A Journey Worth Remembering: Harry Potter & Another Visitor

Oops! I skipped Halloween! I'll squeeze it in here quickly. This is our pumpkin. Ummmm... let me clarify that. This is our Jack-O-Lantern. We only did one this year and I'm fine with that. After five days Emily told me she liked the scary black spiderwebs I put inside. Yeah, I didn't put any spiderwebs inside "Jack." He soon found his way to our trash.

Since our summer movie marathon of Harry Potter my kids love Love LOVE all things HP. Avery was Hermione and her friend was Bellatrix (total coincidence they both say. Yeah, right! I say)

So for 2011 Halloween we had Princess Emily (again), Hermione Granger, Spiderman, and Ninja Jake.

I love the after Halloween sales. I was able to plan a HP party for the kids. I found so many great ideas from Pinterest. (I'm obsessed!) So anyways, the kids each got an owl with post inviting them to the party.

This was my platform 9 3/4. Although Josh is crawling under it you can walk through it, safely.

Some of the food from the party. I forgot to get the main course which was spaghetti & meatballs but of course labeled in a fun HP way. Desserts were also fun.

Doesn't Jake look like Harry? I wasn't really anyone. Bellatrix maybe?

So we had (starting from the smallest) Draco Malfoy, Professor McGonagall, Harry Potter, and Hermione Granger. I lined up a quidditch lesson and short match to play outside.

Brooms and flying lessons are a must for every wizard. In this case we were short on brooms so we had to take turns.

Dementors loomed. Luckily, Olivander's wand shop was open so we could get our wands. "EXPECTO PETRONUM!!"

It was a fun day! We also let the kids watch the last HP. That was the biggest reason for this party. #1 to see if I could pull it off. #2 they'd been asking about the watching the last movie. #3 I thought it'd be fun.
On to Thanksgiving. Mom came to visit for a couple of weeks. It was really fun. Except for that week off of school. Man the kids gave me a run for my patience. I lost it a few times! Ok, maybe a lot of times. Just before their school break Emily had a Thanksgiving play. I know she's hard to spot. Look in the middle section, second row, first girl on the right.

I feel bad for not taking many pictures but we had a really good time! We had another HP marathon, well, one dose of HP a day. My mom had never seen them! I had to "ssshhh" the kids at least a dozen times each movie. Like I said test of patience. We did some Christmas shopping. We had a great Thanksgiving with the Allred family- all 25 of them. It was crazy fun with lots of food! Yumm!

A picture of Grandma Kathy and the kids. (there always has to be one kid pulling some kind of face. why is that? I should pull out my camera and make them practice smiling nicely more often.)