November

 

Happy Birthday, Grampy!

Arch or Arc?

Bedtime Conversation:

Me: "I drove by the arch today."
Brody: "Did you see Noah??"
Me: "Nope. I didn't have Allison with me."
Brody: "Well, did you see all his animals??"

It took a second but I finally caught on.

Someone does not want to nap...

Happy Halloween

Grandma and Grandpa hosted a Halloween Party Saturday evening.  Quite the festive event, complete with a wiener roast!

Cohen the monarch butterfly. Harper The Flower

 

Natalie the cute little Cowgirl

Sweet baby Brooke was a little angel.  A week old and already had a costume…quite impressive if you ask me. 

 

Will the adorable little puppy

The Jones’ family got in the spirit of the holiday.  Eli wanted to be the big bad wolf so naturally the rest of them were the three little pigs.  Little Crewe was a pretty sweet little pig!

Woody and his trusty pal Bullseye

(Woody had a meltdown after this picture and almost missed the party.  He talked about being Woody for Halloween for weeks, but when it came time to get dressed, he wasn’t so sure.)

Not to be left, Cowgirl Jesse and Buzz Lightyear joined the fun too!

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Curtis Orchard 2012

 

Sunday, we took advantage of the beautiful fall weather and visited Curtis Orchard and Pumpkin Patch.  I do believe everyone within driving distance of Champaign had the same idea as we did.  I do believe everyone still had fun though. 

1st pony ride for Brody…he really enjoyed it and later told us he should have told his horse to hurry up and catch up with the girl in front of him!  Riley flat out refused a ride.  Eli at least walked up to the pony before deciding against it.

 

Riley was quite content just playing on all the play sets scattered around.

They each picked out a pumpkin straight from the patch, we bought some yummy apples and to top off the visit they each got a small container of apple cider.  We are definitely ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving with all the pumpkins we have gathered from our adventures!

Riley

For the last couple weeks, Ri has been sleeping in Brody's room in the second twin bed. He also has started to have more interest in going potty, but only at home. This weekend we decided to take down the crib so it is ready to head north for Cohen and Harper's baby brother or sister. Ri also decided that he is now a big boy and that he wanted to wear underwear! At points in time, I never thought we would ever have one boy out of diapers let alone working on training the second. He was so proud of himself that he had to call Grampy and Grammy and tell them he was wearing underwear! Julie says the farmer's almanac states this week should be a good week to train him, so here we go...

Pumpkin Painting 2012

 

.  Painting pumpkins…so much easier to do than cleaning out pumpkin innards! 

combine driving

Last Saturday, the boys helped me start the fall clean up of flower beds.  They both loaded pile after pile of chopped off flowers into their gator and wagon, drove it to the dump, unloaded and came back for more.  Towards the end, they were getting bored with yard work so they turned their pile of yard debris into the their combine.  Riley is driving this particular round.  They eventually ended up fighting over who was going to be Uncle Patty, Uncle Bill, Grampy or Daddy.  It was fun to observe while it lasted!

Chef's in Training

Pumpkin patch

Today, the three year olds from preschool had their first field trip. We had perfect weather and a nice group of well behaved munchkins. They wore me out though! (Brody is off to the left. Right by Mrs. Jack)

Running home...

The boys like to run home from Grammy and Grampy's.  Brody sprints down the sidewalk, stopping at each drive way between our two houses.  Riley takes his sweet time, observing the world around him, picking up treasures, etc.  This particular evening, it was quite the drawn out affair getting from point a to point b, but he made it and had a collection in his pocket to show for it. 

95!!!

Yesterday, Kurt’s Great-Grandma turned 95.  We attended her surprise party on Sunday and I believe she was very surprised. 

Happy Birthday Grandma Helen!

fall fun

 

Happy Birthday, Grammy!

Our knight's in shining armor

Snuggle bugs

Sweet little Crewe!

Harper Rosey

Happy Birthday, Cohen!

 Over the weekend, we helped Cohen celebrate his 4th birthday.  Mr. Cohen decorated his own star shaped cake and I do believe his vision of the perfect four year old birthday cake came to life!Happy Birthday, Cohen Lyle!

Please note that Riley is wearing fur lined crocs that he found in the basket and carrying a baby food jar with his collection of stuff in it.  I tried to hold his jar so he could ride, but that was not acceptable. 

Happy Birthday, Kurt!

the.best.day.ever.

at least in riley's eyes. 

How did they get so big??

I looked in the backseat yesterday after we pulled into Julie's drive. Riley looked so grown up and Brody is in school! How did that happen so quickly?

Demolition!

I'm a wee bit lazy...I have better pictures on the camera, but it's so easy to use the ones from my phone.  This is a picture of the built in closets that used to reside in the toy room, which used to be our bedroom before we had kids.  The room is in the very front of the house and many moons ago used to be more of a front parlor that had archways making it open to the rest of the house.  As my great-grandmother aged, she converted the room into a bedroom for herself in the 60's or 70's...my dad's memory is a little fuzzy on when it actually all took place. 

 

Kurt has had the BEST help possible to get this project completed!

 

Kurt is in the dining room and on this side of the wall, there were built in shelves.  The wall you can see in the toy room that has the pictures hanging and the alphabet displayed will soon become a new wall of built ins - bigger and better than what we had. 

 

There is still much left to do, but the view from the dining room table is improving greatly...well if you can get past the stuff that is just shoved out of the way to make demo possible.