Carving Pumpkins

Between hunting, cleaning out the baby's room/old toy room, organizing the basement, planting flower bulbs, having a sick kid and lots of other odd jobs this weekend, we somehow managed to carve our pumpkins. Maryn really wasn't all that interested in the carving part, she just wanted to decorate her pumpkin with markers! Makenna enjoyed scooping out the insides and both girls were enamored with the glowing jack o'lantern at the end.


Maryn loving the fact that mommy let her play with markers (and not just crayons!). She was covered in marker by the end!


Focusing very intently on that pumpkin!


Makenna coloring her pumpkin.


The girls having fun with their pumpkins from Papa and Nana!


Makenna scooping out the pumpkin. The girls picked to carve the largest pumpkin. We had to set some limits since we have six pumpkins sitting on our front steps and it would've taken us all night long to carve all six!


I had to include this picture since Daddy sat like this by himself for a long time carving out the pumpkin :) What a good sport!


The girls checking out their new glowing jack o'lantern. The lights are actually off in this picture so I couldn't tell what I was taking a picture of. I love Maryn's cheesy smile!


Finished product. Good job Daddy :)

Makenna & Soccer

Makenna is thoroughly enjoying her first year of soccer. She loves being with all the other kids and running around endlessly for an hour :) She's the only girl on her team, but it doesn't seem to bother her much. Josh and I have to chuckle because she runs up and down the field and is typically right there in the pack with the ball, but she doesn't want to take it away from other kids so she rarely touches the ball :) She does really well though when she gets the ball by herself in an open field!! She is way too nice and not aggressive enough for this sport, at least not yet! The important part is that she is enjoying herself immensely and loves having mommy, daddy and Maryn cheer her on at her games! She's already talking about soccer next year.

Right in the middle of it all... she's fairly easy to pick out in the action shots because she's the only girl on the green team.








She loves playing goalie, despite the fact that she loses focus and tends to not even notice when the ball is coming her way :)


I love this one... right in the middle of her soccer game, but she has time to look up and smile for the camera!





Time for a water break!


Maryn loving soccer as well... she's probably more aggressive than half the kids on the field and would probably take the ball away from her own team :) She has better soccer dribbling skills than most of the kids out there.

Me, Makenna and Pumpkins

I had the privilege of being one of the parent helpers on Makenna's preschool field trip to the pumpkin patch on Friday. Makenna and I both have been looking forward to this for a long time! I couldn't wait to see her in her element and she was excited that mommy got to go to preschool with her :) Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate all that well, but the kids still enjoyed it. They all got to pick their own pumpkin from the vine, pull some corn out of the field, and look at all the farm animals. Minus all the mud, I think fun was had by all! Then I even got to stick around the classroom when we got back and watch the rest of their school day. It was so fun sharing in her preschool experience and seeing her just absolutely shine in the classroom setting. I was a proud mommy as always!

I have to thank Josh for making this possible. He offered to stay home from work for an entire morning with Maryn so I could participate in this outing. I am so blessed to have a husband that agrees in the importance of parent participation in school events and is willing to sacrifice 6 hours out of his work day during his absolutely crazy season at work to make this possible. And as always, I think Maryn and Daddy thoroughly enjoy their one-on-one time together! Thanks Daddy :)

Recently Makenna and I got the itch to make a fun Halloween baked goodie. I have a Halloween cookbook so Makenna started digging through all the pictures until she found exactly what she wanted to make - a big ol' pumpkin cake! I agreed and we spent a good 4 hours this past weekend concocting this cake! Much to my dismay, the pumpkin turned out pink (at least according to Josh and Makenna). Orange frosting is not easy to make :) I guess I'm not Betty Crocker, but we still had fun making it and sharing it with our friends at small group last night.


Me, Makenna and our pumpkin cake (Yes, I know it doesn't look like we spent 4 hours on it, but trust me, we did!)

Maryn's ABCs

Maryn continues to amaze us by her fast forward development ever since her ear tubes were put in place last April. Just recently we've discovered that not only can Maryn sing her ABCs, but she has already started to be able to correctly identify some of the letters!! Josh and I thought maybe it was just a fluke that she was pointing out letters and identifying them correctly so I decided to put her to the test. I got out an ABC puzzle and some ABC specific books (her favorite being Makenna's printing practice book) and I started working with her a little bit. Come to find out she can correctly identify A,B,C,D,F,K,L,M,O,P,Q,S,U,W,and Y a majority of the time and after just a few days of practice she has already picked up E,H,G,X and R most of the time. She is even starting to point out the letters in random places and is so proud that she knows what she is looking at. You should have seen her just starring at the huge Bed, Beth and Beyond sign the other day as we sat in the parking lot... she was so excited that she knew all those huge letters up on the building! Maryn has also been working on her counting lately and can confidently count to 10 and most of the time even all the way up to 15! We are so happy that both of our girls have taken such a strong interest in learning :)

