November Update

Wow long time no blog.  It hasn't been a boring November exactly I guess I just haven't taken very many pictures.  We celebrated Carl's birthday on the 19th.  The kids were pretty excited to help him blow out the candles on his birthday cinnamon rolls.

Those yellow towel things in the picture were part of maybe the best part of Carl's birthday weekend.  They came from the ISU vs. Oklahoma State game the night before.  We had tickets from Carl's work and a babysitter(Thanks Danielle!) and were able to go watch our very own Cyclones take down the #2 Cowboys in 2 overtimes!  The day of his birthday my parents watched the kiddos so we could enjoy both of our birthday presents with great seats to the musical Wicked in Des Moines.  We were going to celebrate afterwards by meeting everyone at Hickory Park for supper since we went to a matinee performance but we forgot the All State Music festival was in town that day and wow talk about a busy place.  We went somewhere else to eat and all had a great day celebrating Carl's birthday.  The rest of our month was relatively uneventful of course uneventful with 3 adventurous little ones can sometimes be rather messy.

If you guessed that is powdered sugar all over you'd be right.  Callie decided to make it snow in the kitchen I guess.  Look at that face.  Guilty but loving that sweetness.

We spent the end of this month celebrating Thanksgiving with my family and then heading up to Algona to help out at the tree farm Friday morning through Sunday evening.  I have lots of pictures from our time in the trees but I'll save that for the next post.  Just so I have a good start to December:)

Belated Happy Halloween

RapunzelCaptain America
and Iron Manwish you a belated Happy Halloween!

They had so much fun trick of treating this year. As you can see Callie was ready to go!Callie was Rapunzel but she thought she was Cinderella, every princess to her is Cinderella but since she got this cute outfit and a doll to match for her birthday from my parents we just had her be Rapunzel she didn't know the difference and she was very happy to get to be a princess for the evening. Before we left for trick or treating I made the kids pose for a few pictures. Gabe liked the fact that he didn't have to smile since no one knew if he was or not anyway:)
After the picture torture was over we started off down our street. Our neighborhood is great for trick or treating, there are lots of kids and almost every house had its light on. I was amazed at some of the stuff the kids got, juice boxes, a bag full of candy with a full sized candy bar, a toothbrush and a full sized candy bar, etc. Ty kept saying "I love trick or treating"
Callie had slight obsession with the dogs at a few of the houses we stopped at, if there was a dog near the door she didn't want to leave.
When we were done in our neighborhood we stopped by Danielle's house so the kids could trick or treat. She had a special treat for them and they loved getting to see her house.
after that we ended at Grandma and Grandpa's house and had some pizza and watched the Great Pumpkin. It was a fun night!

Fall Helpers

We finally got around to raking and mowing up our leaves the other day. The three kiddos were pretty excited to help out with the fall chores.I think their favorite part of helping out though was being being weights to hold all the leaves down while Daddy hauled them to the back mulch pile.
and of course jumping in the big piles of leaves is always a favorite too.
To go along with fall we finally carved our pumpkins the other night. Gabe had been begging to do it for quite awhile and he finally convinced Daddy to do it Saturday night. The other two kiddos kind of ditched Gabe to do the yucky pulling out of the pumpkin guts all by himself. They just stood there and watched him and said "Oh yuck"Gabe with is goopy, pumpkin hands
Ty wanted a silly faced jack o lanternCallie of course wanted a puppyGabe wanted a scary jack o lantern but by the time Carl got his carved it was getting too dark for a good picture of him with it. Here is his scary jack o lantern all lit up though.
and all three jack o lanterns.
Today I have 3 very excited kiddos to go trick or treating and to watch The Great Pumpkin one more time. I'm sure I will have some pictures of my little trick or treaters soon!

