Meet Buggy!

It's pretty common that when it gets warm out, those Asian beatle bugs come out pretty heavily. Well, apparently one day last week Eli decided to befriend and name one of them "Buggy", and the kids spent a good part of the afternoon hanging out with it! Even Hannah was walking around saying, friend! and Buggy! and holding her hand out to it whenever she saw one of them. And of course at day's end we had to find him a little bed and say goodnight. Too cute!

MOPS outing to the pumpkin patch!

Early last week our MOPS group had an outing to a local pumpkin patch. It ended up being quite a drive (a full hour!) but definitely worth it! Check out all the fun we had!

animals for petting

always a favorite

there's Hannah!

wonderfully-creative water pump ducky race

the kids got a little train ride on the way back to the pumpkin patch

haha! Eli's got his hands folded and in his lap. love it!

tunnels to crawl through

fun slide set-up

old fire truck to climb around in

a wagon full of corn to play and dig in!

huge hay bales to hide in and climb onour adorable friends

Can't wait to go again next year!

Forget the list!

We're going outside to PLAY! This is the first we've seen sun AND it's warmed up enough to go outside for more than a couple weeks straight now! It's still a little bit breezy but nothing to complain about! It feels so open now that the field's been harvested!Okay, I'm really NOT totally clawing Hannah in this picture!! I believe I was just tickling her!

very cute!

LOVE this one!

totally loving the sky in these

Pumpkin patch!

I love fall, and I especially love the traditions that come with the season! One of my all-time favorites is going to a pumpkin patch every year. Hay rides, picking a pumpkin, getting cider, and attempting a family photo. This place gave a hay ride all the way back to where the pumpkins were (it's a huge orchard). It was a fun ride, however, Eli got stung by a little bee or something, so we were kind of distracted with keeping an eye on it, despite the fact that Eli said it was okay. And when we got to the pumpkins I felt a little rushed because the hay ride was waiting there for us to take everyone back. So we found our pumpkin and only snapped a couple pictures before getting back on our ride. It was a COLD afternoon but the sun did come out for us! Thank you, God! We've been praying all week for some sunshine! We had a fun time, and now we're looking forward to going to another pumpkin patch in a couple weeks with our MOPS friends! But for this time, here are the pictures...

The rest of the family looks surprisingly awesome in this pic, but I'm in mid blink here! Grr...

The windmill outside the store building had Eli's name on it!

There and back again.

This past weekend the kids and I went to Oklahoma for my cousin Matthew's wedding to his lovely bride Samantha. It was a "short" trip. We left Thursday and returned Sunday.

It was a bit of a rough start to the trip. The kids did O.K. in the car, the drive was horribly looong and boring (definitely no car BINGO this time, there was literally nothing to see for miles and miles and miles), it poured rain the entire 9 hours making for lousy driving conditions, and half-way there I realized I'd forgotten our entire bathroom bag carrying all my hair stuff, makeup, shower things, glasses, etc as well as our pack-n-play for Hannah. Soo... as soon as we got to our destination, we hit up the Walmart and I re-bought everything except a curling iron since I have no need for another. Ugh! Let's hope I never forget our bathroom bag again, because it cost a lot buying it all at once! But at least now I'll have everything on hand already when we run out at home.

I thought all hotels these days used pack-n-plays as their "cribs" but apparently this one still uses these old school ones. It's smaller than a pack-n-play, has a crinkly "mattress", and sits high with that bar across the middle. I decided to try Hannah on the floor instead of her sleeping in that thing, afraid she just might be able to climb out. And what can I say, she's a big girl! We had no issues with her not being confined in a bed! I imagine it helped having the room so dark since there were no outside windows in our room. What a relief that it worked so well!

the kids having their morning milk, watching cable

instead of having a big window in our hotel room, we had a sliding door that went out in this atrium/pool area. The pool was fenced off with tables all outside of it. All the family's rooms were right off the pool so we could use the atrium as our hang-out area during the day. Perfect for the kids' bedtime and naptimes and a place for the kids to run around a bit!

Friday we didn't have any plans except for the rehearsal dinner we were invited to that night. It was much too cold to go outside to a park or anything, and I didn't want to stay in the hotel all morning either, so I surprised the kids by taking them back to Walmart to ride all the quarter machine rides. Eli loved it, Hannah was terrified. She did have fun though, as long as the ride wasn't going, and that's the important part.

With the wedding at 2pm on Saturday I really needed to wear the kids out fast, so they'd be able to nap super early. So what better way to tire them out than to let them go in the pool! Again, Eli loved it, Hannah was terrified. After several attempts with Hannah I finally had my mom take her to just play forever in the bathtub while I stayed in the pool with Eli. My dad helped too and joined us. We all had fun! And it certainly worked because the kids both napped at 12pm without a fuss! And by 2 we were ready to go again!

wedding day!

programs were in Spanish, ceremony was done in English with a Spanish translatorseriously beautiful bride

beautiful reception

my cousin Christina (groom's sister) and I

On base there were free fire safety hats, pencils, etc sitting out, so I made sure the kids got some lil' hats. Here are my two little fire fighters!

I love Eli's cute innocent face in this oneEli calls it "fire truck man"

The innocence of a child.

I made sugar cookies during the kids' nap today and when Eli came downstairs, he saw some fresh cookies on the pan and said, "Pancakes!" I love little moments like that, too cute!

It's Thomas!

Wow, I didn't mean to wait so long to get these pictures posted! I ran into computer troubles when I originally tried to get these up and then I kind of forgot about it. Anyhoo, right after our Chicago visit we headed to my parents for the weekend which included a Thomas the Train ride at the Boone scenic railway. Eli's favorite thing ever is trains, so you can imagine how excited he was. But of course we made it a family event (minus Kevin cuz of his work), so Hannah got in on the fun too! There was tons there! Aside from the ride itself, there was a a tent with lots of train tables set up to play at and coloring pages to do, a train car for story time, a blow-up tunnel, pics with Sir Topham Hatt (Eli wanted this so we waited in line), and a petting zoo! Fun day, and lots of pics!

train ride

the coloring station.
both kids backed back out of it before getting through, but that's okaya sweet ending to the whole trip