How was everyone’s first day of November? Mine was pretty normal. I enjoyed some extra quiet time this morning thanks to M sleeping in until 8 am. That never happens. Perhaps there’s something to the 2 hours of trick-or-treating? Too bad I woke up sore and achy as well.

Today I headed to the store for groceries. While at the store, something hit me. Christmas decorations. Lots of Christmas decorations. Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas, but I cannot get into the spirit until after Thanksgiving. Although, maybe I could benefit from doing so. Preparing earlier for Christmas can’t be a bad thing, huh? You still won’t see this up in my house until after Thanksgiving though.

I actually thought it would be fun for me to organize and host a Blogger Holiday Gift Share, where we each get a secret buddy to send a present to in December. If I did that, I would have to embrace the spirit before the end of November. Would anyone be interested? Or is there something like that typically set up? I don’t want to step on any toes! Plus, I would be happy to help out with it as kind of a last blogging-hoorah act before the baby comes. Which actually brings me to the first installment of my November Q + A series!

For this series, I will feature one or two questions per day in the month of November, depending on how many I receive and if I decide to also do them on weekends. Now, let’s get started with Question #1:

Do you plan to keep blogging regularly after the baby is born?

Short Answer:

Long Answer: I  mentioned before in my post on scheduling my priorities that blogging is one of those “me” things that I truly need in my life. Blogging, along with workouts, will continue to serve as my two outlets to fulfill my interests after Braedon arrives. And I refuse to feel badly for taking time for these things.

After Makenzie was born, I went through a bit of a funk for awhile. It wasn’t anything serious or even close to post-partum depression, but I definitely felt out of sorts. I remember crying to Peter that I hated feeling like my only purpose was to be a “booby bar”. A lot of that negativity and frustration came from not having anything to call my own. For that reason, I fully intend to continue blogging regularly.

I would like to keep somewhat close to what I have set up in recent months here, but don’t have any set plans on posting once/twice/every other day. I will NOT put pressure on myself to blog. I can get posts up pretty quickly these days, so I don’t plan on it being a huge issue to continue as I hope. Basically, I will go with the flow and keep it up because it does help me relieve tension.

I honestly cannot wait for the path the blog takes after this baby, which I have a whole post planned closer to my due date. Don’t worry – it’s nothing crazy! I just feel so excited to share my progress on getting back in shape (not that I’m out of shape now), adjusting to a life with two children, continuing to find balance in everything, taking up new challenges, and more. I don’t think I could refrain from blogging! It’s that huge of a positive outlet for me. My family will always take precedence, but my passions have value too. So I will make time for them and you will still see a lot of Tina! I’m not quitting on you, yet. If ever. 😀

• How important is blogging to you? Is it a priority? Why or why not?
• How soon do you get into the holiday spirit? Also, would you be interested in the blogger gift exchange if I set something up?
• If you haven’t yet and would like to – ASK ME ANYTHING!!!!

Good morning! I can hardly believe Halloween has come and gone and now it is November. Hard to believe we only have a little over three weeks until Thanksgiving here in the US and then only a little over 50 days until Christmas! Before we move on to prepping for other holidays, though, I must recap our Halloween night.

I could sum it up in two words – fun! And exhausting. That would not make much of a blog post though, so I will add a little more detail. After church and relaxing some in the afternoon, my parents arrived to hang out with us. They wanted to see little M all dressed up and have dinner together. Plus, they would be our candy passer outers while we were out with M (to the total SEVEN kids we had show up – lots of leftovers to handle).

We got M all dressed up, for the third time, and were ready to head out at around 6 pm. Except no one was out yet. No one. So, we did dinner first! I made a crockpot vegetable stew from a recipe my friend gave me, which I slightly modified. You can figure it was easy and healthy with me making it. Fortunately, it was incredibly tasty too.

Italian Vegetable Stew

• 1 red onion, diced
• 2 zucchini, diced
• 1 small package frozen vegetable soup mix
• 1 can Navy beans (or other white bean)
• 1 can Italian seasoned diced tomatoes
• 1 can vegetable broth (low sodium if you can find it)
• 1 can condensed tomato soup
• 1 packet pesto mix

Simple place all the ingredients in the crockpot. Stir to combine and cook on high 4 hours or low 8 hours. I think it could have gone without the condensed tomato soup. Or I would try to find one without HFCS as the 3rd ingredient.

After dinner, we began to head out. Peter, Makenzie, & I…

…and of course the little man came along for the ride as well.

How do you like my “costume”? 😉 I didn’t get many pictures trick or treating because it got dark fast. We started at 7 in the neighborhood next to us. It took a lot longer than we anticipated. We only hit a very small section of it, but there were so many hills and each house had a ton of steps to climb up (or down) to the front porches.

Holy leg workout! Plus, the entire neighborhood consists of one big hill after another. After making the small loop there, we headed back to our neighborhood. We considered just going inside since it was already 8:15, but knew we had to stop by Peter’s brother’s house to say hello and a couple of our neighbors. So we hit up 4 or 5 more houses to visit them, then came home around 8:45. I was beat! Lugging a 25 lb kid around that long gets exhausting. And we can’t forget the jack o’ lantern I was hauling either.

We spent a few more minutes talking with my parents and then quickly went to bed after they left. By the way, I love my mom! She did dishes and cleaned up some to help me out while I was gone. Thank you, mommy!!!

Alright, that was our night. But I can’t leave out the one creepy moment. It was Halloween after all. After visiting one house, we turned around to start heading back down the driveway only to look up and see this…

  [source]

…standing at the end of the long driveway, somewhat across the street, under the street light. Freaky!!! He just stood there staring like Michael Myers until we were down the driveway and moving down the street away from him again. If he started walking after us with the creepy Michael Myers walk or if I had seen him again that night, I think I would have screamed. There’s my Halloween moment for the evening. Now, have a great Monday!

• Do you like scary movies? I used to love them a lot more. They scare me more now than back in the day. I don’t do gory ones at all now…only the psychologically freaky ones.
• Look for my first day of the Q + A series in tonight’s post. ASK ME ANYTHING if you haven’t already.
• Congratulations to Julie on her wedding!!!! Love her and I wish her the absolute best. 🙂 Next time I see you, Julie, you will have been married over half a year! And to think, we talked wedding this past summer. Time flies!