Play Doh Creations

I must confess... I am a mom that despises Play Doh. It doesn't matter what you do, the stuff ends up all over your house and it's near impossible to clean up completely. With that said, Play Doh is never an activity that I suggest. A few days ago Makenna asked if I could get the Play Doh out and I agreed. She sat there quite content for a long time and boy was I amazed when I came over to find her little Play Doh creations...


Her creation as she explained it to me... the ground below, Adam and Eve are the blue and purple sticks with heads to the right, the tree with the snake and fruit in it and then God is the blue blob up above. She explained her picture all with narration of the Bible story of Adam and Eve. She remembered all the details of the story, including that the snake told them to eat the fruit even though God said they shouldn't. I was quite impressed that she remembered the details given the fact that we haven't read this particular Bible story lately at home or in Sunday school.


Very proud of her depiction of Adam and Eve.


And since Play Doh was such a big success, of course she asked for it two consecutive days in a row. Play Doh creation #2 consisted of two people holding babies, a tree with fruit, the white dots up above are clouds and the little purple dot above is God. I'm very intrigued by how she portrayed God in her art.

Imagination Play - Triathlons

No one can ever claim that our two girls don't have great imaginations :) The past two nights, all with Makenna's leadership and Maryn's following, we have had pretend triathlons in our house. Makenna and Maryn obviously being the triathletes :) The first night I think Josh and I were in such shock at how much they have picked up on at the various races that they've been to that we just sat there and enjoyed the moment. Tonight when Makenna insisted on racing again, Josh got out the video camera and I got out the digital camera. We knew this was a priceless moment and we couldn't let this one go by again.

Makenna knew exactly what she was doing... swimming, biking and running with transitions in the middle. They would run laps around the house pretending to do whatever leg of the race they were on at that point in time, of course insisting that we clap and cheer as they run by. Tonight Makenna even gave me a pretend sign to hold up for her as she ran by :) Makenna even concocted a little sign and attached it to her clothes and told us she was number 35. You should've seen her eyes light up when Daddy got out his race belt and an old race number and tied it around her waist :) But I think probably the best part about it all was that when Makenna started pretending to be riding the bike, she bent over with her arms out in front of her like she was riding in aero position on a TRI bike! How many 4 year olds ride in aero position rather than holding regular handle bars??!! We couldn't believe it! After the races were done, Daddy even had to pretend to be one of the "food guys" and hand out food to the triathletes after the race. Makenna was disappointed that we didn't have watermelon or oranges like they do at the races, but she happily settled for a banana! I think someday very far in the future, Daddy's going to have a little competition at some of his races :)


Makenna at the starting line, ready to dive in! She just had to wear Mommy's pink swim cap!


Look at her get after this swim! I think she's probably one of the crazy ones throwing elbows!


Maryn enjoying the swim portion of the race as well.


Watch out Maryn! You're going to be lapped!


Into the cramped transition area... both girls were loving the real triathlon water bottle and I had to indulge them just a little bit and give them some of the "food" that Daddy eats at his races. Makenna is just fascinated by the fact that Daddy has to eat when he exercises, so I brought little jelly beans out and those were her exercise food :)


Maryn got a little caught up in transition... apparently the water bottle was more entertaining than the bike portion of the race :)


On to the bike.... note the arms straight out in aero position :)


Maryn was just perpetually in the swim aspect of the race because she refused to take the swim cap off :)


All done with her first race of the night! I'm not quite sure how many races we had altogether, but she was sweating from head to toe by the time she was finished!


Our two little triathletes! Oh they never cease to amaze us with the things they come up with!

Watching the Cubs

Our family isn't a huge baseball family, but Josh enjoys watching the Cubs periodically. He's trying to teach the girls that they're Cubs fans despite the fact that it's really not any fun to route for a team that never wins the important games :) Anyway, we obviously were following the Cubs play-off games somewhat. After getting the girls ready for bed one night, I couldn't figure out where they had all disappeared to so I ventured downstairs to figure out what was going on. This is what I found in my kitchen... Daddy must have been sneaking a peak at the score on the TV in the kitchen and the girls decided to join him :)

2 Year & 4 Year Pictures

Here are the absolutely adorable 2 year and 4 year pictures the girls had taken a few weeks ago! We LOVE them!