Happy Halloween

I know Halloween isn't until Sunday but we celebrated a little early this year since we will be in Florida on Halloween. I let the boys put on their costumes to snap some pictures the other day. They had fun playing in the leaves with their costumes on, Ty may be one of the first light sabre toting monkeys around:) Sunday we went to Reiman Gardens and the boys got to do their trick or treating there since they will miss out this year. They had fun looking at all the costumes and of course collecting their candy. Ty really wanted his picture by the giant garden gnome. I had to have a mom moment and get their picture under one of the pretty trees, this picture was taken almost exactly this time last year...wow what a difference a year makes.
And randomly this is my cheesy little button while eating lunch one day, she is a goofball.

A Meal in the Life

Meal time around here is messy and loud. Callie has joined us at the table now and it adds to the messiness. I think she is picking up some bad habits as well, like this.




seriously the brothers are a loud influence!

Happy Birthday Callie Part 2

On 10/10/10 we celebrated Callie's first birthday with our families. We postponed it a weekend because lots of people were out of town or had previous engagements the weekend of Callies birthday. I made a cake for this party and it turned out okay. It was a little topsy turvey but it didn't fall over so that was good, my bottom layers did not turn out as thick as I would have liked, shouldn't trust that one cake mix would fill two 9 inch rounds, they were a little too thin and then my 6 inch layers were really thick...oh well learning experience. I also need to figure out something different with my frosting, it is hard to spread and not sticky enough, I have not found the balance between sticky enough to stick on the cake and crusty enough to smooth out yet, work in progress I guess:) Callie finally got to wear her Christmas present from last year, I bought a cute tutu and 1 onesie for her on etsy for her birthday party and fortunately it was warm enough she could wear it with no problems, since then Aunt Andrea has made her a this super cute tutu dress(that I needed to adjust on her but she was starting to pull on the flower so I just quick snapped the picture:) that I have been wanting to get her out in and snap some pictures in the leaves but so far it hasn't happened, hopefully by the end of the week so we still have some leaves left! The kids had a great time enjoying the beautiful weather and the swings. We did semi-homemade pizza's and salad for lunch, semi-homemade because we bought the crust from Sam's club(great deal by the way and good crust) and then topped them with whatever we wanted. After lunch Callie opened her presents with Daddy's and big brothers help. She got so many cute clothes! Gabe and Ty were a little disappointed with the lack of toys:) After presents we had a sleepy birthday girl so we did the cake right away. She did pretty well not touching the candle but by the end of the birthday song her curiosity started to get the better of her and we had to help her blow it out quickly. I think she liked her giant cupcake from the top of the cake. After cake she willingly took a very good nap! One of her gifts from the day was a homemade shrug/hoodie from Aunt Andrea, she looks so cute in it and we have gotten several compliments already. Aunt Andrea makes all kind of neat stuff you can see some of them here. We had so much fun celebrating Callie's birthday with our families, thanks so much to everyone for celebrating with us!

Fall Fun

Friday we made a trip up to the farm so the boys could ride in the combine. They missed out on harvest last year since we had a newborn and this year was starting to get away from us but we managed to make a short trip up. They boys both rode with Uncle Bone in the combine. They rode for over an hour until Bone called and said he thought they were getting a little bored:) I think they probably would have been better if they had been separate but I was actually surprised they made it as long as they did. This is what I saw when I came to pick them up.

Saturday morning we woke up to another beautiful fall day so we loaded the family in the Monte(this is what Callie looks like when she rides in it, it has t-tops and she loves the breeze blowing on her, she pretty much has that expression the whole time the car is moving) and went to get breakfast to eat in the park. The kids all loved their donuts. The colors in the background are so pretty. When they were done it was time to play for awhile. They all loved sliding and Gabe has now mastered the monkey bars as well. He was pretty proud of himself. Unfortunately we had lots of errands to run so we had to leave before they were ready but we have been loving this great weather!

Fall Family Picutres

We borrowed a nice camera from Danelle again(thanks so much, we appreciate your generosity!) and headed to campus to take some pictures. We decided instead of spending money on a ton of pictures that we never use up because there are so many or paying someone to take them we would give it a try ourselves so we did some of each kid since we never had them done when Gabe turned 5, Ty 3 and since Callie just turned 1 the timing worked out well. Here is the result, I think they turned out pretty cute for a bunch of amateurs(my Mom took the family pics, thanks Mom!)