I know, Halloween has not even come yet and here we are doing a full recap of the holiday. This is because after two parties we have more candy than is ever needed for four lovely children and their pregnant mama. So we are going to be done for the holiday rather than doing Trick or Treating on Monday as well.

We started carving pumpkins as soon as Mason got home from school and had a great time scooping guts, drawing faces, and carving the face's out.

Like always, this little bambino will be a surprise when it comes into the world hopefully on its' due date of February 29th, 2012! Our household is very excited for their newest little baby to join the family, and the kids especially have taken a special relationship to the process and joy in waiting. I had my scan a week ago now and it looks like this little person will fit right into the family by being super crazy and energetic. Everytime the technician would go to take a still shot the baby would kick, punch, or just roll over to avoid detection. It was slightly amusing for me to watch, although had to be a little frustrating for the tech. Good thing we didn't want to know what it was! Count your blessings lovely technician! :)

Taylor is very determined that this baby is a girl because, "we have enough boys in this family." Carter wants it to be another boy, Brennan doesn't care, and according to Mike's unofficial testing with asking Mason, it is a boy. So we will see who is right, and hopefully Taylor won't lose her mind too much if it happens to have a penius. I did ask her what she would do if it were a boy baby and she responded, "I will put it back and wait for it to grow again to be a girl." Although if you talk to her you would hear 'gel' not 'girl' very cute accent and all.

We were at the store yesterday picking up a few things we needed and were in the kids clothing section. Mason started babbling about the same time as Brennan was saying to look at all the baby stuff. Mason started grabbing little baby items and handing them to me with a huge smile on his face! I asked if he was shopping for the baby already and he clapped and laughed at me as he hit the baby bump.

After the store we had a doctors appt for Taylor. We were all gathered in the doctors office waiting for the doctor to come in. Mason stood up and went to lay his head on Taylor's stomach and give her a hug. Carter started to laugh and asked Mason if he thought Taylor had a baby in her tummy as well. Mason quickly turned around came back to me and proceeded to try and lift my shirt up while babbling and smiling at Carter. I think he was proving to him that he did in fact know where the baby was growing.

Tonight we took the time to use our baby heart doppler(e hired a fancy one to have at the house) to listen to bambino's heart and move around a bit. Carter and Taylor love that the baby can now hear them and have been talking to the baby since I told them it could hear all the noise they make. Bambino was being stubborn about being heard and had tucked itself way in the back and wasn't coming out. Well, Carter never deterred by a challenge went and got his tenor horn that he has been learning to play at school. He proceeded to play some notes for the baby in hopes it would be excited and move around. Boy was he ever pleased when we could hear the kicking sounds through the doppler, the heart beat was much closer to the surface and all of a sudden the baby was a big lump on the side of my stomach trying to come out and play. The kids thought this was hilarious and enjoyed singing their two favorites to the baby, "Twinkle Twinkle" and "Humpty Dumpty." I then put the doppler away and the kids started playing another game while I was looking through a book with Mason, and I hear Carter whispering to Brennan. He was telling him that we could sing and talk to the baby now because it could hear us, he told him he should go tell the baby that he is Brennan, the big brother. Brennan comes running over, leans over my stomach and says, "Baby, I am Brennan, I big, and I love you!" It was so very sweet tonight to have the kids so excited about the future boy or girl that will join our brood.

Those were just a few of the baby things that have been going on here and not much else happens besides the regular day to day, school, cleaning, playing, etc.

For the sake of memories I should mention that Carter was wondering why it hurt to have a baby. So I explained a bit about the uterus, contractions, the pushing the baby out and he was very intrigued about the whole process. I think if they would let him in Labor and Delivery he would be right there! I also thought another trip to the Natural History Museum in the human section might be helpful for the curious Carter.

Finally had Carter take a snapshot of the growing baby bump. I am 20 weeks and a few days in this picture. Feeling pretty good and working hard to get my list of projects done before I am too big to care about my list of projects that need to be done.

We have had such wonderful weather this October, it has been fantastic for us to play outside and enjoy all the sunshine while we can. Brennan loves our lovely swing and wanted to be on there all day yesterday! He was pretty ticked when I had to share myself and jump on the trampoline with Mason as well.

Carter is growing up! He did his first 'big' money chore this weekend, and after such hard work earned himself $10.00. We had been at the store that day and he kept seeing kids with toys and was saying how lucky they were to have such great things. I told him that he could earn some money and buy his own great things if he would do the work. As soon as we got home he set to work and did a great job mowing the lawn. He felt great about his new stash of hard earned cash!

I am very aware that Columbus Day is an important day, good to remember good ol' Christopher Columbus and all he did back in 1492. HOWEVER---Mason is not happy about not going to school today because of this day. He stood, cried, and banged at the door for 45 minutes this morning while I got the other kids ready for school. He was ticked off that his taxi was not coming, regardless of how many times I told him there was no school today. He has since been okay with not going because we had BK for breakfast, got him new shoes, and went shopping at the commisary. Yup, I resorted to bribery to make the poor boy happy that he had to stay home with mom. Now he is watching his favorite show of the week, The Wizard of Oz, while I am folding socks/blogging. :)

There is a small story behind his new shoes. He had perfectly wonderful shoes last week until he took them off himself and somehow lost one shoe. He was alone for 5-10 minutes so I'm not sure how this happened. We found one outside by the trampoline, but the other has since disappeared into thin air. I figured the only way to find the other shoe was to cave and buy new ones. So far, no luck.

Mason in his taxi on his first day, he was so anxious to get going and get to school. The summer is way to long for his liking!

A family picture on the grounds of Dunvegan Castle. This castle is home to the Clan Macleod and has been for 700 years! I wish I could have taken pictures of the inside because there were bits and pieces in there that were remarkable. As always I wanted to jump the rope that blocked off the library/study room and tear into the books that were trapped behind glass cases, just waiting for very curious fingers to flip through them, carefully of course.