Lucy's 12th Birthday

Lucy had a blast at her 12th birthday! She invited a dozen of her besties to an epic party at Action City. Here she is doing party prep - filling a few treat bags. :)

Whew - it was a fun night with a ton of girlies!! Thank goodness they were all 11 and 12 and could run wild without too much supervision. ;)

The boys were living their best lives too - super happy to be along for the ride of arcade games and jumping pits. 

We had a very full party room to eat pizza and treats. 

The real MVP of night was this lady - Grandma Nola! Since Dan was out of town, Nola helped hold down the fort and make sure that we had pizza on plates, spills cleaned up, eyes on loose phones/bags/coats, etc. I could not have done it without her! Here she is hand feeding Prince Leo since he didn't have a spot at the big table. Grandma of campions for sure! 

Here is our 12 year old ray of sunshine! Lucy is such a precious daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin and friend. We love her with our whole heart.

She made chocolate cupcakes for her friends and decorated with purple sprinkles this year. 

Here are more pictures of my happy boys - it was too hard to chase down these gals for a lot of photos! 

The birthday crew managed to cram themselves into an old school Photo Booth - this was the result. Love it! 

 

It was the best night - Lucy, her 6th grade squad, and the boys all left happy and tired.

Happiest birthday to our sweet girl!

Life Lately - Early November

We had a pretty chilly and snowy Halloween - nothing like the great blizzard of 1991;) but the weather still warranted a new set of winter boots for Roman. The ToyLand aisles opened right before our visit to Farm and Fleet so the boys most definitely did not stick with me during this shopping trip. 

We gobbled up lots of great pheasant recipes this fall. 

Leo played some indoor t-ball at the Sports Center this November - his BFF Henry was also in the class so he had the best time.

Ranger was not able to hunt this season but it seemed like he was certainly back to his normal autumn activities such as getting into the children's loose Halloween candy. Ugh. 

Leo got a Gingerbread Haunted Mansion kit as part of his Trick or Treating activities. 

Our tween daughter officially jumped on the Taylor Swift Fan Bus - she is bananas for friendship bracelets. I am here for it!

Oh yeah - Roman is along for the ride. ;) Kiddo loves rocking out to Swiftie songs. We went to see the Eras movie at the theater and these two enjoyed every moment. 

Lucy was getting excited for her birthday - She picked out a bunch of balloons at the Dollar Tree. 

Speaking of birthday time - we held Lucy's family party a little bit early because Dan was headed off to Utah for an elk hunting adventure and would be gone on November 8.

Lucy loves making her own cakes - this year it was lemon with a couple of frosting colors + sprinkles.

It was definitely approved by brother! ;)

We opened gifts and got hugs from Grammy and Grandpa. 

I got this picture from day care - Love it so much! Check out Leo throwing that big ol' pile of leaves in the air. :)

Speaking of Leo - we had some special Mama and son time in November. First up - we had a quick supper at McDonalds and we spent time on the YMCA sidelines watching big brother play basketball. 

But the real highlight was a trip to the children's museum! There was a free evening session for all of the city's 4Kers this so I took him to play. He was living the dream! ;)  Leo has a book on the body and is obsessed with the brain page, specifically the neurons. Here he is hanging out in the Children's Museum brain.

I could watch these neurons all night, mama! Haha!

We checked out our wingspan. 

We rowed in a boat and used our arm muscles. 

It was a very fun night! So glad that the 4Kers had a chance to explore. 

Happy November!

Halloween 2023

Here are the Halloween highlights from 2023 - 

We did our annual pumpkin carving event at the Storm household. 

The big kids opted for screaming Jack O Lanterns this year. 

Here's Leo looking like the character in the Scream painting ;)

Ranger always loves eating up any dropped pumpkin pieces of stray seeds. ;)

Speaking of seeds, we baked a big ol' batch this year. Yum!

I saw this meme and it made me smile - feels very accurate! Haha!

The kids at Lucy's school were not allowed to wear inflatable costumes (too distracting) so we found a quick pair of scrubs at the thrift store - just cut them up and a bit and added fake blood and she was good to go! 

Lucy is the Pinterest Queen these days - she finds all kinds of cute things for celebrations. On this day she made some eyeball jello for dinner. ;)

Dan picked up Kion early and took him to the DNR for some office Trick or Treating on Halloween night. 

I took the big kids to Trunk or Treat at church - they both met up with friends at the event. Roman was pumped to see Alex and Lucy had fun with Nora. Nora's skiing costume was perfect - it was actually a very chilly evening!

Here is the candy haul! Everyone had a successful evening. ;)

Lucy zipped around the neighborhood with Marnie and Harper. 

All of the big kids had a big candy trading session at the kitchen table. Love it!

Happy Halloween!