For the past 6 months or so I’ve been going to Dream Dinners every 6 weeks or so. Dream Dinners is a place where you go to make freezer meals. They have all the ingredients ready–chopped, portioned etc. and I just have to put them together. I make about 12 meals in an hour. It’s awesome.

Well, Paige and I decided we could also make our own, so we gathered some of our favorite–or easy–recipes and headed off to Costco

It was quite the trip…sad I don’t have pictures of it.

Then it was back to my house for some of this:

The Prep Counter

Just some of the food....

There was so much food! Pretty good for $330

Master Chef

We had lots of fun pouring, mixing and creating.

Professional pizza makers

One of our meals…mostly for the pizza-loving boys.

And here's a tortilla

For some reason I’m channeling a Price is Right model. Here’s to the yummy enchiladas!

Completely full fridge

Seriously, completely full. I couldn’t fit another thing in my freezer either. Granted, a lot of this is Paige’s too….

We created a few dishes

And, what were Brit and Mav doing all this time? Well, being perfect angels of course. Really, they were very good. They played together, watched a movie or two, didn’t cause any serious harm, and even liked each other at the end.

What? It's educational!

So, after about 9 hours together, from shopping and cooking, we ended up with about 15 meals. Combined with that and the Dream Dinners I already had I haven’t cooked a complete meal from “scratch” in like a month. It’s sooooo awesome!

The Bee is getting ready for some sweets

Maybe a dip in the water...

Really, he wanted in.

Get the candy

put it in the basket

That really was his favorite part, but a lot of people just put it in his basket for him. It took a long time for us to get these pictures. Since he doesn’t yet dare talk in two-word sentences, the best we got for “Happy Halloween” was “Ween!” sometimes elongated and often with a hand in the air in excitement. Trick or treat was “teet” and of course, his always present “Thank you.” He did steal many workers’ hearts for sure.

What are the odds? A witch and rock star have a cute little bumble bee!

The Bee collecting sweet stuff

Scary trunk..I mean, witch's lair

We think Britton had fun. We know he liked running around on the baseball field during crafts. When we got home he was just interested in taking his candy out of the pumpkin and putting it somewhere else. It was the days ahead that we would constantly hear “candy?” with a cute little sign.

Wednesday…the one before Halloween….we carved our pumpkins. Well, just one of them.

Brit colored his since we figured a knife wouldn’t be a super good idea.

Mark starting on his masterpiece

Brit likes the guts!

Yes, that’s his eye

Happy Jack

On Thursday we went Trick-or-Treating at a retirement home near by. Some of the residents were excited to see us, some of them couldn’t have cared less. But, the kids got to go running around in a new place, so that was fun.

On Friday at Musicmakers all the kids dressed up and then we decorated cookies afterward. Brit loves the sticks!

This is what you get when you have 2 toddlers decorating cookies.

Put your finger in the sprinkles

Dump them out

Get them all over the “designated work area”

Lick the frosting  and enjoy!

Not really, but I did see a post on a mom site yesterday about being so busy this week she might be exhausted by Christmas. After the week we had, I may agree with her a little bit.

A couple of weeks ago we went with Shanni, Teo and Marcos to the Pierce College Pumpkin Patch. We had a great time.

Brit was a “cowboy”

Brit’s first time on a horse. He was a little afraid at first, but had fun.

Pumpkins

Britton and Teo

Their favorite ride was the train. They went three times.

When we got home, Brit thought he’d sit on the pumpkins again.