our doorbell, even though all the outside lights were on. I just couldn't figure it out! The next day, stuck with loads of candy, I asked my neighbor what I did wrong. She pointed out that I needed to be outside. Lesson learned!

Such a beautiful little fairy! What a fun "Fall!"