Fall stuff

Two princesses, a knight and "Mutt" from Indiana Jones. They were just so cute! I did have fun with the decorating. We have so much candy. I think we have gotten more in years past, but the amount was perfect... enough that they were excited about it and I won't throw most of it away after a few days. 
After the decorations came down, I made a wreath out of things I already had. Go me! We have been really budget-conscious lately. It has been really pressing on me the way I spend money. It's a little here, a little there, until it gets out of control. I reason that a $2 thing won't break the budget, maybe $7, and before I know it, there goes $100! (Or more.) Anyway, I promised Harby I'd post a photo of the wreath I made. It came about because first of all, I've had the Southern Living door bucket on my door -  empty for months. It has bothered me, but I don't have anything to fill it with. So I took it down for Halloween, and wanted to replace the Halloween thing with something for the Fall. My neighbor had such a cute one. I mentioned to Jeff I "needed" one. He said, "Take hers." (That is so Jeff.) The neighbor said, "You can get one for like $5 at such-and-such store." But I knew I shouldn't, so I made one that night from things I had used in the past. Why didn't I do it sooner?? I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out! I think I got the pieces from like 4 different projects.

The past couple of days I have been doing some "not spring" cleaning. Since I pulled out winter clothes (for Jeff and me) I realized I don't have enough hangers. So I have decided to change the way I do some things. I folded my sweaters. Probably better anyway. I also took all the girls clothes away from them. They constantly have their clean clothes mixed with dirty and almost dirty clothes all over the floor of the bathroom, closet, bedroom and hall. It makes for tons of laundry, so I confiscated the clothing, put them in one of Maddox's closets, then took the hanging canvas cubbies and laid out clothes for the week in Maddox's other closet. So now I choose the clothes and give them clothes for one day at a time. My hope is to train them how to care for their clothes and gradually return responsibilities to them. I have been completely supervising/managing bath time for the last few nights, and that is working well. They have a clean bathroom for the first time since we've lived here. Not just once, but all the time! It's amazing how much more time I have when I invest in supervising certain activities. You live an learn. So without access to a plethora of clothing, the girls actually wear the same thing all day. If it gets a little wet, they wear it anyway. It also helps that I am using plastic bibs on the babies, as their clothes stay clean during meals. Imagine a bib doing that. Seriously... you'd think I'd be smarter than that. So we've been establishing baby-steps to routines. 

This photo was taken a few days ago when we went to Katy for a Tae Kwon Do tournament. This is probably one of the last times the older kids will fit into one of these things. Maddox is almost as big as Lacey!

I voted!

I had been putting it off, but I went ahead and voted on the last day of early voting! When I got to the community center, the line was from the community center all the way past the doors to the library. (It was very long!) So the first thing we did was to clean out the car! That mess was driving me crazy. How does that happen?? I think it stems from getting 4 kids into the house and trying not to let Lacey out of my sight long enough to run into the road. I digress... Next we HAD to go to the library and get some books. Afterward, we just got in line and waited. I have no idea how long we were in line. The older 2 just read. Kailyn read out loud to me, and Korbin would show me things here and there from his book. Lacey fell asleep in the library and didn't wake up until we reached the car. Maddox was a happy baby until he fell asleep for quite some time and then woke up scared as we were voting. (I let the kids push the buttons, and had left the stroller a few feet away since we were in a crowded room.)

 The first thing I noticed about this picture is that the boys and girls seem to match. Actually, that wasn't planned. Too funny. I am so glad it went so well. I'm sure it won't always be like that, but every now and then when things go so smoothly, I feel really great about it.

We had a fun Halloween. We didn't do all we had planned, but it turned out simple and that was okay. I had prepared 60 bags of candy. (Small individual bags for trick-or-treaters) We have 6 left over. I'm sure we would have zero if we had not turned out the lights just after 9 o'clock. There were people out late. We got tons of comments on our decorations. I was kinda proud of that. Now to tell the truth...I really hate halloween. I don't like scary things one bit. When the kids pick costumes I don't let them get scary stuff. (Dad is there to balance me out, though.) If I had it my way, they would all be themed, but I don't want Korbin to be embarrassed. So I let them choose. I usually don't decorate, and the decor we have is from my mother-in-law since I'm just too boring to buy anything scary. This year the kids talked me into the spider web stuff. So I stretched it out over our koi pond. Then I changed the lights inside it to red. There were lit skulls lighting the path to the door, and webbing and a spider on the door. Maybe next year we'll add a strobe.

We got to trick-or-treat with some neighbors, and our old neighbors came to trick-or-treat with us too! Becky took a cute picture of the girls all together. 2 cave-girls and 2 princesses. They were so precious! I love that the girls always want to match. I remember never wanting the same thing as my sister. I guess we were just too close in age. But Hannah and Audrey are the same way as far as costumes go... they always match too!