A little bit of this…and a little bit of that

Since we are so incredibly far behind in updating our blog…I’ll just give you a little sampling of what we have been up to. One of these days we will be good at actually keeping this thing up.

So I’ve decided just to go thru the camera and post a few things we have been up to…So sit back, get comfy..this is a long one!!!

We attended two baby blessings on the same day. Amy and Alex blessed Sierra (family shot above) and Emily and Dan blessed Aubrey (didn’t get a family shot…so see below). Grandma made both of their dresses. Aren’t they amazing!

These little boys are the best of buds! They were so cute that day walking around together, eating ice cream, and breaking into Papa’s car together…ahhhh memories :)

The whole “ON” clan…I swear we just get bigger and bigger and bigger (numbers wise…not “size” wise)

Ben finished up his soccer season. He loved playing soccer and was such a little super star. Ben’s favorite position is playing goalie. He saved a few goals and made some really great friends.

Ben with his soccer coach

We were able to have Mike and Brittany come and play. Andrew is OBSESSED with baby Lily. He always wanted to hold her and give her a bottle. Thankfully Brittany was really good about indulging him in his love for Lily. Well…kind of. I don’t think she was a fan of when Andrew went and picked Lily off the floor for her. Lily was doing a little tummy time and Andrew thought that was the perfect chance to hold her. All I remember is talking to Brittany and Brittany suddenly darting into the family room and a look of shock on Andrew’s face as he quickly DROPPED Lily back onto the ground. Amazingly Lily didn’t cry and wasn’t hurt….although Andrew was very confused as to what he had done wrong. I’m not sure Andrew realizes that Lily is a real life baby…and not one of Kallie’s dolls!

Kallie and Lily

Ella super duper happy….Lily, well not so much.

Kallie also played soccer and got this amazing medal. Really, why even attend the games? Take her to the end, pick up the treat, then show up and pick up the medal at the end. Really, that is all that is important to Kallie at the moment :)

Kallie so proud!

We even attempted a family kid shot! See how well it went?

Andrew wakes me up every morning whispering “mom, I need Dad’s keys”. If ever I can’t find Andrew I first check the cars. He can unlock them, start them, and loves the CD players. I’m really excited for this phase to pass. *sigh*

I went to pick the kids up from school and we got stuck in the middle of an amazing rain storm. We loaded up all the kids we could into our van and took them home. We were all soaked by the time we made it home, to the kids put on jammies, I made hot chocolate and we watched a video with popcorn. One of my favorite days in a long time. It was so much fun to just relax with the kids with rain pouring outside.

Lots of family game nights…thank heavens for Wii Sports!

Up next, Gardner Village! One of our FAVORITE places to go in October! This year we went with Krista and Jan. It was great! I’m not sure who had more fun finding all the witches…Chris or the kids! If you haven’t been yet, you need to GO!

Chris and I were attempting to get a picture of just the two of us. Why is it when we want a family picture the kids refuse to get near us…but when we try for just a couple shot they all huddle in?!?!

So I cropped them out…but kept the witch (not talking about me…the one with the hat!)

My cousin Krista and I with my signature hold the camera and take a picture of us shot :)

Finally a real couple shot! No cropping needed!

My adorable boys!

Krista with my boys

We have taken a few trips to Discovery at the Gateway. My kids love this place! I love to take them there and light up because they can do everything. Everything is at their level. We spend hours there!

Andrew spends most of the time in this red car. This time we were smart and brought him a set of keys from home to pretend to start the car with. He drives for a while, stops to fill it up with gas, put air in the tires, picks up cute girls and escorts them to sit in the back seat while he drives them around. It is so cute. When he is ready to move on, he puts his keys in my purse….he is so cute!

Just a cute shot of Chris I thought I would throw in. He doesn’t get to go on many of our adventures….so here’s one so the kids don’t forget what he looks like :

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We attended a few weddings. I only took my camera to this one though. Cute girlies

Almost all the grandkids. Just missing Sierra. Love Ava and Andrew’s “cheeeeeessse” faces!

How can you not love this little smile!

We spent hours and hours at the park. Here is our most recent visit with some friends.

The best hill to roll down!

How is it they all start at different spots at the top, and end up in one big heap all together at the bottom?

So this is what has been happening at our house…or at least a little snapshot. Hope you enjoyed our picture overload!

Homecoming Week and Halloween Decorating

 

This week was full of more fun of course. First off, Katie has really gotten into the decorating mood lately and it’s ironically centered around her supposedly least favorite holiday: Halloween. The house is definitely as spooky cute as it’s ever been and definitely on the spooky side for Katie herself. She started placing large spider cutouts in our family room windows which really stand out on the white blinds. However when she went flipping up the blinds the next day one of those spiders flipped out little causing her to scream bloody murder. On top of that she’s also got a handful of fake mice which she REALLY doesn’t like having around, but the kids keep yelling “scarier!”.

Andrew in particular has found several friends among the Halloween decorations. His favorite is an action-activated skull that guards a candy dish. You’d think it was just about the candy, but Andrew just sits there for hours tripping the skeleton into yelling his head off (pun intended). Katie is not very happy that the kids seem to be just fine with all the Halloween stuff. She just can’t seem to find anything that actually scares them.

On Friday Katie, Kallie, and Andrew met me at school for the physics department’s annual homecoming dinner. The spread was amazing and I think Andrew drank about a gallon of pog and Kallie at about half a pan of assorted desserts. Fare included apples and zucchini from our yard by the way. As part of the festivities there was a planetarium show that we took the kids to. Andrew was doing really well just chilling on my lap watching the stars and galaxies explode above us when he turned his head to the side and asked “popcorn?” I informed him we could get him some popcorn at home, so after thinking about it for a couple of minutes he started loudly telling me he was “done”, that he wanted to “go home”, and started trying to dig in my pockets while asking about my keys. Luckily, we were pretty close to the end.

We decided to go to the homecoming parade Saturday morning which was also the day our downstairs neighbors had a garage sale. This translates into ALL of their FREE stuff getting transferred into MY house. To the dismay of the neighbors I limited the kids to 2 items each. Kallie, however, found a loophole by deciding she could pick out free items to give to Andrew. This mostly consisted of Christmas holly twigs. The rule was quickly modified.

We decided to hit the end of the parade route so that we wouldn’t have to get going so early. This translated into sitting around waiting for the parade to start, then sitting around wondering when it was going to end. I wonder if my parents ever were so bored doing “fun” stuff for us. If they were it didn’t record in my memories. Hopefully my children’s memories will be just as merciful. Here are the pictures: