Halloween

All five kids in their shirts from Grandma


Annie was a unicorn and Lauren was Clifford. We still had snow on the ground, so the kids had to dress warmly for Halloween.


It's a good life when you get a Daddy shoulder escort for trick-or-treating.


We've been trick-or-treating with some of these kids since 2005. That's before three of our children were born. When we only had two children. That's hard to imagine.


We haven't been taking too many family pictures lately, so I'll post what we have!

First snow

We woke up to this scene last week. In October. But we like snow and winter so the general feeling in this house was excitement. Jack and the boys had worked hard the weekend before to split and stack our wood, so we were "ready" in that way. Here we go!


It's not every winter that the snow piles up on trees that still have their colored leaves.


This is the view we got to enjoy as we ate breakfast last Thursday morning.


With snow comes the need for snow clothes!

5 months

Everybody loves our sweet happy boy. Aidan is so jolly and social with everyone and he makes friends wherever he goes. People are delighted with his quick smile. Such a precious boy.

At five months he's starting to hold on to toys and to be serious about getting them in his mouth. I wouldn't mind if he slept a little bit more during the day, but he does well at night so I really can't complain. He loves to be with his older siblings. And he's starting to eat some big people food - he's a fan of sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and bananas.

So happy and excited for Halloween!


Because Aidan is drooling so much, I dug around for some bibs. I found my sister Allison's old "A" bib that my mom had given me when Annie was born. It's too girly of course for Aidan, but it does the job for a while. Jack turned the bib around to give Aidan a Super Aidan cape.


I'm sorry that you're wearing lace, Aidan.


All dressed up for church in his cousin Ethan's old outfit

Tummy time

I haven't been putting Aidan on the floor on his belly enough. He spent at least 20 minutes, maybe more like 30, happily playing on the floor today. He was so happy and so smiley, I just had to take some pictures.




Annie is such a good big sister. She spends so much time playing with Aidan. As a result, some of his biggest smiles are reserved for her.

Siblings

I have often thought what a blessing it is that the kids each (well, except for Aidan) have a sibling his or her own age, own gender. Jakin and Corban talk to each other All. Day. Long. Just jabbering about professional soccer players, Fantasy Football, Legos, or Star Wars. Long after we have sent them to bed, we can still hear them yapping upstairs. And they enjoy doing the same things together, especially games with balls.

Annie is Lauren's little Mommy. Annie is the one who gets up with Lauren in the mornings these days (much to the delight of her mother who is still getting up multiple times each night with a 4-month old). Annie is the one who takes Lauren to the bathroom, helps to get her breakfast, and helps to get her dressed. The girls like seeing Daddy in the mornings and then they just play.

Girls doing girl things. Boys doing boy things. Lots of mixing it up. Good days.

Dirty girl

Lauren's recent run-in with the dirt pile outside.....


.... was a good opportunity for me to use my new mudroom sink!

All five

That's a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches ....
A lot of dirty underwear in the laundry
A lot of soccer practices
A lot of incredulous looks and disbelieving stares when I say that we have five kids. "Are you kidding?"

Nope. Five. And it's a wonderful thing. For so many reasons.