Pumpkin Carving

Last Friday night we turned on some Halloween music and did some pumpkin carving. I thought maybe Luke would be into taking the seeds out this year, but he was just as disgusted as in prior years!



Paige finished up her supper and was wondering what the heck was going on.

Luke's face is pretty much how he felt about all of this.  Even with the little shovel, he wanted little to do with the carving process.

 

He did try though!

  

Then it was Paige's turn!


She did a little better than Luke.




While Paige and Wally were doing the work, Luke put on last year's Halloween pajamas. They were a little short in the arms and legs, but he didn't care because they glowed in the dark!


Paige didn't know what to think of the candles in the pumpkins!




Look at her (and Wally's) eyes!

The finished products!

First Look

Here are some pictures and video of the kids in their costumes the day we bought them about a month ago.  We soon realized Paige needed a size bigger.  Her skirt was a little short, but she was in heaven as Minnie Mouse!

For Daddy

This post is for Daddy!  The loudest biggest Notre Dame fan we know :)

(We did the best we could with the pics.  Obviously, the kids weren't much in the mood!)







And a flashback to a year ago - my babies were just babies!

Luke's First Field Trip

This past Tuesday Luke's preschool took a field trip to Konow's Farm.  It was not the ideal morning for a field trip.  It was rainy and super muddy from the previous days' rain.  But, of course, the kids could have cared less!

This picture does not reflect Luke's excitement about riding on a bus; however, it does depict how unexcited he is about me taking his picture these days. But it shows his pretty eyes so I am posting :)



There's the forced excitement :)

Once we arrived, most of the kids immediately started jumping and sliding and getting muddy!




Time to drive some tractors!



And just as some of the kids were about to go out on the Moo-Choo ride it started to lightening and then raining HARD! We had to climb out and head to some indoor activities, which thankfully they had!

(Patrick, Jackson, and Luke)











We were able to get back on the Moo-Choo ride right before we left!


We grabbed our pie pumpkin and headed back to school on the bus.  The weather wasn't great, but all of the kids seemed to have a great time!

7 Years

Wally and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on October 15th.  With it being a Monday and the kids both being sick, we didn't celebrate much on the actual day.  But we did have a weekend away planned - just the two of us!

Last weekend around 1 PM on Friday, we headed to the St. Joseph, MI area.  Along the way we stopped at the Michigan Welcome Center and New Buffalo.

We stopped to take some pics at the beach in New Buffalo.









And then we were off to St. Joseph.  As soon as we got there, we parked downtown, grabbed some hot chocolate and just started walking.

We made our way down to the beach and began the walk out to the lighthouses.  We were on the wrong side, but at that point, we weren't sure how to get to the other side so we just went with it.











We then checked into our hotel, relaxed a bit, and took a cab to get some dinner and take in some night life!  We ended up at really cool bar with an awesome band.  They played mostly 90's alternative music, which totally brought Wally and I back to our high school days!  And you guys, we stayed out until 1:30 AM - what?!?!  We enjoyed ourselves!





The next morning we had a huge breakfast and then drove around a bit and made our way back to the lighthouse.  Except, it was SUPER windy and the waves were scary so we didn't venture all the way out.



Next up was a tour, wine tasting, and dinner at Tabor Hill Winery in Buchanan, MI.











After a fairly early dinner, we headed back to the hotel.  I was still not feeling 100% so I decided some dayquil and a nap would be good so we could enjoy the rest of our night.  Well, I took some Nyquil by accident and was out for an hour and woke up with a terrible headache (probably because I wasn't really supposed to wake up yet, right?).  I decided that a little caffeine would help and we were on our way to New Buffalo again, but this time to hit up the Four Winds Casino.  We found ourselves wandering around for about an hour because neither one of us could pull the trigger and gamble our money away - ha!  (Times have changed!)  So we were just about to walk out and head to the car when I was like we can't come to the casino and not play anything.  So we decided we would play $30 at the roulette table.  Wally lost his $20 in about 5 minutes.  I played on my $10 for nearly an hour.  In the end, we didn't win any money, but I at least won our $30 back.  It was fun!

Sunday morning we had breakfast, went to church, and decided to head home.  Well actually we went to Toyland at Farm & Fleet.  I know, seriously!  But, we are basically done Christmas shopping for the kids so it was definitely worth it!  Wally found it strange Christmas shopping in October, but I felt relief knowing that I at least had 2 people done!

All in all, it was a great anniversary trip and a much needed getaway for Wally and me.  But we missed our babies and couldn't wait to see them!  We have plans for a bigger trip for our 10 year and hopefully some more mini trips in between!