what did we do in october?

Wanna know what we did in October?  Well here you go:

We wore funny wigs

We took family pictures

We dressed up in costumes

We sewed Halloween costumes

We helped make Daddy's birthday lasagna

We stopped helping make the birthday lasagna

We pretended we were sleeping, but every time mom took a picture, our smiles gave us away

repeat

repeat

aw, that one's convincing.

We snuggled on the couch

We went hiking

October was a great month!

happy birthday to krew, happy birthday to krew!

Can you believe that on October 28th this little guy of mine turned 5?!

All of the kids had the day off of school that day, so we went to McDonald's for breakfast to celebrate our favorite birthday boy!

After breakfast, Krew wanted to go to the pet store to look at the animals.  Sidenote:  whenever we go to the pet store to look at the animals, the employees there ask me multiple times if they can help we with something.  I usually say, "No, we're just looking" like I would say at any store, but what I really want to say is, "No,  we don't have any pets, nor do we want any pets anytime soon.  We're just here for the free zoo."

These pictures are from a couple of days earlier when Krew got to celebrate his birthday at school.  He brought in K cookies, which he put the sprinkles on all by himself!  It was so cute watching him interact with his classmates.  

Krew was so excited that because the no one had school, and Bart only works a half day on Friday, that he didn't have to wait until dark to open his birthday presents like everyone else does.

After presents, Bart took Krew and his friend Bailey to one of those inflatable play places.

Then, we all met up at Krew's favorite restaurant, Hu Hot for dinner.

Last came birthday cake,  It will come as no surprise to anyone that Krew requested a football field birthday cake.  I think it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself!

Happy birthday Krew!  We sure love you!

everly at two

 Here are some fun things about my favorite two year old:

At her two year checkup, she weighed 22 lbs.  That puts her in the 2nd percentile for weight. She is very average for height though, so that explains why I can't find pants that fit her.  She still wears a size 2 diaper, which I'm sure Krew outgrew when he was a few months old.

She communicates with me fairly well.  I'm not sure that other people can understand half of what she says, but most of the time I can tell.  One of her favorite things to say is, "I wanna talk a you!"  Sometimes it's just because someone else is talking to me and she doesn't want to feel left out, or she'll say it when I'm busy doing something else.  It's adorable.  Something that isn't so adorable is her high-pitched shriek!  I finally understand the term "ear piercing scream" because that's exactly what I'm afraid is happening to my ears when I happen to be too close to her when she screams.  Sometimes it's in response to not getting her way, or it can be a way to get someone's attention.  It can also be used as a way to express excitement. So basically, her ridiculous shriek can be heard multiple times every day.

 She loves the color pink (hooray!!).  Although she hasn't quite mastered naming the colors, she will pick out a pink object over any other color just about every time.

She loves to play with her baby dolls, but she loves real babies even more.  She spots them at the store, at church, or outside.  Then she gets really mad if I don't take her over to give the baby a hug, which I'm sorry, I'm not going to ask strangers if my child can hug their baby.

Her favorite toy in the world though, is still Krew.  I know I've said it before, but watching those two together is pure magic.  I hope that never changes.

She loves to watch Frozen, Princess Sophia, and Minnie Mouse.  She loves to dance around the house whenever there is music playing.  She loves to be thrown in the air, twirled around, flipped over, tossed on the bed, etc., and will say "again" a million times to any adult who engages in one of these activities with her.

She still lets me rock her to sleep, which I completely adore.  She will often lay her head on my shoulder and pat my back when I pick her up, which is something my boys never did.  She is by far our most snuggly child.  I am going to cherish every one of those snuggles until the day she no longer lets me hold her.

We love you, Everly!

we went to nashville!

At the end of September, I kissed this little sweetie goodbye, and handed her over to her grandma.  Then Bart, the boys, and I headed to Nashville, Tennessee!

I knew I was going to have a terrible time being away from my little princess for that long, but It looks to me like she wasn't missing us a bit, as she was eating lunch with grandma at Costco!

One of the very first things we did when we got to Nashville (after a 10+ hour drive), was head downtown to check things out.  It was such a fun city, and not really like any other place we'd ever been.

Of course the boys were all thrilled to see the Tennessee Titans' stadium, even though they aren't necessarily fans of that team, but an NFL football stadium is an NFL football stadium, am I right?!

My three biggest football fans!

We had to take our picture with this boot, because that's what you do in Nashville, right?  We also went into a few boot shops, and I picked out my dream pair of cowboy boots, which were on sale for only $950.  Then I remembered that I wasn't sure I would even ever wear cowboy boots, so I went home without them.

The main reason we went to Nashville was to go to a Florida Gators football game.  Nashville is the farthest north that they play this year, so we decided it was as good a place as any to see a game.

We got to see some of Bart's friends from PA school who also happen to be twins.  Two sets of twins in one very Gator-y picture!

Notice how the stands seem to be filled with more orange and blue than black and gold?  And as the crowd began to fill in, it was even more Gator fans.  It felt a little like being at a home game instead of being with the visiting team.

Okay, so I know this little guy is a huge football fan, but was only 4 years old when we went, and a real football game is much longer than a YouTube video of football highlights, so I wondered how much of the game he would watch before he got bored and stopped paying attention.  The answer: The whole game, every single play.  In fact, I think he watched more intently the entire game than the twins did.  Seriously, this boy loves football!

We all had a blast cheering on our gators!

And of course, the Gators won, 13-6!

After the game, we went exploring a bit around campus and to this awesome park nearby.

Krew insisted on having his picture taken with this weird dog.  I guess that's better than when he used to cry whenever he saw a character like this.  

So besides going to the game, another awesome thing we got to do in Nashville was visit with some friends that we knew when we lived in Tampa.  They were even nice enough to let us stay at their house.  Well, Kevin works for Pearl drums, and gave us an amazing tour of their corporate offices.  It was fascinating.

Later, at their house, the boys got to play in their drum room.  Who even has a drum room?  Our cool friends, that's who!

I swear my boys could have spent hours in their making noise and pretending they knew what they were doing.

One day we walked through the Opryland hotel, which is just massive and beautiful and interesting. 

Our friends also took us on this beautiful hike.  It was perfect weather for a hike, and even though we were hiking with 8 small children, we all had a great time. 

At the end of the hike, there was this little pond, and you can see the cave up there that was hand-dug through the rock to get water from the other side of this cliff.  It was really cool!

Of course the men (and Kade) had to be brave and climb up there, while I kept shouting things like, "If you fall, I'm not going to help you!"  Because I'm nice like that, and I dislike watching people do stupid things.

The whole group.  

On the way home, we decided to spend the night in downtown Chicago.  In the morning, we explored downtown a little bit.  I always think that downtown Chicago is so interesting and fun.

While we were in the Under Armor store, the twins decided they needed their pictures taken with some of their favorite basketball players' posters.

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Krew on the other hand, really, really wanted his picture taken in front of Trump tower.  Bart and I thought it was so random how completely obsessed he was with Trump tower.  I mean, we knew he had heard of Trump from all the election stuff, but this was before he won, so maybe Krew knew something we didn't know!