Backing Up

So I need to back up to June, to Riley's birthday, so that you have the whole story with my next little adventure in life! Riley got a dog for her birthday! It was all she asked for and so it was all she got! Riley is 10 and so we figured old enough to have a pet! She has been great with the new responsibility and totally loves her dog! The dogs name is "Cookie" (we adopted her at a year old and so the name came with the dog) and she has been great! Until two weeks ago when she discovered my neighbors garden!
We didn't know where she was one afternoon, and so the kids and I went searching all over the neighborhood, just to find her next door! Now, that's not the problem, the problem is that she eats all the rotten veggies in the garden and comes out completelycovered in burrs!!! I have had to cut almost all of her hair off with kid scissors! Cookie is a ShihTzu, so she has longer hair (or did, until I had to cut off her little beard, part of her tail, all the hair on her paws and under her chin!) I feel so bad for her, she is a total of 9lbs. and needs all the insulation she can get now that it is in the 30's, but the stupid dog won't stay out of my neighbors garden!
The picture included is when we first got her, so now just picture her with longer, patchy hair!

The holidays are here!

It always seems that as soon as Halloween is over, it is a made dash to the New Year. Which now for us is fun because it is Lainie's birthday, but this time of year is my favorite and it seems to come and go so fast that I feel a little dissappointed that it's gone.
The kids this year (as you can see) all followed some kind of theme for costumes. Riley is cotton candy, Baylor is a "Crunch" bar, Payton is a bag of jelly beans, and Lainie is candy corn! It was fun to make the costumes this year (to me that is what Halloween is: deciding what you want to be and getting creative in pulling it off) they were all really into the trick-or-treating except for Riley, who I had to talk into dressing up for her school party, and trick-or-treating! I can't believe that I am to the point in my life where my oldest doesn't want to trick-or-treat anymore! I'm not that old!
In preperation for Halloween I took the kids to pick out their pumpkins for carving! Todd has been so busy with work lately that this is the first year he hasn't made it with us to pick pumpkins! It was weird doing it without him, but we took lots of great pictures to make it up to him!
So some of you might notice the time that I entered this blog: 5:15 AM! This whole day-light savings thing is KILLING me! Lainie hasn't changed her clock and I am afraid that I will be up at 5:15 every morning until APRIL!
Anywho! I have started discussing with a friend of mine what to do for our kids for Christmas. It is always so hard to figure out what they will really enjoy, what they will play with longer than just Christmas morning, and what they need! Even though my kids really don't need anything! It is harder for me now that Riley and Baylor are getting older and the kinds of things they want are $250 each!