nursery school hayride

one of my best friends, stacie and i chair the nursery school hayride every october and it is such a fun event! this is our 3rd year chairing and the kids have a ball, the parents love it, and the cider donuts are to die for!

fall is my favorite time of year.

eliza and sutton

stacie and i

on the hayride

i love this school and will miss it so much! so will eliza!

was it REALLY halloween? not for us!

This year was like no other...we had a huge snowstorm (12") on the Saturday before Halloween. This is typically one of our family's favorite days of the year!

It is usually a perfect fall day, with the air crisp and the leaves changing. Perfect sweater and hot cider weather!

but instead...a snowstorm in October. It literally crippled our town. In-town trick-or-treating was cancelled, another fun Halloween party (with an outdoor haunted house!) was cancelled, and ultimately the mayor cancelled Halloween.

Surely something like the mayor canceling Halloween only happens in books and movies, but NO, it happened here.

Halloween was rescheduled for Friday, November 4. How do you move Halloween?!?!?

the girls were super sad since it would be our last Halloween here and our street is so cute and fun with the party and parade and all...but since the house who usually hosts had a tree hanging on an electrical wire, ready to fall on their house, they were out for hosting!

So the snow came, the trees and power lines fell, and it looked as though a tornado had ripped through our cute little town. It was like nothing i have ever seen in my life. The town was deserted and we lost power for 7 days. We were fortunate enough to stay in a hotel for the week, but had friends who hunkered down in their homes for the week. We hooked up a generator for our sump pumps and each day on our trek back to gas the generators, the thermostat read 43 degrees! We couldn't possibly stay here....schools were cancelled-"snow days"-for 5 days! We have already used up our snow days! the talk of the town was when we were going to get our power back...if i never bail out another sump pump in my life, i will be a happy gal!

thankfully, our church did a "trunk or treat" so the girls were able to get dressed up two weeks before halloween! it was a great party! but even the school parties and parades were cancelled...

on the actual holiday, we met some friends at the mall to have lunch at cheesecake factory and trick-or-treating at all the stores. better than sitting in a hotel room!

here are my girls in their costumes:

kira as a witch

eliza as goldilocks

alexa as a 70's chick

it will be a halloween we'll never forget!

what we're eating these days...

pumpkin bagels with pumpkin cream cheese. alexa and i die over these!!! no one else really likes them like we do, but alexa wants one everyday in her lunch and i have one every saturday morning.

i crave them!

but they're a fall thing, so they'll be gone soon...

so we are stockpiling the pumpkin cream cheese!

YUM!

changes...

we are moving.

when we bought our dream house on our dream street, we never thought we would move. this was it. the house felt like ours the first time we walked in it. but it is time for a change.

the day they came with the for sale sign, i got a little teary. well, a lot teary. but our decision to move is a good one we all feel happy and good about.

it has been said that the only constant is change.

our move is bittersweet, but has not for one minute felt like the wrong decision. we are moving within an hour or so, and we know we will still see our amazing friends here!

one of my best friends was saying how fun it will be to discover new shops, new restaurants, new vacation spots, etc. and i am actually very excited about that!

who doesn't love discovering a great new grocery store? okay, maybe it's just me!

i'm back....maybe

but this sure is a fantastic picture to come back with!!!

yep, i met him. and he was so nice and talked EXACTLY as he does on the show! my whole family loves this show, so they will all die when they see this! i love modern family and phil is by far my favorite character on it...followed closely by cam of course!