Quick Trip and Football

This past Friday my mom, the kids and I headed up to Algona for a quick trip. My Grandma Marj is still in the nursing home while her broken leg heals and if you know my Grandma Marj you know that she is VERY restless to get home. We thought a visit from 3 of her favorite little people might make her day and weekend a little brighter so we headed up Friday morning to see her. When we arrived she was resting in her chair but quickly was wide eyed when she saw who was there to visit her. We also surprised her with a few new pictures of the kids and a picture book full of pictures from this past summer and fall. Here are the kiddos showing her their pictures.Gabe was over there showing her the book too but suddenly when the camera came out he was camera shy...go figure. After a visit with Great Grandma we headed out to the farm so Mom could deliver a few things. While she was getting her things done I took the boys on a gator ride down to the bridge to throw rocks. There is a large pile of rocks off to the side of the bridge and the boys think it is great fun to throw them in and hear them splash. The funny thing is that was one of my favorite things to do when I was younger too. We used to go over to the bridge by my great aunt and uncles and throw in big rocks. There was a wire that ran across the creek too that we got bonus points for hitting as well:) Here are the boys with some of their rocks.and of course no quick to the farm would be complete without a quick trip to Dave's to jump on the trampoline. Look at those ups.
It was a long day but Grandma was so excited to see the kids and was so pleased with her pictures that it definately made the trip worth it. The next day we were given tickets for the whole family to the ISU football game. I won't go on about how we lost the game AGAIN to a team that we COULD have beaten had we been able to not shoot ourselves in the foot for the 4th game in a row but instead I will just show you the pictures I took. View of the jumbo tron from our endzone seats.and our friend Mike and Brady were able to come too!
and Callie enjoyed her 1st ever Cyclone Football game(well she slept through some of it and she didn't miss much when she did but enjoyed it none the less)

Hiking in Flip Flops

This past Friday Carl was able to get off work a little early so we could go for a family outing to Ledges State Park. We hadn't been there in a few years and wanted to go while there were still some leaves left on the trees. We had forgotton that Ledges was flooded last year and maybe even before that and didn't realize that the road was closed pretty quickly once you entered the park. That being the case I didn't have the kids or us wear the best shoes for our outing. I was thinking we would just park down in the bottom of the park somewhere and let the kids run around and splash through the little streams that run across the road so I had them wear their sandals. We wore our sandals too which when we discovered we would need to walk quite a distance to get to where we wanted to go ended up not being the best choice of footwear but the kids did GREAT and we made it just fine. We ended up hiking our way through the trails down to the bottom. I made the kids stop for several pictures on the way. This one was while we were on the road before we started off on the trail. I love the way the light is showing through the trees.We also took a picnic supper for the kiddos to eat while we were there so that is the plastic bag Carl is carrying, again didn't think we'd be hiking:)Nevermind the pink wand, Callie found it in the dollar section at Target earlier in the day and it became her best friend for the day. She carried that thing all over! Even though we didn't plan the hike, it was gorgeous! The trees were beautiful and the weather was perfect(maybe even a little warm!)We had the kids pictures taken at school and in a studio for Callie but that didn't stop me from trying to get a few of each of them individually at Ledges as well. I succeeded to varying degrees as you can see from the pictures below:)The most treacherous part of our hike in our sandals probably came from these stone stairs. Great for good pictures but not so great for walking down in flip flops.I think the best part of the trip came when we got down from the trail and the kids discovered the water! That was definately one advantage to the weather being nice and warm.
After we played in the water a little bit we found a picnic table and ate our supper. I found the kids were pretty hungry and ate pretty much everything without complaint after our hike to get to the table, guess we should hike every night before supper. After we ate I tortured them into a few more pictures in front of the bridge. It is crazy to think how much the road is broken up and the place overgrown after all the flooding but at the same time it was nice as we didn't have to worry about cars and traffic at all with our little explorers.By the time we hiked back up the road to our van it was starting to get dark. The kids did great on the way back up and thought it was pretty fun to walk through all the fallen leaves on the road. Gabe took our picture in front of the Inspiration Point sign on our way back to the van.
We had such a great time and it was just awesome to be out in God's beautiful creation. We may have to go hiking again this weekend except this time not in flip flops.