A Chiarino Thanksgiving

Ingredients:

1 trip to SDC to see the Christmas lights and festivities (night before)

2 home-made turkey hats for two little turkeys

1 two year old soux chef

1 post dinner baby diaper blowout (Ewww!!!)

Watching balloons and tackles on tv

Lots of lovin from the oven! :)

Combine ingredients to create a wonderful blessed day of thanks.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

My Pumpkins

We celebrated Halloween in a big way last week and over the weekend. First, we dressed the boys up for our church's fall festival last sunday, then we took them to Halloween in the Halls at MSU on Wednesday. On Saturday we got up early for the Homecoming Parade at MSU and then went home to carve our pumpkins. Christopher helped me design a little one to carve, I did a goofy face, Chris did a goblin face, and I carved Happy Halloween into one. It was lots of fun!

Christopher enjoyed digging the "guts" out of the pumpkins. I'm not a fan of that part so I'm glad the boys like it!

After four pumpkins, we were knee deep in seeds and guts!

And here are the masterpieces!

Christopher LOVES his little pumpkin!

Then we dressed the boys up one more time for some Trick-or Treating fun. We took them to our neighbor, Miss Nell, and around to a few friends houses and then we let Christopher pass out candy to kids at our house. He loved handing it out...surprisingly!


We had a little Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi this year!

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween this year!

I'm so mean!

I had to take advantage of this time when I get to choose what the boys dress up as for Halloween. Gabriel is Yoda and Christopher is a Jedi...more pics to come!

This was taken at our fall festival at church tonight.

I need to perfect the face paint :)

Loving Autumn

We have been enjoying the fall weather as much as possible-that is when it's not 40 degrees and raining outside! Today it was BEE-utiful out so we waited for Chris to come back from his men's retreat and then we headed to Campbell's Farm for some fun. I enjoyed snapping pictures of the boys in the gorgeous surroundings.

Christopher enjoyed the bounce house & the little tykes choo-choo train rides.

The boys painted some mini-pumpkins on Friday.

Gabriel got more paint on his face and highchair (and my camera) than he got on his pumpkin!

Christopher is such a little artist!

I hope this nice weather stays around a bit longer...we love getting outside and playing on our new swingset. Everytime I ask Christopher if he wants to go outside and play on it he replies with a loud "YES" before I even finish the sentance!

We are looking forward to visiting "Aunt Penne's Pumpkin Patch" next weekend in Arkansas, going to baby Kyle's 1st birthday party, and dressing up for Halloween fun coming soon!

One Year Ago...

we were at the hospital preparing for our baby boy to arrive. I can't believe it has been a year already. In some ways it feels like he has been in our family forever, but it feels like yesterday when I was cradling his tiny body in my arms. He has grown into such a unique little person in the past year and he has blessed our lives tremendously. Here a few things about our little prince...

* He is speed crawling, pulling up, standing alone, and walking along furniture. Not walking alone yet, but I expect he will be very soon.

* He is still nursing, and showing no signs of being done soon. I'm trying to use up the gallons of breastmilk I have stored in the freezer so that he can transition to whole milk. I am happily done pumping for now!

* He is a little flirt and he loves to point! When he sees a girl he knows, he will lower his head and gets a little grin on his face...it's too cute!

* He is still taking 2 naps most days, but occasionally he will just take one long nap. He goes to bed at 7:00 pm and sleeps until about 7:30 am.

* He loves animals...he squeels and gets so excited whenever he sees a cat or dog.

* He also LOVES his dada! When he gets home from work in the evening Gabriel is the happiest litte boy!

* When he wants something he lets us know by screaming. He does this in restaurants, church, stores...pretty much anywhere. It's quite a bad habit and we are working on different forms of communication :)

* His favorite foods are cheese, goldfish, grapes, bread, noodles, green beans, and bananas. If he has a mouthful of food and I start to give him a bite of something before he is done chewing he will drop everything out of his mouth and open up for a bite...it's the funniest thing!

* He is a curious, happy, & wonderful little boy! We love him so much!

Hours and hours of fun!

My dad got the boys a huge birthday/Christmas present this weekend.

Here are some cute pictures of all the boys helping out...

