Pilgrim and Indian

 Rylee and Lainey had a feast at preschool today and came home with traditional headpieces:

 If the original Pilgrims and Indians loved each other like these two BFFs do, it's no wonder we have Thanksgiving (:

 Rylee preferred the Pilgrim hat and Lainey the Indian headdress, but I coaxed Rylee into sporting her feathers for a bit

 so I could document their "Indian Names."

McLove-ly Birthdays

 The McDonald kids - two of our favorite little people - had birthdays recently; Avery turned 4 and Liam turned 1.

 All the kids wore their Halloween costumes to Avery's party.

The loved the donut on a string game

 The pinata was hilarious; Shellie made it herself, and it was indestructible!

 All these kiddos (plus a few more) each got two turns without any luck.

No, Cailyn is not wearing her costume here...she fell asleep in the car on the way and slept through the first half of the party. She changed later...

 So it was Hailey Hermione who came to the rescue and finally finished it off.

 

 Love these sailors (:

The next weekend Liam had a joint 1st birthday party at the beach with his cousin, Nixon.

(Can you tell I've been having fun playing with not only my camera, but also starting to dabble in photoshop?)

Liam LOVED the quilt that Allison made for him. He crawled back and forth all over it like it was a play mat, rolling around, trying to pick up the little cars, etc.

 The sunset was GORGEOUS

 

We are so lucky to have these sweet kiddos in our lives (:

Halloween

We had such a fun and memorable Halloween this year!

Here are the treats we made when it was Rylee's turn to bring snack to preschool:

Spider Cupcakes

Banana Ghost Pops

(Cailyn got to eat some at home)

Speaking of preschool, Rylee learned this fun song:

 

Quinn came up with the great idea of having our whole family dress up as Care Bears. It took a little bit of coaxing to get the girls (mostly Rylee) on board with this idea rather than being princesses, but everyone wound up having fun in the end.

The girls wanted to help me make our belly badges, so I gave them each their own to paint while I worked.

Grandma Karen made hats for us and I found these so-perfect-that-there's-no-way-I-would-have-found-them-if-I-had-gone-out-looking-for-them boots by chance at Wal-Mart.

Our first opportunity for a test run was on Thursday before Halloween at the preschool Halloween party. These girls are so silly.

On Halloween morning I figured I might as well start the girls off with some sugar, so I made them these Jack-o-Lantern waffles.

Rylee had me paint Candy Corns (one traditional colors, one non-traditional) on her cheeks during the day.

In the evening we braided hair, (yes, I even did my own circle braid...be impressed!)

 carved our pumpkins

and then got dressed.

Share Bear, Friendship Bear, Grumpy Bear, Cheer Bear

Then we headed over to the Starnes. Halloween is supposed to be wacky, and there's not much I can think of that's wackier than McNamara girls + Starnes kids.

Jack, Rylee, Carter, Cailyn, Lainey

Cailyn brought up the rear all night; often she would get to the door after everyone else had left. And that was with me carrying her in between houses. Sweet little girl.

Me and Casey

Back at home, we took these out of the freezer.

No, we didn't mix up our holidays...it just turns out that plastic eggs make perfect eyeball molds!

Cailyn got right down to business sorting through her candy

While the big kids fought over who got to pass out candy.

Love these kiddos.

Back at our house, there was more candy sorting

and candy "patterns" made.

We put on skeleton jammies, struck a scary pose, and went to bed with braids still in

so we had waivy hair in the morning!

Here are some of my favorite costume shots:

 

Fun, fun, fun.