Fall Festivals

'Tis the season for Fall Festivals!!  I love this time of year.  The leaves are beautiful this year!  Our neighbors go to St. Joseph's and we have heard about their annual fall festival and decided to go check it out!  Our little ghoul got so many compliments on the Halloween shirt I made her.  And she wore it with such pride.  She loved those feathers!

 She really wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel.  I was nervous to take her because once you're on it, you're on it...

 At first I held her close, assuming she would be nervous or scared.

 But she can't removing my arm from around her and yelling at Ernie, "Here I am Daddy!"

 She loved it at the top.

 And always wanted to find Daddy at the bottom.  We went on to ride the bugs, cars, and some super slide.  We found our neighbors and hung out for a little while and then carried an exhausted child home.

Fall Picnic

Lilly and I went to the fall picnic for work this year. She had a great time! Sophia, her, Braden, and Claire were all born within the same 5 month period and they see each other at different functions because their parents not only work together, but they sometimes play together. It's really fun to see them all growing up. And even though they don't see each other that often, when they do, it is like they say "oh hi! it's you again. let's go play" and I'm sure there is sweet music in the background.
This is Sophia and Lilly at the pumpkin decorating station! Oh, Lilly made a mess! And it was my fault for suggesting "Lilly, do you want to use the paint?" Who would ask that question? (besides me.)

Enjoying the slide.

And they all loved playing on this bouncy fire engine.

There was an awesome face painter there. Lilly stood in line and waited twice to have a little pumpkin painted on her hand. She only waited in line for a couple minutes and would leave to see something else. She sees an older girl with her whole face painted like a tiger. And she looked at me and said "I want that." Then she walked over to the face painter and waited. Even the face painter questioned her ability to sit still for this to be done. I assured her I had no idea if she would and that I had low expectations. We told Lilly to just lay back and close her eyes.

She was so still and relaxed she almost fell asleep.

And she was so happy with it! It was adorable! How do you tickle a tiger? Surprisingly, very easily. Now because we were at this picnic having so much fun, we missed our nap time. So we had to keep her awake until bed time now! So much fun. This is her extremely tired and concentrating so hard on painting. She went to bed so easily.

Little Gym - Bring a Friend

We invited our friend, Ava to come to Little Gym with us. This is Ava helping her mom, Marlo walk a straight line!
And here are our little angels listening so well to the music as it tells them where to put their bean bags! I was so proud of Lilly for actually listening for a couple minutes.

Lilly showed Ava one of her learned skills - the wheel barrow on the parallel bars.

And here Ava shows Lilly her natural skills. Also doing the wheelbarrow on parallel bars. No one likes a show off....
And as always, the class ends with bubbles. Lilly loves this part! She wanted to catch them on her feet.

Hair Woes

Some days Lilly wants to be in complete control of her hair. On those days, our daughter usually puts every barrette she can find in her hair and then completes the look with a head band. But recently, she insisted she wanted not one ponytail, but three ponytails! Three?! So I introduced her to pigtails. She was so excited about them - who knew?!
And this was on our way into Little Gym. I just loved the shadow...

Pumpkin Vase

So I have a new addiction. Pinterest.com. I'm on it all the time getting great ideas like this one! Lilly helped pick out the pumpkin and the Aster. She was not much help cleaning out the pumpkin, but she was a great help cleaning the seeds for roasting! Here is our finished vase!

Sta-cation - Day 2

We all know about the "fully stocked bar", but I have never heard of, much less seen, a fully stocked playground. This playground was across the road from our building. Stocked with playground balls, volleyballs, basketballs, horseshoes and a huge sandbox, not to mention the normal stuff - swings, slides, monkey bars.


Oh - did I mention we were right on Tablerock lake? We had a beautiful view and the lake was just a short walk away.

Where we pretended to know how to skip rocks to teach the kids how.


And then went to the docks where we tried out the paddle boats!
Yes, free paddle boats for the guests. And can I just say how proud I am of Ernie and I?! No, I did not want Lilly this close to the water. No, I did not want us to do a paddle boat. No, I did not think Lilly would sit still for the paddle boat. But we did it! And as much as I wanted her to just sit on the bench and enjoy the scenery, we paddle-boated. She enjoyed it and neither of us were too over-bearing. At least I don't think we were. Good job parental units!

Another perk: fishing poles! The kids loved this. And Megan actually caught one. Something with gills and beady eyes.

Sta-cation

I got a great groupon recently for a weekend stay at a resort in Branson. So we planned a staycation with my friend, Kelly, from Oklahoma. Lilly was so excited to go. She was in the car and ready to go for about 10 minutes waiting on Ernie. I finally talked her out of the car to try to go potty and wait on Daddy inside the house instead of the garage.

Our little sooners who hung out with us: Megan
and Matthew.

Intense yahtzee. Matthew really enjoys that game!
Root Beer floats! Great just before bedtime, right?!
Matching pajamas.
Creative play do. By the way - I made that play do!

And that is the high lights of our first few hours of staycation. Not included in this post, the trip to Walmart (I still don't like that store) for groceries and a bathing suit for Lilly and a visit to the pool for about 30 minutes before forcing these kiddos to eat a spaghetti dinner!