And here it is almost put together...it still needs the roof.

This is going to be tons of fun! Thanks Papa Mark!

Happy birthday to our little prince!

Gabriel's birthday is actually tomorrow (Oct 12) but we had his party today. It was a fun get-together with close friends and family.

Here is a picture of the spread and decorations. I had fun using my new cricut to make the banner :)

This was my first time making a layered cake and using fondant icing. It wasn't easy, but I'm happy with the finished product. Chris said it's not as good as "Ace of Cakes", but he did say it was the best home-made cake he has seen. And it tasted yummy!

Gabriel has his eye on that cake!

Eating the sprinkles first

And then he went for the whole thing!

He also loved the balloons that were attached to his highchair!

When it came time to open presents he was so funny! He loved tearing the paper and pulling on the tissue, but he really loved holding the cards! He would hold a card in one hand and tear paper with the other. He looks like such a big boy in this picture!

Trying on his new coyboy boots from Mimi...

Is there anything cuter than a naked baby wearing cowboy boots?

I made Chris' family sit down for a quick picture. The photos I took with my dad didn't turn out...sorry papa Mark!

Christopher with his girl Fotine...look at the love in their eyes!

Her heart really belongs to Gabriel though :)

Our wonderful family!

He was all partied out :)

Nighty night baby.

I just want to say thank you to all of our friends and family. Thank you for loving our boys and being part of their lives. Thank you for making memories with us.

Happy birthday to my little prince. You are an incredible blessing! Your smile is the highlight of my day. Your curiosity keeps us moving! Your joy fills our hearts with joy. We love you so much.

Wild Animal Safari

Me and all my boys (minus Daddy) took a little trip to Strafford to visit the Wild Animal Safari. This place has been 30 minutes from my house for 7 years and I have never been! It is a wild animal sanctuary that you can drive your car through and feed the animals. Sounds like tons of fun and a great educational experience for the kids, right?

Maybe if I hadn't been the teacher.

I think I just instilled fear into their hearts. I really didn't intend to, but I was down-right scared!

So, I got a bag of food along with our tickets. We start driving through and immediately see a camel. Awesome! He's walking toward us...cool!

And then I realize that he is going to stick his entire head into our vehicle. OH MY GOODNESS. Have you ever had a camel in your car? You don't want to. Here I am...trying to get a good picture while also rolling the window up on the camels head. After I took this pic I swear he kicked my van. I now realize why the lady told my they aren't responsible for damages.

So we decided to crack the window...just to be safe. The lighting is bad, but Christopher is carefully sliding a food pellet out the crack into the camels mouth.

He couldn't believe he fed a camel!

So if you think the camels are the scariest thing, well, you are wrong. Look at this! Huge ostrich eyes. Spikey ostrich hair. Pointy death inflicting ostrich beak. SCARY!!! I rolled the window up on a few of them while yelling "shoo shoo!"

I think the funniest thing about this picture is that the ostrich and Christopher have the same exact expression on their face. I think they are both thinking "WHAT is THAT??"

I still see this at night...and wake up in a sweat!

Now, moving on to the non-life threatening animals. Although this pig was disgusting and fat and just plain gross I was so glad to stop and look at him for a while since there was no chance of him getting into my car.

And there was one lonely zebra. So gorgeous.

It was a fun learning experience for all!

Zoo Field Trip

Last Tuesday Christopher's preschool class went on a field trip to the Dickerson Park Zoo. All the kids rode in the school bus (in their carseats) to the zoo where the parents were waiting. I couldn't miss his first official school field trip, so I loaded Gabriel and Caden (the little boy I watch during the week) in the car and headed to the zoo for some fun.

Christopher thought he was so cool because he got to ride in the wagon and didn't get stuck in a stroller. Apparently the little girl in the wagon with him didn't share the same excitement! :)

These are a few of the other "ladybugs" in Christopher's class. Notice how that little girl has the same look on her face as she stares at Christopher. I'm gonna have to keep my eye on her...

Here are the babies...looking at the baby elephant. They had so much fun looking at all the animals...and the big kids!

They love each other! Caden is like our little brother :) He even pulled Gabriels hair a little bit in the stroller...ah the brotherly love!