HaPpY BiRtHdAy AdRiaN

Just a super quick Happy Birthday Shout Out to my Adrian!!!! Happy Birthday sweetie I love you. Pictures of the party and festivities soon to follow!!!

Snow Bird

We went a couple of weekends ago up the Snow Bird with my friend, her sister, and our families. We had fun sledding in the fall snow and we rode the GIANT lift up to the top of the mountain. One car can fit around 30 people in it - tons of fun!!!!

Harry Potter House

This is the Harry Potter House. A house up on the mountain that I live at the base of. I have gone to this house the last three years. The outside is beautiful and has trees and pathways everywhere and is decked out in HP. People come volunteer to be the characters, you can get cider from "The Three Broomsticks", candy golden snitches from Mrs. Weasley, candy body parts from Madam Pomfrey, and autographs from Professor Lockheart and much much more, I didn't even get to take pics of everything. You enter through Platform 9 3/4 to . . . .


* I appologize for those of you who haven't read Harry Potter or seen the movies, you may not fully understand this post. :) *

Find Gred and Forge Weasley, I mean Fred and George Weasley, standing at the entrance and greeting us all. They even spoke in unison!!!

It's hard to see, but this is a pic of the painting of Mrs. Black, Sirus's mother shouting at all the mudbloods. See the floating candles in the top of the picture?

Pictures blurry but this is the Nite Bus. Need a ride?

Feeling cold? It's that dementor!

Dumbledore and Fleur Delacor standing with Tinker Bell. Disney and Harry Potter? Now your right up my alley.

That horrible Umbridge woman, gave my son detention, and wrote "I must not tell lies" on the back of his hand. Adrian though it was great though that an adult was writting on his hand!

Qudditch. There is a zip line set up, and one person rides it down and tries to throw the "quaffle" into one of the hoops, while everyone else lines up to throw "bludgers" at them. Definately Adrian's favorite part! In fact, I lost him for two minutes and found him back at "Qudditch Try-outs"

Rita Skeeter and her quick quotes quill.

Buckbeak the hippogrif, and Dobby. Adrian was none too sure about bowing down to the feathery beast, I think he din't want to take his eyes off of him. So we didn't linger.

Filtch was a downer as always looking for misbehaving children to lock up.

Oh I love Luna! Is she not awesome? The kids thought she was fun.

My dear friend Allison, sorted into Slythern, she about cried! I got into Ravenclaw, and am quite proud of it!

The Monster Book of Monsters. Adrian was a bit afraid when it stared growling and biting, but I showed him how to pet the spine and cause the book to purr. Literally!

Expecto Patronum!!!! Olivander let my try my hand with a wand, and wouldn't you know it? I cast a perfect stage across the water. (One of those christmas deer was across a small stream and would light up if you did the spell right)

See my super hot silver skin and blue hair? I'm a robot. And this is how I looked when I met my ex's new girlfriend for the first time. Great huh?

The Dursley's trying in desperation to get Aunt Marge down from the tree while Dudley pigs out.

The beautiful and changable Tonks, with Gildory Lockheart popping in. He wouldn't miss a photo opp for the world.

Did I mention this is all free? Super fun huh? There is also Hagrid, Hermione, Ron, Harry, Lucious, Collin Creavy, Bellatrix, and so much more! It is a great opportunity. Let me know if you wanna go next year . . . . I won't have Adrian though. You'll have to wait two years for that. :)

This is my stash from the mafia house. My friend and I both are going through divorces, and arranged it so we have our kids on the same weekends, and the dad's have them on the other. Since Halloween weekend was the dad's weekend, but Halloween our holiday, we got our kids 4pm to 9pm Halloween night. After our kids were back with their dad's we decided to check out the mafia house, we had never been before, seen the super long line, and didn;t know what to expect. The pic above is my loot. My friend has a duplicate one. The guy had boxes and boxes of candy stacked on metal shelving and handed out about a dozen candies to each person who came!

Trick or Treating

Yay my favorite holiday!!!! I know lots of other people disagree, but I LOVE Halloween! What other time of year do we drive past someones yard and comment, did you see the skeleton hanging on their door? SO COOL! Or that rotting body half buried in their yard is awesome! I mean hilarious right? Besides the fact that my family has always just gone all out to decorate for
Halloween. I'm not much of one for the candy, but I love dressing up!

