Golden Hour Halloween

I love taking pictures of my kids! I love that they love to dress up and humor my crazy ideas. Pictures in their costumes is what makes Halloween so great for me. This year we caught the golden hour before we started trick or treating. And I think the little drive and walk down the trail was totally worth it!

Of course my Samuel Teddy HAD to be a teddy bear for his first Halloween. And dang if he wasn't the cutest little bear EVER!

Sadly, there is no water around for this pretty mermaid. Her tail apron and top were handmade by me and she loved it. 

Stryder is so fun at Halloween. He's always so excited about dressing up and gets so into character. This Ewok costume is also handmade by both myself and Ben. His mask was a "deady bear" mask we found and then was totally altered into a much friendlier Ewok mask by Ben. I sewed the orange hood.

Soren loves being superheroes and this year he chose the Green Arrow. We went more with the CW show Arrow look than the comic book character one and Soren was a little bummed how few people knew who he was. But he was the best Arrow in my book! And his mask was hand painted by Ben.

Now enjoy more pictures of my awesome kids in costume because I couldn't post just one of each of them :)

 Happy Halloween from the Brown kids 2015

Daddy Daughter Halloween Party

A couple weeks ago Shelby and Ben attended the Activity Days Daddy Daughter Halloween Party. It was Harry Potter themed and everyone came in their Halloween costumes. Ben and Shelby had a blast. The leaders seriously know how to throw a party and decorate to the 9's.

One of the leaders hand wrote this Dumbledore quote and drew Hogwarts on this giant chalkboard. She's kind of really talented.

Did I mention that I'm an Activity Days leader? Ha Ha! I came dressed as Lois Lane with Sam as my Superman.

The decor was awesome and the girls and dads had so much fun. I'd call that a great success!

Samuel Teddy Bear~ 9 months

On October 20th, Samuel turned 9 months old. It seems like just yesterday that I was 9 months pregnant with him. Now he's this adorable baby with a serious stubborn streak and the cutest personality. He's become so curious and has been army crawling all over the house. He's just barely figured out the hands and knees crawl. He's developed a love of food, especially bread and different flavors of those squeeze packs and gogurt. But he still nurses a lot and we both love those snuggles. He pulls himself to standing so easily and loves to turn off his daddy's xbox. He makes the cutest faces and the silliest noises that make all of us laugh. At his 9 month well check he was 18lbs 15oz which is just under the 50th percentile. So he continues to be our littlest guy. We sure do love him.

He loves when he finds this red ball around and on this day he wouldn't give it up for anything. I had to hurry and grab it to take the top picture.

This is our favorite Sam face and luckily he makes it often and sometimes on command if you do it at him first.

Samuel Teddy Bear~8 months

Sam celebrated 8 months on September 20th, while we were in Henderson. Yes, I brought his blanket and bear with us just so I wouldn't miss it. This crazy baby has really challenged us. He has figured out how to pull himself up to things. First it was up to his knees and then slowly but surely he was regularly standing. We all hate it when I put him in footie pajamas because he needs more saving as his feet slip and slid out from under him. He has taken several tumbles backward onto the hard tile but continues to get back up and try it again. He is steady sitting up and moves to crawl away easily. Still no teeth but I'm ok with that. And he still army crawls, no hands and knees just yet. He loves the squeeze packs of apple sauce and the kids have even been able to feed him those. This boy is seriously trouble and keeps us so busy but I don't think any of us would trade him for the world.
 

I love his little chubby feet and bum when he sits like this. 
 

This is a shot of him when he was first pulling himself up on his knees. Oh we love this little bug.

September Overview

Here's a recap of our September in pictures. 

Sam is growing so fast and wants to be on the go a lot of the time, so when he snuggles in for even a few minutes it has to be documented.

 September 9th is National Teddy Bear Day. Of course, we celebrated with our Samuel Teddy.

This beauty got glasses! She can finally see the board at school. 

Little bear fell off our bed and face planted it. He wakes up so happy and quietly and crawled across our bed without a sound. Next thing O know he's screaming and laying flat on his back on the floor. He must have nose dived and then flipped onto his back giving himself so pretty awesome rug burn on his nose and forehead. He looked worse than this picture the next day as it started to scab over.

Toward the end of the month, we headed to Henderson. We were able to get all my parents grandkids together for pictures. These kiddos sure do love each other and spent as much time together as possible that weekend.  

My cousin was baptized that weekend as well. It was so neat to be a part of it. Ben, Trevor, and Stryder even did the musical number. I love these faces and miss them dearly.
 

At the baptism, I asked, or maybe forced, all my cousins that were there to take a picture. Apparently, Lauren thought our line looked a little like prom so she had to hug her date. I am so blessed to call these hilarious, awesome people my family.

And we finished the month checking out the blood, super, lunar eclipse moon. The kids thought it was pretty creepy but way cool.