Thanksgiving Week

We had a very fun, albeit busy, Thanksgiving weekend.  The Magids hosted Thanksgiving this year, so we left Wednesday afternoon for Indy.  The long weekend got off to a great start with a wonderful dinner at the Country Club.  As Julie's picture accurately portrays, much wine was consumed and everyone had a good time.  

Little Beanie Boo getting some loving from her aunts.  

This is a picture of just MOST of the cousins who were in Indy for Thanksgiving.  Needless to say, they all had a blast playing together.

 I didn't get an actual picture of the dinner, it was delicious, or the Turkey Bowl, there was much smack talk and fun had, but I did manage to capture a picture of the kids in the house next door watching a movie.  Almost all of the cousins slept together on the floor in this room each night.  And before sleep came, much silliness commenced.  Finn joined in for the silliness, but preferred the coziness of his parents bed to actually sleep.  The girls, of course, slept in their pods like little angels.

On Friday after a trip to the Indy Children's Museum to tire the kids out, the Frost family followed us to Chicago for some more fun.  Saturday we all went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  Here's Finn driving the John Deere.

And Gillian and Finn posing as an engineer and fireman, respectively.

After the Museum, the older kids, Vicki, Mike and I went to see the Muppets.  It was very cute.  Then Sunday, the Frosts had to head home.  So we decided Thanksgiving was officially over and it was time to move on to Christmas.  We put out our Christmas Village, nativity scene, advent wreath and, most importantly, we put up our tree!  The kids had fun helping decorate before they went to bed.  Well...of the three Finn did most of the decorating.

Sabine was content just looking cute.

While Louly was happiest showing off her awesome belly!

My cuties!

The finished product.

And last, but not least, the elf on the shelf, who was later named Gorky, made his first appearance at the Manning/Kline house the next morning.  Finding Gorky every morning after he returned from his nightly visit to the North Pole proved to be loads of fun for Finn!

Ian's Birthday Party

Our little friend Ian turned 2 and I didn't manage to snap a single picture of the birthday boy!  I'm terrible! I actually didn't bring my camera to the party as keeping track of my three crazy kids is usually about all I can manage, but I had to pull out my iPhone and snap some photos when Mae and Finn started playing dress up after the party started to die down.  They just looked so darn cute!

For Halloween this year, Mae was Daphne and Ian was Scooby Doo.  Love!

And the girls looked so cute in their party clothes, I had to snap a pic of them too.

Girls' First Year/Holiday Card Photos

Michele Kasuboske did another fantastic job of capturing the adorableness of our children!

Lourdes is a walker!

Lourdes has been so close to walking for several months now, but just last week she finally put it all together.  Here's a video I took of her showing off her new skill!

Halloween Week

We had a week-long Halloween celebration here at the Manning & Kline household.  It started with the school-wide party at Alphonsus.  I was actually a co-chair of the event and, though it took a lot of preparation, it turned out really fun.  We hired an awesome balloon maker who made Finny a balloon rocket.  He was really talented and made another kid an octopus with 8 legs and all these little girls fairy wings that they could wear over their costumes.  Very cool.  There was also a bounce house, face painting, and random games like bowling, pick-a-duck and a bean bag toss.  A professional photographer also came to take family pictures in front of a Halloween backdrop.  She gave a portion of her proceeds back to Mother's Club, which sponsored the event. I had low expectations for my kids' picture because she took it at the very end of the night and they were all beat, but it actually turned out quite cute.  A few days later, we carved pumpkins.  We got a template this year for the big pumpkins and they turned out awesome!  We decided to do a 1 and 2 pumpkin for the girls in reference to the their costumes.  Then on Halloween, all of the kids at Alphonsus were allowed to wear their costumes to school and they paraded through the halls for all the parents to see.  So cute!  Then later that morning, each of the classrooms had their own little party.  Finny's class made a Halloween necklace and picture frame before playing pin the tail on the cat.  Then around 5 that night, Joe and I took the kids trick-or-treating.  Unfortunately, for Lourdes and Sabine they were confined to the stroller this year, but they will definitely get into the action next year.  We live two blocks away from a section of Paulina where all the houses get into Halloween hard core.  All the adults were out drinking wine and passing out candy.  They close the street so all the kids can run from house to house.  And since the houses are so close together, we hit like 40 houses in 30 minutes.  Finn got TONS of candy.  He was psyched.  Thankfully, he ate two pieces that night and then assumed it was gone and hasn't asked about it again.  This is probably the last year that will happen.  So all in all, it was a very fun Halloween.  Now on to Thanksgiving!

The kids at the Alphonsus Halloween party.

Finny was a big help and scooped out all the seeds from his pumpkin.  Then he picked the ghost design for me to carve.  I picked the forest scene and Dad had the scary face.

Finn was very proud of his pumpkin!

The Halloween parade!

Decorating Halloween picture frames at his classroom party.

The necklace he made.

Pin the tail on the cat.

Cute picture of some of his school friends.

Ready to go trick-or-treating.

Lou would not wear her wig, but Sabine kept hers on the whole time.

When we got home, Finn's friends Arden and Gunner stopped over for pictures.