Fall Hike

On the same Saturday that we got our pumpkins we visisted a beautiful state park not too far away and took a lovely Autumn hike. Caleb loves hiking and it was just so gorgeous and relaxing. It was perfect!
Let me highlight a few of my favorite pictures.

I love that Mackenzie and Justin are lifting the same leg. I think this picture is precious.

And this picture is definitely frame worthy. Perfect lighting, colors, and even smiles. I love my family!

I'm thankful for...Friends and Pumpkins!

About a month ago one of my old roommates and dear friends traveled with her husband and wee son to attend a wedding in Omaha. Well, they live in Chicago, you see, and we live right between Omaha and Chicago. And I haven't seen them in a few years. They've never met Mackenzie and Caleb was 2 weeks old last they saw him. And I'd never met their little boy! I insisted they stop by! They accomodated me and were able to stop by for about an hour while they fed their sweet babe, pottied, and just took a comfortable rest. It was so good to see them! I wish they lived closer, but at least a visit was made possible. Another should happen in the future...thanks for coming guys!


Justin's been super busy this semester (I might have mentioned that...) so on Saturdays if he actually has a Saturday that he feels like he can relax a bit on, we try to pack it full as much as we reasonably can.
One such Saturday we decided to go get our pumpkins for Halloween. We visisted Kroul Farm again, our emerging traditional adventure.

 

We had fun picking out pumpkins...

but Caleb for some reason did not want his picture taken. Silly boy! Pretty pumpkins though, yeah?

An update on me..and Justin!

I've been doing a lot of fun stuff for me lately, too. I've been making burp rags, I'm almost finished with Caleb's Halloween costume (a Fireman!), I added a button hole and a button to one of Justin's shirt, mended some pants of his...and...


I finshed my shirt! Some of you might recall I was in a sewing class last semester (Feb-May) that my so awesome and kind neighbor taught. Well, I made pajama pants and this skirt during the class, and I was supposed to make the shirt, but it took a bit longer and I worked on it all summer long. I finally finished it! It's not perfect, but I'm proud of it and proud that I knew enough to do it! So, here's the complete outfit!


In addition to all that, I've started a preschool with Caleb twice a week, I've been going to the gym 4 times a week (Yahoo!), and I am now the Wolf Cub Scout Den Leader. HAHA! It's been feen, the two weeks. A huge learning curve, at least for me! I've never done scouts before. But I'm excited to get to know the boys--they're 8 years old-- and learn more about all of it!

As for Justin. He's just busy. He did get to participate in IMOM this last Saturday: "Iowa Mission Of Mercy." It's a group of volunteers, many of them dental students, who travel to various parts of Iowa to perform free dental care. They set up in a gym or some big building, and just do fillings and such that needs to be done. So, Justin go to do anesthesia a lot. He was really excited! He'll get to do his first filling on a real patient this Thursday. He's a bit nervous about that one!

We are doing great!

Brother, Sister and Birthday Parties

One morning I was too tired to get up so I asked Caleb to get Mackenzie some breakfast (a rare occasion, don't get too jealous. Plus, imagine the mess!). But then an even greater gift was hearing them play nicely together. I came down the stairs as quietly as I could and spied them sitting together reading books. I love little moments like these (I think I've mentioned before) when they are friends. I ran upstairs to grab the camera but Caleb heard me and kind of ruined the magic, but I still caught a trace of it. :)



And our little Mackenzie is a nut. She's just crazy! She runs around, grunts, throws royal tantrums if we touch something that she wants, or if we don't, and has an obsession with her binkies. We say she "chain binkies." Working on that one. Here's a little example of how much she love them. Even if she has one in her mouth, if she spies another one, she insists of having it, too. Usually it's just in her hand, but this time she decided she could try put both in her mouth. And she did.

Those beautiful brown eyes get a very mischievous gleam when she knows she's doing something she shouldn't be doing: throwing food on the floor, walking all over library books, throwing things down the stairs, getting her brother into trouble. She's going to be a wild one!

Caleb has been invited to two separate birthday parties the past couple of weeks, which has been a lot of fun! I decided to go cheap with the first one and so for the gift bag we decorated a white lunch bag with stamps and stickers. Caleb had a blast!

 

 

And at the end of one of the birthday parties, we were walking back to the car and there was another of those friend moments. Walking side by side, Caleb guiding Mackenzie softly and patiently...but I was too slow with my camera. Hopefully they stay friends!

 

Pig Tails and Birdies

As usual, I've been busy! And I haven't taken very many pictures to document it. So there ya go.

Two important things about the above picture: Mackenzie's pig tails and the sticker on her left arm. She finally has enough hair to do pig tails! We call her "Boo" from Monsters Inc. When I do her hair like this. We think it's so cute! And the sticker says "Romney." We walked down to the pancake breakfast at our Institute building at one of the first home games, which happens to take us past the football stadium and all the crazy tailgaters and vender food tents. Well, on the way home, we kept passing these people wearing "Romney" stickers and we wanted one! so the next person we saw wearing one, we asked. And they happened to have a whole roll of stickers and generously gave each of us one. So we are Romney supporters!

And this picture is just cute of Mackenzie with Daddy reading a book.

Our local zoo (it's an hour away! lol) has various days free. In September, it was every Friday. So we went one day. It was really lovely. It's not a very big zoo so we can easily get through it all in a couple of hours and still see everything. This was Mackenzie's favorite part: the Parakeet house. They were flying around us and you could buy food, but of course I didn't want to spend that money, so we just watched them fly around and Mackenzie just signed "bird" the whole time and chased them around. I love learning what gets my kids excited!

My two kiddos at the monkey observatory! You can kind of see Mackenzie's chunky legs...but mostly she looks cute in general. Caleb is certainly a caring big brother! I can't believe how big they are!