Fall Happenings

I was pleasantly surprised with myself when I logged on and saw that I blogged once in the month of October. So here I am posting again a month later and this is good for me! Ha! I should probably just stop blogging, but it's a good way to update my grandma (and the other 4 readers) with our happenings.

Fall in this house means LEAVES! We LOVE our giant walnut trees in the summer because of the shade, but we definitely pay for it in the fall. So.many.leaves. And the birds love to come and eat our walnuts, which is kind of fun until they poop on your head. Maybe when the kids are older and beg to do a lemonade stand I'll make them sell walnuts instead.

We finally got a couple bikes and a bike trailer. Thanks to our warm fall, we've been able to go out on the trails by our house quite a bit. (I love where I live!) Savannah is happy as long as she has a cracker. That girl out-eats her brother every day. I have no idea how she is still so tiny.

Pausing on the bike trail to play with the horses.

Those eyebrows though!

Some friends surprised me with lunch on my birthday. Owen is OBSESSED with birthdays, so he loved it.

Savannah is holding the Strawberry Shortcake doll
from Aunt Lisa. It's just like the one I had as a kid, and
it even has the strawberry scent!

I'm a bad mom. I really need to learn what all the different "tractors" are called. (Ok, I do know that the one in the picture below is a backhoe). But as far as Owen is concerned they are all called "tractors." It works for us. This construction is just down the street and has provided much entertainment.

Playdough letters. This kid is obsessed with letters and numbers and can name them all in any order. We're working on the lower-case letters (why are all letter toys in uppercase only? Someone needs to fix that.)

I caught Owen climbing around the edge of our deck, which is a good 7 feet in the air. Yikes! This kid is a climber for sure and I am just waiting for the big fall that actually does some damage. So far we've been lucky!

We made it to the pumpkin patch with Owen's cute joy school group. He LOVED it.

Playing on a real "tractor."

Savannah got in on the action as well, until she tried to eat the corn.

Last year we moved a week and a half before Halloween. The year before that Owen cut his first tooth on Halloween. To keep up our tradition of having something big happen in October, I potty trained Owen. It went pretty well but man is it exhausting! He trained great with the #1's, but when it comes to the #2's this kid can hold it for DAYS. No amount of bribery, coaxing, threatening, etc etc has helped. But he is slowly figuring it out and it's been 5 days since I had to clean anything up, so I'll call that a win.

Drinking lots and lots and lots of juice. His grin kills me.

Feeding the potty doll.

This is the treat he chose after filling up his sticker chart. Yes, it's a chocolate "tractor" from the dollar store. Gross.

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His beloved Maui hook was the reason for the October potty training. I knew it would be a good motivator (it was!) This kid can quote the entire movie and is obsessed with all things Moana. So it just made sense that he would be Maui. Yes, I made his costume. Don't judge my pathetic sewing skills.

One more picture because I can.

It just made sense that Savannah would be little baby Moana. She was totally doing the hula with her hips when I took this picture.

Here we are at the annual Witchie Poo party. SUCH a great party! Grandma & Grandpa sure do know how to make Halloween awesome. Owen loved it!

  We carved pumpkins with some neighbors. Pumpkin carving is serious business around these parts. Yes, Dan is using a saw to cut into the pumpkin (brilliant!)

This is what Savannah and I looked like trick-or-treating. We lasted about 45 minutes. Owen was in candy heaven and couldn't believe how easy it was to get treats. He would run from house to house yelling, "Cheee whoooo!" (It's a Maui thing.)

 We totally scored the other day at the grocery store. A fire truck pulled up just as I was putting the kids in the car. The firemen were super nice and gave Owen a hat and let him climb inside. I promise he loved it - he was tired (nap time!)

I had a total win at joy school last week. I found this awesome yoga for toddlers and the kids LOVED it. Here they are waving at the sun. So cute! 

 I took my little man on a date last week. Thankfully he pleases easily with ice cream and playing at McDonald's. He loved it!

And we have to end with a Savannah picture. She is the favorite baby at church (even though she's still totally bald - thank goodness for headbands). She already passed her 11-month mark. How is she going to be 1 in less than a month?!

