Halloween and family photos

 

me and the kids at the ward party

 

 Tom with his joyschool buddies.  They are a hilarious bunch. 

 

  Funny story about these next photos.  I kept going back and forth on whether or not to do family photos this year.  Then last Sunday I saw that Shutterfly photo books were 50% off until midnight.  I usually make our yearly photo books over the course of a week or so, but I wasn't sure if I'd get as good a deal later so i just went for it.  As I started going through our pictures, I found nothing suitable to put on the cover and decided it had to be done immediately. We had a baptism to attend at 5, and it would be too dark afterwards, but it was already after 4:30.  I called my neighbor and asked if she would take our picture, snatched G from her nap, and told Matt to comb Tom's hair and meet us outside.  We were just going to stand by a tree or something right by our building, but the golf course behind the apartments was looking so resplendent that we had to run over there to do it.  The boys came out to find us shouting at them to hurry from across the field.  Matt was seriously annoyed and we were already late.  And poor G was insufficiently dressed and kept saying "cold!" through streams of snot.  So we were frazzled and I was super bossy and we came huffing in late to the baptism, but I think they turned out just fine and I'm glad we did it.  Matt said afterwards that I "pulled a Cat", which is funny because I was thinking "this is such a Cat thing for me to do" while it was all happening.  Cat is his party animal sister who likes to do things on the spur of the moment, which is usually so not my style.  I usually have our photo appointment and outfits planned weeks in advance.
And then I stayed up late making the photo book and may have shed a few tears and said a few cuss words when it didn't save the first time, but I got it ordered by midnight and it's in the mail so all is well!

Remember when we did these family photos when I was pregnant with Grayce? Well I was 19 weeks along, and as you can see there wasn't very much belly going on yet. And in this new one I was 23 weeks and check me out already! I feel as big as I was when the other two were born. Crazy times.