Birthday, Pumpkins, Halloween & More Birthdays

As of September 25th, Nicholas officially is no longer a little kid. Most everyone who is reading this knows that Nicky is my nephew. The big boy kindergartener turned 5 years old! Watch out world - Here he comes!!! We went to a Jumphouse place in Tracy and Nicky had a pirate birthday party. The kids had a blast!

October means time for the Pumpkin Patch, dressing up and most of all - trick or treating. This year Lexie is in pre-school and so we got to go to Joan's Pumpkin Farm with both Lexie & Bella's class. They got to pick out their own tiny pumpkin and a big pumpkin. This was Lauren's first time at the pumpking patch. As expected, she was just along for the ride.

Michelle & Dave FINALLLLY let me watch their kids the weekend before Halloween. We had a great day. We went over to the Larsen's house and decorated Halloween cookies. Let's just say that the black frosting on the cookies made their teeth look really nice!

Lauren now has 4 teeth. She looks hilarious when she smiles too! We've also been teaching her to flip people off if they bug her. ;-) haha Click on the picture to see those dangling suckers close up!
On October 30th, my sister-in-law Michelle turned 21 (again). Dave, Michelle & the kids came out on Halloween to go trick-or-treating with the girls. I didn't have to pick and choose with the girls costumes this year. If they didn't get the same one then they'd be fighting over the other one's costume. Since I've learned my lesson and I don't want to deal with that kind of crap, they ALL wore the same thing. They loved being butterflies - even Lauren.

Nicholas & Christian were absolutely adorable. Nicky was Captain Jack, the pirate, from Pirates of the Carribbean. Chris was Dash from The Incredibles. So fitting for that little booger! Aren't they the cutest little boys?

We even lucked out and got them to all sit on the couch for a picture. I didn't say they were smiling, just that they all were on the couch....

The Dugorepec and The Gardner families on Halloween

We got together in October to celebrate Bella's birthday as a family. This was the only time we could get all the family together and take a group picture. Can you believe those two old people in the middle are responsible for all the people in this picture?

November 4th was Bella's birthday. Our little Princess is now 4 years old. We had planned to have Pony Parties & Petting Zoo out to the house to do Bella's birthday but due to some unplanned circumstances, they had to cancel. Good thing because I was sicker than a dog. Bella, Lexie, Nicky, Christian & Alyssa went to Chuck E. Cheese for Bella's birthday. After playing for a few hours they came back to the house, where I was coughing up a lung and blowing my nose, to open presents and eat cake (cupcakes). As you can see, blowing out candles in our family is definitely a GROUP thing.

Now we have Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to. As we do every year, we're headed over to Milenko's parents' house for the day. In fact, Bella and I are going over there early on Thanksgiving morning so that Bella can help Baka make a turkey.

My brother Dan turns ....err....well his birthday is December 5th. We'll probably get together that weekend and Milenko and he will go golfing like they do almost every weekend.

Christmas Eve is always at our house. It's fun to do it here because the kids get to open all their presents from family that night. It's like a wrapping paper chaotic disaster when this happens. It's a lot of fun though.

That's it for now. I'll try to get another blog in before the end of the year so everyone can see how our little weeds are growing.