Holiday Catch-Up

I am not a very consistent blogger but I'm always a lot worse every year between October-December! Life just gets too busy with the holidays, which I guess is a good thing. We had a great fall and enjoyed spending the holidays with our families. Here's the recap of our past few months.

In October we had our first big hurricane since coming back to Florida. We were very close to an evacuation zone and had a lot of friends evacuate but we were fortunate and ended up being totally fine. We spent a few days cooped up in the house for the storm and since we didn't lose power we watched some movies, including Robin Hood for the first time for Russell. He loved it and requested a Robin Hood costume, of course, so we reenacted Robin Hood all weekend.

Watching Robin Hood, he enjoyed it a lot more than it looks here!

Ricardo spent a few weekends afterward cleaning up some local damage and he took Russell for a few hours one day. Russell still talks about the hurricane a few months later, mostly whenever he sees a fallen tree he will tell me "it's from the storm."

We had a fun Halloween this year, we dressed up as The Wizard of Oz, and watched the movie a few weeks ahead of time to get Russell excited about being a lion again (ha, his costume from last year still fit so we went with it). He loved "the Lizard of Oz" and sang "we're off to see the wizard" all night long when we were trick or treating. We also had a fun church Halloween party a few days before Halloween and he enjoyed his first trunk or treat.

We also did a few pre-Halloween festivities, including a pumpkin patch and carving (ours looked like Mater).

Ricardo's dental themed prop for the trunk or treat. The kid's extracted one of the monster's teeth to get their candy. He was sad to throw it away.

It's rough to be still for a picture when you're 3.

Before I get to Thanksgiving, here's some random pictures of these 2 fun brothers.

Thomas is starting to get the messy stage of opening up everything and Russell loves jumping on board the bandwagon and blaming the idea on his brother. Oh well..

He actually loves being dragged across the room by Russell. He will basically let Russell do anything he wants because he adores him so much.

Turtle watching..

Enjoying our neighborhood park and pool in October!

He believes his dad can make him anything and he's usually right. He loves his batman costume made out of old cardboard boxes.

We spent Thanksgiving with Ricardo's family and had a great time on the farm. Russell caught his first fish and was so excited!

Playing at the park while the men played in the turkey bowl.

My Thanksgiving pies. We had a delicious feast and the most authentic American Thanksgiving we've ever had with Ricardo's family. A few weeks after Thanksgiving some of the cousins came to visit us at our house and we had rice and beans and they told me they wished we had that for Thanksgiving dinner! ???

Thankful tree we made leading up to Thanksgiving.

We celebrated Ricardo's birthday with a breakfast date for him and I and a walk on the beach at sunrise, then we all went to the local children's museum, and had birthday dinner at home. It was a fun day for all of us.

His office celebrated too and his balloons were enjoyed for many days around here.

My dad ran a marathon in Kiawah Island, SC in December and my parents were going to drive by our house to get there so I decided to go with them for the weekend with my kids. We had a great time sightseeing in Charleston and enjoying the beautiful island. Cheering on dad and Grandpa was fun too. He's amazing!

We saw some amazing Christmas lights in this amazing Christmas village and look who is brave enough to ride the carousel now? Finally!

All tired out by the end of the race.

In December my sister's family drove down to Florida for Christmas. They spend a few days with us on the way to my parent's house and Russell was in heaven with his cousins. My sister's son is his same age and they have a blast together. We did some sightseeing locally and had fun showing them the sights.

We also spent a day in St. Augustine. The kids loved the fort and we saw the famous Christmas lights, which was fun too.

We spent Christmas at my parent's house and all my siblings were there from out of town, so we enjoyed Christmas together for the first time in a few years. It was so fun.

Uncle Trent playing with all his nephews.

We went to downtown Orlando after Christmas for the Citrus Bowl parade which was lots of fun.

Also after Christmas we enjoyed Wild Florida, which is a zoo/alligator park and we went on an airboat ride and saw some alligators in the wild. Russell loved it and Thomas hated it (it was pretty loud). He eventually fell asleep though!