Halloween and such

I have been terrible lately about posting online, talking to friends, and just about communication in general... its not cause I don't love ya all... I've just been in a world of my own lately :) Things are good, really good actually. What I thought was the end of the world a few months ago when my ex husband managed to force my kids and I to move back to Arizona from Arkansas has actually turned out to be the saving grace of my marriage. It allowed my husband and I to spend some much needed time together after we we both had some time apart to think about what we had each done to hurt each other, and the time apart gave us the perspective needed to show us that we do not want to loose each other. I have made some big changes in myself to fix our relationship and I know that I can do what it takes to be an equal partner in our marriage, so thank you Ryan for bringing us back to Arizona so that I could fix my marriage and not loose out on the love of my life! There are alot of things going on that I am not ready to put out there on a public level, but the boys and I are doing great. Big plans are in the works. I am enjoying the time I have now that I am not working (either by choice or not), I am taking advantage of it) to really spend quality time with the boys.

Aidan is in 5th grade at my Alma matter Blue Ridge and is doing fabulous. He brought home his first report card of the year a few weeks ago and got an award for not only honor roll, but straight A's honor roll! I am one proud mama! He is defiantly a smart little guy! Zander and I have some pre-school workbooks that we do and he can count as high as he wants in English and to 10 in Spanish. He can say his ABC's and recognize all the letters and is working on writing them. He can spell his name and is trying to write it. One thing he does not like is coloring, which seems strange to me :( we play alot of chutes and ladders and candy land while big brother is at school now that it is getting cold!.

Aidan has developed a love of singing, Glee is his favorite show now (good for me!!) And he auditioned and landed the lead role in his school musical production of King Arther! I think it is sometime in December, he is so excited to sing a solo in front of the entire school! That kid has some serious guts!

Halloween around our house was great fun, We had planned to be in Arkansas, and since my stepkids have long grown out of allowing me to dress them all up in themed costumes I was super excited to pull my niece and 2 nephew's into the fun! My sister and I told all 5 kids they
could each pick their favorite sea creature to dress up as and we would make the costumes.....
have you ever told a group of kids to pick their favorite sea creatures and seen what they come up with? Wow it is interesting! They came up with:
Aidan 10 years old : A Weir (also known as a Sea Monster)
Lizzie 6 years old : A mermaid of course
Zander 4 years old : A stingray
Tristan 4 years old : A giant octopus
Baby Cole 2 years old: A Starfish

And then we had to figure out how to make costumes like that... try finding those costumes on ebay, or even patterns!!! In comes Grandma to save the day!!!!
I told the kids I would include adorable costume made candy bags with a picture of all of them on the front in their costumes with the bags made out of pieces of their costumes... great idea until we ended up in Az with the rest of the crew in AR!

Here are the costumes: (we had to have my kids model all the costumes so that I could get pictures for the bags......yep, even the mermaid costume, before we shipped them off to Arkansas)