Trick or Treat!!

halloween snuck up on us this year. october has been so busy and all of a sudden, it was just here. this year, roman was a magician and gianna was sofia the first. pretty cute and handsome, right?

of course, we didn't carve our pumpkins, but at the last minute (the night before), we decided to paint them.

they looked pretty cute, i think. and they won't rot as quickly as if we had carved them.

roman's school had a parade and a party after. such fun. this group of kids are so fun to hang out with!

making his way down the hall in the parade...

roman and archer had a little friendly competition at the party (they were blowing small eyeball candies with air through a straw).

we are ready to go beg for candy!

making their way around the neighborhood...

my kids will take candy from anyone...dead or alive!

back at our house, waiting for some trick or treaters

we got a visit from two very cute elsas. they have come for a visit the last few halloweens and we look forward to it each year!

candy break!

hope your halloween was sweet!!

 

Time for the Trophies!

soccer is over for the season and these boys were UNDEFEATED!!! they played great all season and improved so much. i'm so proud of how they worked together and got it done!!

even though roman had to play defense the whole game, he was able to still score a goal.

now, on to basketball!

 

Holiday Farms 2014

on friday afternoon, we headed up to holiday farms to pick out our pumpkins and let the kids enjoy all the activities that holiday farms has to offer.

all the colella kiddos

they had fun in the pumpkin maze. however, i see that mikah is a little smarter than the rest and found that stepping over the pumpkins was the quickest way to get to the center.

and no, you can't move the pumpkins to make your path easier! i see a pattern of cheating colellas here!

does anybody else think gianna looks about 14 years old here? i'm dying!

sorry if most of these are of gianna, but roman was running with all the boys and i couldn't keep up!!!

 

you can actually see the boys in the background of this one...they were playing football!

time for the pig race!

we may be blurry, but we are ALL in the picture, and i love it!

searching for the perfect one....

sassy lady, hands on her hips...i can hear her voice in her head now..."hmmm, lemme fink..."

this one is perfect!

my perfect punkins (the kids ain't half bad either)

can you tell someone was getting an attitude? who could it be?

we had a good time with all the cousins, can't wait for next year!

 

Zoo Crew

after the USC game, we stayed overnight and headed to the zoo the next day!

about 10 seconds after this picture, this bird pooped on wil's shirt. womp womp.

i love ella's face in this picture. the kids loved feeding the birds.

 

 

 

they found this little hole in the tree and wanted to hang out there for a while, but they had to get out and let some other kids in too.

 

time to feed the giraffes! this guy almost took a bite of toby's hand.

you stinker!

the bigger kids got a chance to pet this nice fella.

 

gianna kept saying, "momma, i want to show you the spinny thing", and i didn't catch on until about halfway through the zoo that she was talking about the carousel. it was at the entrance and she just couldn't wait to get back there and take a spin. doesn't she look so much older here?

roman tried his hand at climbing a tree. it was tougher than it looked.

the rock wall was a little easier. for him, anyway! i would have probably only gotten about 2 feet up...haha.

finally, one last thrill before we head home.

she fell asleep about 10 minutes after we got in the car. she was pooped from all the fun we had. roman stayed awake, but i think he was just thinking of all the fun he had over the weekend with his best girl, mady. it was a really fun weekend, hopefully, we will do it again!

 

Go Gamecocks!

on saturday, we left really early to head up to columbia to tailgate for the USC vs. Furman game. we were going with our friends wil, kelly, mady and ella. they are die hard fans and so we had to live up to some pretty high tailgating standards. we got tickets for the boys and the two older kids, but kelly, me and the little girls hung back at the "camp" waiting for them to come back. it was cool though, we had enough food and drinks to keep us occupied!

i don't know why it always surprises us, but these kids are super close, get along so well together and never really fight.

all decked out in her garnet gear!

what can i say about these two? they were SO excited to hang together all weekend.

and these two were pretty pumped too!

they spent a lot of time at the adjacent parking lot, just playing football and running around goofing off.

we had a pretty legit setup, i would say. toby even brought our full size grill. no camp grill for us. we had SO MUCH food!

gianna and ella spent some time in the back of the car playing together. too cute!

ella was even really great about helping gianna in and out.

tutu or afro wig...she's versatile with her accessories.

the lucky big kiddos got to go in with the dads and they had a blast!

prom pose for the win!

waving their game towels...woo hoo!

and look who stopped by to say hi! gianna's bestie, lucy!

mady and ro sat on the train tracks for a long time, just talking. we kept saying how we wish we could record their conversations to see what they were talking about. they always seem to have something to say.

we had a great time and are hoping to make it an annual trip!