High School BFF

One of my best friends from high school, Ashley, lives in Cincinnati with her husband.  She was so nice to come up and visit for a while yesterday.  She is one of those friends where you could not see or talk to them for a long time and then when you see them it's like you never missed a beat, which is pretty much what happened until I moved back to Ohio.  I love this girl.  She is so kind to my little family and is like another aunt to Lucy and got her and Claire matching(ish) pajamas and Lucy was really excited to get a big bag of dum-dums too!  She also brought me a fun surprise of a bunch of seasonal pumpkin stuff- Pumpkin sugar cookies, bagels, english muffins, and pumpkin pie chocolate covered pretzels.  We had lunch from Panera, ate, talked, laughed, etc.  Ashely and Lucy also made some peppermint chex mix treats.  I'm so glad we live close enough to have been able to see each other every few months.  We had a great time and I can't wait to see her again!

Somehow I always forget to get a picture of us, but at least I got a picture this time (although not sure what Lucy is looking at)!  This was when Lucy and Ashley made the treats together.  Lucy loves unwrapping the peppermint kisses, stirring the melted chocolate, and shaking it all together with powdered sugar in a bag.  Perfect activity for Lucy.  Ashley also brought her own bowls and spatulas so I wouldn't have any extra dishes to wash, wish was thoughtful!

Snuggly

I couldn't resist snapping these pictures the other night.  Doesn't she just look so comfy/cozy/snuggled up?

Halloween

We have a bunch of really great neighbors, almost all of which have little kids and many are stay-at-home moms.  Almost everyday the last couple of months we have ended up outside one of our houses while the kids all ride bikes/toys and the moms chat.  It's usually in that long part of the afternoon when we are waiting for our husband's to come home from work and both adults and kids need some kind of distraction.  The kids all get along really great for the most part and have become really comfortable playing with each other.  So we decided to have a neighborhood halloween party before trick-or-treating started.  There were a lot of kids, a ton of food, and just plain fun.  The forecast was showing 100% chance of rain and damaging winds with threats of tornados during trick-or-treating, but thankfully the wind died down a bit and the rain was all we had to deal with, and even that wasn't bad enough to stop us (if it was, we might never go trick-or-treating in Ohio!).  It was such a fun night and like everyone says, holidays get one million times more fun with kids (even if they already are fun!  Which is saying a lot)!

These are a few of the neighbor kiddos that we partied with on Halloween.  This was taken at the beginning before the kids got too crazy and so several were not there yet and didn't make the group picture.  Lucy is not a fan of getting her picture taken and cried unless I sat and held her hand.

Lucy's costume was kind of a mix between a leopard and a cat, so we called it a kitty cat so she'd really know what it was.  It was also the first time I successfully got her to tell me what a kitty cat says. :) I love this picture below because it shows how excited she was to go trick-or-treating!  She remembered from our church trunk-or-treat activity the night before what exactly happens.  Free candy?  Lot's of it? Count her in!

 She actually stood back and smiled for the picture!

 The neighbor's who had the party just finished off their basement and they have a fun kids room there that has a slide that goes down into it from upstairs.  It's the type of thing you see on pintrest.  

 It's a really fast slide.  I was afraid Lucy might break a leg or something on it, but she didn't.

 Looking at the huge dogs in their cages.

 Checking out her loot after trick-or-treating!

 Caught them both with candy in their mouths.

Pumpkin carving

Monday night was our second annual pumpkin carving family night with the Madsen's, which Marci and I declared to now be a tradition.  Last year was at our house and this year we went to theirs and carved away.  We had a good time with them, as always.

 

This is where the babies hung out the whole time.  They had their own party. :)  Baby Ally is exactly three months older than baby Claire.  They will be bff someday, I'm sure.

 Ha- the picture below is our attempt to show that Lucy helped with the process.  Clearly we have an artist since she drew a great outline while not looking at the pumpkin at all. ;)

I promised Adam that I wouldn't facebook this picture (I rarely use FB anyway) but I didn't make any promises about the blog.

I had to include this one even though it was blurry because I didn't realize when we were taking the picture that Lucy was actually kissing the pumpkin. ha!

Don't my girls look thrilled?  I promise they did have a good time.  Lucy always loves that she gets lots of treats there and this night was no exception.  She knows right where their fruit snacks are. :)

 This was the best group kid shot we got because....

 ....the rest involved Lucy bawling her eyes out because she was scared of being outside in the dark.

A sunny fall Sunday

This last Sunday was beautiful outside and the leaves were definitely at their peak!  We assumed it was probably going to be one of our last pretty fall days before all of the leaves are fallen and it's too cold, so we ventured outside and enjoyed all of the pretty changing trees in our neighborhood.  It was also good to let Lucy run around and use up some energy. And I didn't end up in a single picture, but the rest of the fam looks good! :)

 When we got home, we realized we had been "booed" by a neighbor and let me tell you- it totally made Lucy's night!  She was so excited to see that pumpkin on our doorstep, ran right to it as fast as she could, and dug into it all as soon as she got inside.  She kept playing with all the fun goodies inside of it and calling everything "mine" over and over again to make sure we knew it was hers. ha!  It was really cute! (Please excuse the super blurry picture).

Stuck in a stroller

Lucy decided to sit in her baby stroller one day and buckle herself in.  Unfortunately, she couldn't get it unbuckled and just decided to stand up and walk, stuck to the stroller and all.  The funniest part is that she walked around like it was no big deal- nothing was out of the ordinary.  Ha! Silly girl keeps us laughing!

Daddy's helper

Ryan is definitely outnumbered, so it's a good thing these girls sure love their dad!  Ryan is in charge of bath time but since he was out of town for a whole week after Claire was born (for work, and thankfully while my mom was still here) this was his first time giving Claire a bath.  Lucy of course wanted to help as well.

 Ryan always gets the itch to make apple pie in the fall but this time it seemed a little too daunting with a newborn around, so he made apple crisp, which is a little easier.  Lucy helped with this process as well and loved the daddy/daughter time.