Home Owning

Before we ventured into the word of owning a home (well, of letting a bank own our home) we were warned about the amount of work we were bringing on to ourselves. So I can't complain when it takes us all summer to get *most* of our sprinklers working correctly or when I discover a leaking pipe in the basement on the 4th of July, or when our main drain line breaks. After all, I was warned! And just in case you were wondering, those home warranties that you get after you buy a house are useless.

Our neighbor is a plumber, which is a huge win for us! Knowing a plumber is like knowing a good mechanic. (At least I think it would be like knowing a good mechanic...I don't actually know one, but I can assume.) The only problem with knowing your own plumber is he waits to work on your stuff when he has time. And if he has a deadline to finish a project at an elementary school that is opening in 5 days, that doesn't leave him a lot of time to fix your house. He DID come over and did a quick fix to make it more useable for a few days (thankfully). And of course when it broke we had company in town (bless you, Tina!) But after a couple of days I got to the point where I couldn't do laundry and I couldn't use my kitchen (the bathrooms run on a separate line). So basically we couldn't do much in the house. Not fun.

This is a bad picture of Dan jack hammering up our foundation. It was the only way to get to the pipe. It was nice of our neighbor to loan us the jack hammer, and it was nice of Dan to do it himself, because then we didn't have to pay the plumber for his time to do it.

Can you see that break?! Even the plumber was impressed. No one knows why it happened . . . the foundation shifting, tree roots, bad luck? Could have been anything.

And here it is all fancy new and fixed. Hoorah!

On to another *fun* house project. Back in June (or was it May?) I scored an awesome deal on a used swing set. It was already taken apart and all we had to do was haul it and put it together. Easy peasy, right? Well, it's super heavy so of course Dan hurt his back again trying to move it, and by the time his back was feeling better it was way.too.hot to spend any amount of time in the yard working on it. We also knew we would need help from family and we didn't want anyone having a heat stroke at our house while trying to put it together (because with our luck it probably would have happened!) So we FINALLY had a swing set raising party and thanks to all the men in our families we got it up. Hoorah!

It took all these men to get the side pieces connected to the top piece that Greg
is standing on. I was there to pass out cookies and remind them how manly
they are. 

The look of joy on Owen's face made it worth it. I think. :)

Owen with his cousins on the cool tire swing.

We let all the men go once the main platform was up, which left Dan and I to do the rest (but mostly Dan). He is becoming quite the handy man after a year of owning a house. We got everything up that day but the slide. We needed a few more bolts and it was getting too dark to finish, so the slide had to wait.

Owen played on it anyway.

This project took some SO MUCH nagging on my part, so Dan is grateful to have the wife off his back. And I am grateful that I can send Owen into the backyard to play while I make dinner and watch from the window. If we ever move this is NOT coming with us. Dan said the only way it's coming down is by fire. :)

And now here are some random pictures in no particular order.

My little cougar.

Can you guess what Owen's halloween costume is going to be?
(Assuming he actually keeps the wig on his head.) 

Mr. Dapper

These 2 play together all the time now and it is THE BEST!

Capes make everything better.

Stop growing up already! 

I always get stares from people at the grocery store when they see tiny Savannah holding herself up just fine in the cart. She'll be 10 months next week and has just started wearing 6 month clothes. At her last appointment she was 2% for weight. So little!

Once she figured out how to pull herself up, she has to stand all.the.time. Including when she is supposed to be napping. The dirty dog.

 Owen had his first day of joy school. Really it's just a glorified play group. It's once a week for two hours and he and I both love it. A win for everyone!

We survived our first stomach flu. He rocked it and threw up in the bowl, so thankfully the cleanup wasn't too bad. Joy school is bringing home lots of *fun* bugs. Tis the season I guess.

I came into the kitchen and found Owen "playing the drums."

I love this picture!

My little bear. :)

Grandpa visits are the best.

Savannah's right eye is pinwheel blue/brown. I LOVE it and I really hope it stays (although I'm doubtful). I finally captured it in a picture. Cool huh?!

And while I've been quickly creating this post and the kids were "playing" together, they made this mess with Owen's diapers. This is his last package of diapers and then I'm potty training. Pray for me.