Happy Halloween!

Today we celebrated Kerriann's third Halloween.  Wow, I can't believe that we are entering her third holiday season already.

We had a great day together!

We started by getting all dressed up in a cute Halloween outfit, and then heading to school.  I dropped her off and came back about an hour later for her Halloween parade.  Since her preschool is affiliated with the Department of Energy, all of the kids put on their costumes and walked over to the DOE building.  The employees were all lined up in the hallways ready to pass out candy.  Kerriann was such a good girl, and rotated between saying "Trick or Treat," "Happy Halloween," "Please," and "Thank You."

Kerriann received a ton of candy and had so much fun at school.  She was really upset when it was time for me to leave, but when I picked her up she was in a great mood again and even had a couple of really cute Halloween crafts to show me.

(Don't mind the cake, or the rest of the mess in the background... haha!)

As soon as we got home from school Kerriann was begging for candy and to go trick or treating, so I managed to get her to eat some chicken and strawberries and then we put her costume back on. 

We walked around our neighborhood trick or treating for a good 30 minutes before I decided we should call it a night.  Kerriann had already collected a ton of candy, it was cold, and it had also started raining.  When we came back in we watched Halloween specials on TV and ate a few pieces of candy.

She had a bag of regular M&Ms, a bag of peanut butter M&Ms and a mini three musketeers bar and still went to bed at 8pm with no problem!

We had a great day, and the only thing missing was Kevin.  I'm already looking forward to celebrating Halloween and the rest of the holidays as a family of three next year!

First Wedding Anniversary!

Happy first wedding anniversary to my husband and best friend, Kevin!  

10-30-10

Photo by Howie McCormick 

Even though we are unable to celebrate this day together in person, I know that we will have many more years and anniversaries together in the future to make up for it.  I am so lucky to be your wife, and I am more and more thankful for you with each passing day.

Photo by Howie McCormick

You mean the world to me and I love you so much!

Happy Anniversary!

Kids Day at the Farm

Today we finally visited "Kids Day at the Farm" at Rich's Fright Farm in PA.  When I was in college (the first time) we would go to Fright Farm for their haunted hayride and we always had a great time.  I honestly had no clue then that they had kids activities, but I was happy to hear this from a friend when we moved to the area this year.  When we arrived I couldn't believe how beautiful the area was.  Since the hayride takes place at night, I had never seen it during daylight hours.  And despite the snow we had yesterday, it was actually a decent day to be outside (50 and sunny!).

There were quite a few activities for the kids.  Kerriann's favorite was the huge tires made into trampolines.  Uncle Shannon was nice enough to climb up and help her out with these.

There were also lots of props for cute photo ops!

There was a corn maze, but we didn't bother trying that out because it was so muddy.

They also had a barn set up where you could decorate a pumpkin inside.  Kerriann absolutely loved this, and it was hard to get her to leave when her pumpkin was completely covered in paint.

We also visited the "pumpkin patch" that they set up.  Of course, this was no REAL pumpkin patch like we visited in Alabama, but it was still fun for Kerriann.

Since there were no pumpkins big enough for carving, we picked out a small one that we'll showcase on our mantle for the next month.  Maybe it will even last until Thanksgiving!

Halloween Weekend

Again, it has been way too long since my last post!  Wednesday-Friday is always so crazy for me, and then if I have anything at all going on over the weekend I feel like I look at the calendar and suddenly it's Sunday night again.  I guess that is a good thing though, that time has been flying by lately.  Before I know it it will be Tuesday afternoon and we'll be at the seven week mark.  And since Kevin left a couple of weeks later than the rest of the guys, we are technically two months into the deployment, which is awesome!  I feel like we are finally starting to make some progress with our countdown.  Only ten months, at most, to go!

On Friday evening my mom and brother, Shannon, arrived at our house for the weekend.  I was so excited to have them here to keep us company for a couple of days.  I attempted to make my first real gluten free meal for them.  I was about 75% successful.  I made gluten free pasta for myself and Kerriann, regular for everyone else only because I ran out of GF, homemade meat sauce, GF french bread and a salad.  Everything was delicious, with the exception of the bread.

I still have no clue what went wrong because I followed the directions to a T, other than not using the "heavy mixer" that it called for (maybe one day I will have my beautiful Kitchenaid that I've been dreaming of, and then I can make homemade bread).  Oh well, everyone still left the table with a full stomach, so I guess that's all that counts!  After dinner, I made an apple spice cake (gluten AND dairy free) and it was DELICIOUS.

I have eaten over half of the pan by myself since then... oops!  I'm probably going to be making it pretty often from here on out, so get excited to try it if you'll be stopping by my house anytime in the near future!

Our original plan for Saturday was to go to "Zoo Boo" at the Pittsburgh Zoo, but when we woke up to snow, we decided we'd just do a little shopping instead.

We spent the morning relaxing and then picked up Christiane and headed to the South Hills Village mall in the afternoon.  Kerriann was sort of out of control for most of the trip so I didn't accomplish much, but we did get her some new tennis shoes since she has out grown both of her pairs.  I always told myself I would never by my child velcro light up shoes, especially with a character on them, but Kerriann is now the proud new owner of exactly that.

She loves Dora so much that I just couldn't help but give in.  She has been dancing around in her Dora light up shoes ever since!  I think the $20 was well worth it in the end for her happiness.  I'll try to get a picture of her in them soon.

After we were thoroughly worn out and starving, we had dinner at Red Robin.

This was my first time dining there, and I was excited to find that they actually had a gluten free menu.  I had a great Avo-Cobb-O salad, and I'm pretty sure everyone else enjoyed their dinner just as much.

We spent today doing Halloween activities, but that's for another post! :)

Trunk or Treat

Tonight Kerriann experienced her first taste of trick or treating!  Trick or treat takes place on Thursday night this year in Morgantown, and unfortunately I have night class.  When I saw the sign that Chick-Fil-A's family night this week was "trunk or treat" themed I knew we had to stop by!  Kerriann is a big fan of their food and I wanted her to be able to trick or treat at least once this year.

After we had dinner inside, we got in line for trick or treating.

She was so excited that it was hard to keep her standing still in line.  There was a little girl dressed as a princess in front of us, so I asked her to please stay in line behind the princess.  So she proceeded to stand right up against this poor girl.  Luckily she didn't care much, but I tried to teach Kerriann a lesson in personal space without much success... haha.

Luckily I had my trusty sidekick aka "Aunt Loogy" along to help out with my crazy girl.

Kerriann had a great time going up to each car and saying "trick or treat" before getting her candy.  The only candy she ended up getting that was appropriate for her age was a little pack of M&M's, but I don't think that was entirely a bad thing!  She loved trying them for the first time and was so cute eating them.

We had a great night and hopefully we'll get to take her trick or treating again this year, but if not, at least we got a little taste of Halloween festivities tonight!

Weekend Re-cap

Kerriann and I spent our weekend visiting my parents.  It was exactly what I needed after such a crazy, stressful week!

Here's our visit in iPhone pics...

Kerriann's first homework assignment

Coloring at Grandma's 

A little mid-morning tea party

I love fall

Kerriann's first cinnamon roll... 

She actually wasn't into it and left almost the whole thing!

Cookout at my dad's on Saturday afternoon

Chris teaching Kerriann how to play badminton 

All snuggled up after bath time

Sunday morning... I was not ready for temps in the 30's...

Misty morning

The kittens are getting so big!

Playing before church

Hope everyone else had a great weekend as well!