Look at these cuties!!!! We went trick or treating with my super cute friend and her two kids (her hubby tagged along too). Adrian talked for days afterwords about trick or treating with Tinker Bell and Batman.

This house was fun, the guy who lives here hand makes all their Halloween decorations, including the skeleton you see hanging here, it's his hobby. You actually walk around the entire yard and they hand out king size candy bars and snack size bags of chips.

Poor Adrian. Do you see his knees knocked together? I knew there was someone hiding and made him walk up the stairs by himself. After the "skeleton" jumped out and scared him, him stayed crouched in a little ball until I walked up the stairs and the guy took off the mask, then we told him it was just a joke and Adrian laughed and said "You sacred me". Whew! I'm glad I didn't scar the kid for life.

Halloween Party

My friend invited Adrian and I to come over to her house for a Halloween party that her kids had planned. We had dinner in a pumpkin, frosted cookies and played games. There were 13 kids and 7 adults it was a blast

Super cute spider cookies!

Thanksgiving Point

We made the long trip down to Thanksgiving Point with my parents for the first time doing something with all of us together for the first time. I know that sounds crazy considering Adrian and I currently live with them, but none of us have ever really considered doing things together. I chalk it up to the fact that Nearly all of my parents marriage we have lived away from family, so it was almost always just my parents taking us kids places. I finally decided it was time to make a change, so we're working on it!

Un fortunately this is the ONLY shot with my dad in it, that's what I get for handing over the camera to him, next time I will make sure not to repeat that mistake.

LOVE that FACE!!!!

Too Cute! I love this pic, my little independent boy would NOT sit on my lap or even stand near me, had had to be out on his own. Figures. Is that just an oldest child thing?

Although that independence does sometimes fade a bit, he was excited to ride the horse, but it had to be the smallest one and I had to walk next to him, with a hand on his back the ENTIRE ride.

The Headless Horseman. My family LOVES the Disney feature Ichabod Crane, and so when the headless horseman turned up on our hayride, the camera was flashing non stop. Adrian, however, was not too sure of the phantom.

The jacket I'm holding is actually Adrian hiding, see the horseman behind us?

PumPkiN PaTcH

Our new tradition is to go across the street to Cochrans Produce for our pumpkins. Good price and close by, and Adrian has fun. They also have some of the cutest home decor for sale inside!




This picture does not do justice to the size of these wagons, they are HUGE. I thought Adrian would have fun riding in it with me lugging him around. Oh no, he's a BIG boy! I'm half suprised he didn't ask me to hop in so HE could pull ME.




Autumn is my fav time of year, these pumpkins just look so festive.




He needed help around the corners on the trip back, but was just as happy to pull the wagon out as he was pulling it in.





The final product! Well until we carve them that is.

16 Bricks and a 3 year old

I love that Adrian finds a toy in ANYTHING. We had fun building outside. I love (most of the time) that he is such a lively and active little boy. We always have something to do, and it's great that we get some variety in there. Some days I can't wait until he's a little older and can participate in activities I know he will love, but just isn't quite old enough to do, then I have to remind myself that that time will come soon enough and I need to enjoy Adrian as he is now. Today.

I have a unique perspective on enjoying my little boy now. When he has visitation with his daddy, I miss him terribly! I have to keep myself busy to avoid slipping into a mini depression. It is hard to be a mom and not know or experience everything my three year old does. It is hard to let go every time he goes with his dad, not because I think his dad won't take care of him, I know he does his best, but because I don't get to have him in my life.

I also have a fear that if I ever do remarry and have more children, I will not be a patient mom, and have a hard time adjusting to having my children around all the time. Will I be patient enough? But no reason to stress about something that has not happened yet. Something that's not even close to happening. So many of my friends are going or have gone through divorce has well. And they all happen to be single mothers now because of it. It is so sad to me that such a thing is so prevalent today. It is never anything something any of us saw or wanted in our futures.

Yet we go on. We have no choice. We all want and need to make the best of our situation. I am so grateful that even if I never remarry or have any more children that I will always have Adrian he is such a joy and guiding light in my life. I feel immensely blessed to have him in my life.



Here are the cute pics of us building together: