Steal-A-Bear

Well, that's almost what it felt like.

Remember the Build-A-Bear birthday party? Well, we got $40 worth of gift certificates because of the points we got on our Stuff4Stuff card. Then we got e-mailed two coupons for $10 off when you spend $30, because both Zach and I have given them our e-mail addresses. There's also a promotion right now, if you spend $30 you get a free Christmas stocking.

We told the girls to each choose their favorite B.a B. animal and headed out to the store, which was empty, since it's Monday. (Zach has a day off school!!) The first thing they did was fix our ripped Mr. Monkey, and put tags on our animals so they would know they were already paid for.

After choosing what they wanted, we added up the total: $60 even. Anya chose an angel outfit, Bree chose a sparkly pink dress with sunglasses, (Mr. Monkey is now Mrs. Monkey,) and Mia got a new panda bear in a fabulous dress with some matching hairbows. And we each got a free stocking- which was handy, cause Kael needed one. Zach bought half and used his $10 off coupon and $20 worth of gift certificates, I bought the other half and used the same coupons of mine.

The old lady who rang Zach up was already shocked out of her mind just ringing up half of it, and asked if we had a birthday party there as she begrudgingly took the coupons from him. When I asked if we could choose two different colors of stockings, she tried to tell my cashier that Zach had already gotten one, so that was it. She didn't realize I was doing the same thing!

No Christmas experience is complete without Scrooge. It was a glorious day. :)

October

Wow. I can't believe how freaking hard it is to post anymore. Okay- it's easy to post, but hard for me to put it high enough on my list of priorities to ever get to it. If this was something I could do with one hand, I'd probably have a post every day. But the only time I'm at the computer now is to nurse(which I can't do hands-free yet for some reason)or do school with the girls. So here's all of October in a nutshell full of pictures.

We went to the Creepside festival super early and were the second to get our free picture taken at Studio K. Bree is a cat in a dress, Mia is a witch, Anya is a crazy princess, and Kael is a jack-o-lantern. It is so nice to have another photographer around. I wish I could find another me in this town- someone who doesn't charge an arm and a leg, does a decent job, and lets you have your files. If you hear of anyone...



We went to DeMonye's greenhouse a couple of times again. It was just as fun as last year!








Grandma Cork sent some awesome crafts- we have enough to do more next year!


Grandma Gale sent everything we needed to make these owls. We gave them out to our neighbors with some cards Mia made (which I forgot to shoot- drrt.)
We delivered this one to our single neighbor, Dave. I tried to sneak out with just the one on the right, but Mia noticed that we "almost forgot!" hers and so I made sure she pointed out to him which one she helped with. He was so cute and complimented her on how nice a job she'd done with barely a chuckle... We were just looking at this post together, and I said "Look- Mia, there's your owl!" She just giggled and shook her head and said, "You didn't put a mouth on yours. Mine has a mouth."



Mia was the only one interested in helping with jack-o-lanterns this year, so we ended up with a Jasmine one.



And here's the center of attention every waking moment. None of us can get enough of this kid. I keep waiting for the girls to get sick of him, but they love to hold him and get him to laugh all day every day. Zach says he feels guilty he didn't enjoy any of the girls this much as infants. Mia threw us newbies for a loop, and the twins threw us for a loop-de-loop. We wonder if he smiles more than they did because he gets smiled at more than they did....