Anyone know how to avoid the new Blogger fees?

I've been attempting to publish the last 4 1/2 years of this blog into a book or actually 2 books (1 of 2008-2010 & one of 2011-2012) as my sister sent me a 20% off plus free shipping deal from a site she has printed before.  This will rid me somewhat of the guilt I have for not being a better journaler/scrapbooker over the years.  But, as I was attempting to add a few photos to some posts that I had slideshows on (which obviously don't print), I was informed that I'd reached my 1 GB of storage in Picassa Web Albums.  Apparently you have to pay $2.49 a month for 25 times that much storage (which at the moment seems a little bit ridiculous) or maybe you can upload photos to Google +, where you have unlimited storage.  Does anyone do that?  Anyway, just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to avoid the fees, keep your blog going, & not make the process too complicated :).  Does any of this even make sense to anyone?  I probably just need to upload less pictures or use a lower resolution as my friends suggested in the future and delete older years of posts in order to avoid the fee.  But, boy my kids would miss having it all on the blog for super easy access to the last 4 1/2 years!  Oh decisions!

Trunk-or-Treat 2012

Life has been a little crazy lately with sick kiddos, a trip to Texas, family visiting, etc. etc., so I have some catching up to do!  But, let's start with Halloween.  We aren't real big into dressing up for Halloween at our house.  Our kids love dressing up and we actually have our kids' costumes in their dress up box in the basement and they love dressing up often.  I remember one year when we decided to do a family Toy Story theme.  That ended in a tantrum (someone changed their mind once they saw all the pretty princesses at the party) that lasted the whole entire party and really put a damper on our family's mood.  I got some pretty good pictures that showed the kids' moods that year - posted in November of 2009.  So, ever since then, we keep things simple around here!  I've even toyed with the idea of taking extra costumes for in the car.  Drew was Spider-man this year, the girls were witches (they loved these matching outfits from our Witch Fest), and our neighbor let us use this darling little lion costume for Nathan.  Somehow, Andy convinced me 5 minutes before we had to go to the neighborhood trunk-or-treat that we should wear our old matching firefighter shirts (that I found on clearance for a dollar or two when we were first married) and put a bunch of yucky black make-up on to look like we had been fighting fires.  Of course everyone wondered what we were.  Kassi even thought I was a duck because we had gloves sticking out of our back pockets?!?  People asked Andy if he was a chimney sweep or a coal miner.  ;)!

 This cute little "good" witch decided to wash the table and the amount of water left behind required a lot of drying!  It was fun to watch her be a good little helper when she is typically going around singing her "I'm a mean old witch with a hat" song.  I should post that for any of you who haven't had the privilege to see.  It is adorable if you ask me.

Nathan was the only sad one that night - and thankfully that only lasted 5 or 10 minutes when we first got his costume on.  I guess I didn't prepare him well enough.

 When the girls saw me face painting a spider on Drew, they decided they needed a spider too.

 Nathan was a very cowardly lion at first, but a very happy lion once the candy started coming!

 Oh so cool Spiderman Drew!

 And, one hot fire fighter (if you ask me)!

 Jesi decorated a little bag with her name, a broom, a hat & some bats!  She apparently thought she'd get a decent amount of candy with her little brown lunch sack.

 Kassi on the other hand was counting on a whole backpack full of candy!  She does have a sweet tooth - which unfortunately would explain her recent dental appointment.

 We couldn't resist a picture of our little lamb with Kassi's little friend sheep.

 A few of our good friends in the neighborhood.

 One of our kids' favorite babysitters.  Our little witch decided to be shy and cover her face with her hat!

This hand moved - I think it scared me more than the kids!

 This motor home was too cute - about as cute as these buddies!

 My sister had this great, simple way to decorate her van like a monster.  I was all about simple this year!

 We enjoyed spending time with our old neighbors that moved a couple miles away back in August.  They joined us for the trunk-or-treat and a little bit of trick-or-treating afterwards.  We swapped this ninja costume for Nathan's lion costume.

 Drew may have left a trail of candy for other people with his bag!  He had a giant grocery sack though!  I think he and Kassi think alike!

 We discovered that some nearby neighbors make their own cotton candy for trick-or-treaters, so that will for sure be a tradition from here on out!  If you want to join us next year, let us know!!!

 Another tradition will surely be visiting Drew's 4th grade teacher down the street (who we are SO grateful for) who has this amazing jack-o-lantern that lights up and changes colors and could entertain the kids for hours!  I was a little embarrassed because as we were chatting, Kassi ripped off a piece of mostly dead, dried flowers behind her and fed it to the pumpkin witch!  This is the only picture I got of the kids actually trick-or-treating because the older kids were too fast!!!  It was a fun filled Halloween.  I am sad to say that we were planning on painting pumpkins that afternoon before the trunk-or-treat and they are still sitting on my front porch unpainted!!!  I'm toying with the idea of still doing it this week - but we shall see!