That's a lot of pumpkins...

It's my favorite month of the year! And I don't officially count it kicked off until we take the mandatory pumpkin patch pictures. This year we were got to do it twice because you know we're taking them with both sets of cousins! (yes, I'm aware that I have a problem.)

First up- Vacek fam mis-tee-ve-us pumpkin patch! 

Emmy and Becks just want to look at each other and slap the pumpkins instead of taking pics. 

They are pretty sweet though! 

 Abs and Emmy are matching cuties. Abby was our styling director and no picture was complete unless every single person was holding a small pumpkin. She made sure that everyone had one.

 This picture makes me laugh ;)

 We had to go through a variety of "faces" to get everyone to look. This is everyone's "happy" faces, except for Sam and Becks. They're giving a little bit of "what tha" face and "are we really freaking doing this AGAIN" face.

 And next up : Sansom family pumpkin patch with custom made outfits custom of Gigi's NEW embroidery machine! (sure to make many further appearances on the blog.) We thought that this was pretty much how it was going to go...

But look how good we did! That's three kids looking in the general direction of the camera, and 1 is only a few weeks old! I was jumping like an idiot behind Laura, but you gotta do what you gotta do. These are the official pumpkin pictures we're talking about.

Mine STILL wouldn't look at the camera.. just at each other.

 But we got some interesting individual shots to show off the outfits. And Clara did GREAT!

 It is now OFFICIALLY Fall!

Back to the Beach!

We had so much fun on Labor Day and the weather was SO nice, that we decided to head back to the beach the next weekend. Even though Beckett has physically been at the beach, he hasn't actually been down to the water in a LONG time.  Of course, I forgot his freaking swimsuit, and Blake forgot his swimsuit, AND we forgot the pack and play. Yeah, we're losing it. Even thought B didn't have a swimsuit, he DID have a LOT of fun. He was SUPER busy, played in the sand...

 Even had time to make this for Emmy ;)

 He even played a little in the water. Emmy, on the other hand was very into it again. She wanted to jump and jump the waves.

We asked Dad to take a picture of us from "here up" and we followed my directions EXACTLY.

 One of the best moments of the weekend was when we all looked up and couldn't find Beckett. We realized then that he had taken off pushing to wagon loaded with all of our stuff down the beach. Mom caught up to him and he was going "Vrooom! Vroom!" having a great time.

 He's getting bigger and bigger everyday and I get surprised frequently when I realize he's doing unexpected "big kid" things. He's watched Emmy and GiGi blow bubbles many times now, and he just started doing it himself! He was pretty good. He really was more interested in pouring the bubbles, but we nixed that pretty quickly!

We headed down to the beach after B's birthday bash for a little R&R (mommy needed it.) We thought that this would be B's big time back to the beach.. he hasn't actually been in to the water in a while, but instead he took really long naps that meant he never actually made it down to the beach. I guess we was a tired boy too. There were lots of bubbles in pajamas on the deck.

 The cousins came down for the day. Since Emmy's cast was pretty much destroyed after the party, we said what the hell and just let her go down to the beach. Hopefully it's coming off in three days anyway! (crossing fingers!) If there's a crab or two in three, who cares at this point.

Abby was still intently focused on personally saving all the little animals that got caught in the surf.

While the rest of the kids dug in the sand and had , just a few, cheetos.

We hung out after everyone left and decided to make a long weekend out of it. We had plans to take Emmy to the new Pleasure Pier, have a nice lunch at my favorite, Mosquito Cafe, and hang out. No one told us that the entire Island shuts down the day after Labor Day. Every single thing, except for Moody Gardens was closed. Seriously, everything. We headed out to Moody Gardens for about the 10,000th time. 

Our of everything, Beckett was most impressed with the butterflies. he REALLY REALLY wanted to eat one. You can see we saved this one at the last possible second. I mean, seriously, if I TRIED to catch one I couldn't and he managed to almost snag one and he's ONE!

After Moody Gardens we thought we ended up taking the kids to pretty much, a bar to eat. It was seriously the only the place that was open. I have now taken a baby carrier, and a sleeping baby into a bar. Guess I can check that one off the bucket list.

The Beck-a-Roo is 1!!!

Somehow , I looked up and a year has passed. I cannot tell you how happy this little guy makes me. He's quick to laugh, pretty easy going, mischievous, and busy.  Happy Birthday Beckaroo!

We celebrated with family and friends at the Splash Pad down the street from our house. Of course, it was 100% humidty and almost 100 degrees. I have sworn off our outside parties for life. DONE!

We had a mustache and ice cream theme. You can see the tiny mustache on the invite. So I drew from there,plus mustaches are just fun! 

The adorable cakes went with the theme. That's a melted ice cream cone on the smash cake.

There was JUST enough wind to make all the decorations go NUTS =) We made sugar coated cones filled with vintage candy for favors. 

Here's the birthday boy (who wouldn't stand still to take a picture of his shirt.)

All the kids spent some time playing in the water. We just went ahead and gave up and taped up Emmy's cast with plastic bags and mustache duct tape. That worked well for about ten minutes. Oh well! We get it off next week.

After a little splashing we let Beckett have his cake. i thought he'd really dig in, but he spent most of his time focued on the cone. Once he figured out it was full of icing it was all over =)

The kids enjoyed all the mustache goodies while we ate. 

And then the ICE CREAM TRUCK showed up! Beckett and Emmy got to jump in the truck and pass out ice cream to all their friends. 

After everyone had their treats it was Giant bubble time! Beckett really had a blast while Pops helped him pop the bubbles.

You know it's a good party when your shirt is filthy and you're flat out exhausted =) I think the best part of the enture thing was that I really think that Beckett loved every minute of his party. He giggled and danced and squealed the entire time. 

At the afterparty, we opened gifts and Beckett managed to stay up for an entire three hours before taking a nap =)

The princesses played and played and ate a LOT of candy.

....and we all realized that Blake should never ever, under any circumstances grow a mustache)

Happy Birthday little man! We love you very very much!