Pumpkins and Sugar Cookies!

So we got together with the Harmans and Hustons for dinner and Halloween festivities!

We cleared out part of the garage and carved pumpkins. Yes it was too cold to do it outside. This is the Alaskan way of carving pumpkins!

Elle and her best friend Laura. Two prettiest girls in all the land!

Elle and her other best friend. Please don't ask how tate got those scratches on his face... I'm having a really hard time with it:(

Beautiful Amy and her two oldest boys.

And her other two!

The crew. Elle is definitely outnumbered. We need a girl to add to the group. Laura I am talking to you:)

Contemplating....

Tate you are soo cute!
Daddy joining the festivities. Dane is diggin in!
Look at those yummy guts!
Bryce making his masterpiece!
Elle helping draw on the pumpkin.. and unfortunately also on her new shirt:( mom is sad can you tell?
Mommy with her babies.
Dane and Ty
This is how elle ended up by the end of the carving. half naked. And of course Amy gorgeous as always.
On to the next project. Amy made the MOST delicious sugar cookies and brought frosting, sprinkles and candies to decorate the. The kids had a blast!
YUMMY !
Ty like the black sprinkles:):)
Elle grabbed the camera and took these last pictures. They turned out so good I had to post them. Our little photographer in the making!

Life at the Raleigh household

Sweet little Blake. Two months old and growing like a weed.

He is already wearing 3-6 month clothes.. very sad. He is such a happy baby and smiles a lot for his momma, which makes me oh so happy. He has started laughing a lot and it makes everyones day. Elle always comes running ' oh bake' :) Too cute.

Here are my two cute kiddos. If Elle had it her way she would hold Blake all day everyday. Unfortunately mom gets in her way more than not. :)

As you can tell here she is lifting her shirt up.... asking if she can feed baby bake.

This is usually what happens the second he goes into her arms. Hilarious.

So naturally she has to rock him, pat his back and say sssssshhhh bake shhhh.

She is quite the little momma.

Elle has taken up reading. Finally.

She will bring all her books out and read them to Blake and I.

She is pretty adorable, of course I am a biased mom:)

Mom please listen this is the important part of the story.

So I am always soo bad at taking pictures during our play dates. Here is one of the boys Jack and Blake getting ready to go for our nightly ritual- a walk.

Unfortunately it won't be lasting much longer. I see snow on the forecast...

Maybe sledding will take it's place.

Here are all the cute kiddos. Kennedy and Jack are so cute with Elle.

Always loving on her and at the same time looking out for when that pinch is going to come out.

It's a love-scare relationship.

So tonight we had our friends the Murrells over. We had a BLAST!

Mylee and Elle played so good, and the boys got to hold the babies and talk construction.

While us moms got some catching up in too.

Sure love you guys and can't wait to do it again... like next week!

Elle found a comb in Kalyas purse.. and next thing she knows

she has both girls combing her hair.

Too cute to not get a pic!

Playing with the balloon. So Fun!

We can't wait to have Mylee back over to play some more.

Playing in the kitchen

Cooking up some yum yums.

This is the funnest little easel/ chalkboard that we got from Aunt Danielle, Uncle Bill and London. We love it and so do all the kids that come over.

It is usually the hit of the party:) Thanks again guys!

Well that is all that is going on here, lots of play dates.. potty training and well everything you do with a two year old and newborn. I won't get into all the details:):)

MAJOR MILESTONES

My little girl turned two years old this week! She is full of personality and SpUnK! She is so independent and testing mom on everything. She wants to do everything herself and is really talking a lot more. It is really so fun to see her grow up and be so independent!

We are POTTY TRAINED!!!!! Yes this is a glorious day:)

She started be interested in the potty about 1.5 but mom was pregnant, and sick and therefore lazy.

Finally we had a poop incident that threw me over the edge.

We had to get potty trained, if I had to clean up one more poopfest.. I was going to loose it:)

We started on her 2nd birthday...

and she did it all herself!

The first day, she showed no real interest, I got so frustrated and just decided I wasn't going to fight her. That night we ran to target, bought some Paul Frank underwear( because she loves animals- thought that might help).

The next morning we put her big girl panties on, and told her to tell mommy when she needs to go. From that point on she has gone on the potty and not had an accident!!!!!

Daddy even took her on an outing on day # 2, and for four hours, no accident. Then she told dad she needed to go potty when they were in Lowes.

What a relief and how excited I am, and more importantly she is! She is so proud of herself and loves all the attention she gets from us. It has really been such a fun thing, to see her so happy, and I have had so much fun praising her!

On the baby front... Blake got moved to his crib, sad but mom gets some good sleep. Elle is continuing to be such a wonderful big sister, always loving on him. I have to still watch her like a hawk though, or she will pick him up and carry him around like her baby doll.

Had to throw this in. Getting ready for church, she says mama cheese...

We are sleeping in our big girl bed! So fun, she is really growing up. Mom is excited so she can get Blake's room all finished!

Getting her baby ready for bed. As you can tell her undies are on backwards.. this is how they usually get worn. Too cute!

Some fun little projects I finally got done!! Blake's car seat tent. This was really fun and soo cute!

His and her towels:) Trying to get started on their bathroom. As you can tell I am literally obsessed with Alexander Henry zoo print. It's pretty pathetic:)

Well that is all from the Raleigh front, we are enjoying playing in our house and having lots of play dates. Winter is rolling up on us faster than we think, we are excited for the snow to fall to have some pretty white stuff to play in!