Surprising no one, this year’s theme was LEGO! Super fun, super timely for us. It also gave us a great excuse to rewear our shirts from Legoland.

As always, the cake needed to be on theme, and I thought building a Lego piece would be easy! Turns out it’s been a while since I’ve made a square cake, and the circles on top weren’t easy either haha. It worked though.

EIGHT! I feel like we’ve finally left little kid behind and you are becoming this super cool middle age kid. I can have super long conversations with you about the world or politics or yourself. You love learning and are still into math and reading but also really enjoyed learning cursive this year.

I feel like you have a good group of friends at school, and also have things outside of school you’re doing great with too - you just earned your first big kid belt in karate!

When we realized we had a 4 day weekend for Easter, it felt like we should go somewhere. We’re at an age where travel is almost easier than staying home! Gone are the days we were afraid to leave the house. Now if we stay home it’s more likely the house will get destroyed.

We’d been tossing around the idea to try Legoland NY for a while, since we’re big into Lego in this house. And then just days after Tom and I were discussing it, the kids came home and asked if we could go. It seemed like a sign and so off we went.

G is the hardest kid to buy things for, or do something special for, because we have no idea what he likes. His Christmas list is still whatever his sibling gets. He plays with what everyone else plays with. And the only thing he really, really wants is baa baas. We’ve already done a sheep birthday party, though, and wanted to do something new and fun. So since G couldn’t decide, we said we’d plan something fun and he trusted us.

It didn’t end up on the Christmas card this year (no one was really feeling it) but I still think it’s worth sharing the annual PJ photo. Merry Christmas everyone!

You always are completely and uniquely you, and will never go along with something just because everyone else does (which I will be more thankful for as you get older). For now that means refusing to take a birthday picture until you’re ready, not wanting a birthday theme, and doing things completely your own way (down to picking your outfit head to toe for your birthday party).

You are sweet and hesitant but also bold and demanding. You spend a lot of time worrying about life and friends and things, but you won’t tell many people or let just anyone see that. You put on a big and brave act and entertain everyone in the room. The loudest, the silliest, the least likely to do anything without a fight.

Just keep trick or treating… just keep trick or treating…

Is there anything better than a group costume? As you might have noticed from F’s birthday, she’s a bit obsessed with fishies and the Finding Nemo/Dory movies. So it didn’t take much to convince the rest of the family that we should dress up as characters from the movies.

There was no question that F gets Dory, the blue fish. I love my fuzzy nemo costume and am going to need to find a way to make this my costume every year. If you haven’t seen Finding Dory, you might not know E’s character Hank. Tom is Bruce the shark, and Gideon is either Squirt or Crush (one of the turtles).

I think it’s finally starting to feel like fall here. The leaves have been changing and falling for a while, and pumpkins have been out, but when everyone’s still wearing shorts, it’s hard to get in the mood. But finally we looked at the calendar and said it was time. Saturday was our town’s 2nd annual fall fest. We’re still trying to get the hang of it, and always leave feeling like we were a bit confused and not sure we made the most of the day. We ate some food that was not as great as we were expecting, and tried the bounce houses but found them too crowded and aggressive, and waited in a line for far too long for a train ride (that at least everyone said was fun!) We saw a lot of people that we knew, but the whole thing was so crowded and frenzied, that it felt hard to actually hold a conversation. We rushed by booths and were constantly trying to get to one place or another.

It’s back to school season!

I’m not going to lie, this back to school period was hard. The calendar was very full, even without the fun celebrations for a birthday and vacation. We had three children starting school on three different days, and each had an orientation day and back to school night on top of that. Two of the children were starting completely new schools, which only added to the stress.

You know me, I love when a kid gives me a theme to work with. F has been very clear for a while now that she expected her birthday to have a blue cake, goodie bags, and everyone to sing to her. But the actual theme she wasn’t super sure on.