Author: Emily

Every year since Kate and Joshua were born, Jenny’s family has come over to our house for trick-or-treating. It’s one of my favorite yearly rituals! We’re gearing up to do it once again tonight, and I’ve been thinking about how much our kids (and our trick-or-treating experiences) have changed over the years. And as I was going through pictures, I realized how much Jenny and I like to recycle costumes!

In 2004, Kate was six months old and Joshua was eight months. Here’s Joshua all decked out, hanging out with his daddy:

I don’t know why, but I couldn’t find a picture of both the kids in their costumes, but here they are later that night:

(Oh, hi, this is Jenny, I found a pic of them in their costumes! Kate was a bug! So cute! Ok, now back to Emily!)

For their second Halloween, we got them all dressed up again and handed out candy at our house (those were the blissful days when they didn’t yet know what candy was). Here’s my cute chicken (this costume will be put back into circulation tonight!):

And Jenny’s cute turtle:

In 2006, we finally introduced Joshua and Kate to trick-or-treating. I will never forget the looks on their faces when they figured out exactly what was going on! Here they are going up to the first door together:

After they gathered their loot (note Joshua’s costume – you will see it again!):

Kate’s costume that year was some serious recycling! Here’s a throwback picture of me and my friend Karson – I’m wearing the same clown outfit Kate’s wearing in the picture above. My great-grandmother made it, and it’s been worn by my sister and cousin as well.

The next year, we added (or Jenny and Bobby added, I guess) another kid into the mix (costume handed down by my friend Marianne):

Since Joshua was still obsessed with Thomas, Jenny saved some $$ and broke out that costume once again:

Tonight will be round five. I am so excited… it is unbelievable to me that already so many halloweens have passed and our kids have grown up so much.

Frankly, I’m still not sure how Jenny and I went from dressing up as California Raisins (note to self: find pictures of that!) and hitting the streets to wrangling FOUR kids of our own into their costumes.

When did we become the grown ups?

I’ve got the day off today, woohooo! I have a million and one things I’d like to get done today, so I’m taking a page from Jenny’s SAHM manual and making a to-do list. I thought I’d share it with all of you so you can laugh at my optimism… I plan to update it from time to time today so you can see how many things I actually get done.

To set the parameters, it’s 7:59 right now, and I have to be out the door (all dressed up) by 2:15.

Here we go.

— Mop kitchen floor
— Take Kate for her flu shot
— Call plumber about dishwasher (he should remember how to get to our house as he was JUST HERE fixing the hot water heater. But I digress.)
— Change sheets on all the beds
— Wash said sheets
— Do 3-4 loads of other various laundry
— Clean up dining room area
— Clean bathrooms
— Put dinner in the crockpot
— Vacuum living room and bedrooms
— Organize pantry
— Clean out freezer
— Shower and get dressed in real clothes
— Pick up Andy from school at 2:30 and then
— Renew driver’s license
— Vote (Ohio has early voting!)
— Drop kids off at my dad’s
— Attend funeral visitation

Thus far today I have:
— Cuddled with the kiddos and watched Phineas and Ferb
— Written this blog post.
— Wiped Kate’s butt.

Ok that’s all I can think of for the time being. What’s that I hear? Laughing? No, Jenny, you may not collect bets on how many things I will actually accomplish.

Check back to see the progress I’m not making throughout the day!

I am thrilled to report that Cribgate ’08 (thanks Lori!) has been resolved.

I just received a call from the regional vice president of Babies R Us. He had read my post last night and was very apologetic about the experience we had, and he is going to fix it.

He’s arranged for me to bring back the old crib tomorrow and exchange it for a new (and safe) one. I am so glad. Sammy will be glad, too, when he no longer has to sleep in a pack ‘n play!

The whole problem was that I was given misinformation the first (and second) time around. The recall issue can be fixed with additional hardware, so if you have one of these cribs, you can go here and have the part sent to you. No crib disassembling required!

So a big thanks to Babies R Us for rectifying the situation I faced, and a big thanks to all of our readers for your support.