Halloween Fun

In addition to trick-or-treating, Andrew and I had some Halloween fun with our kids. We visited boo at the zoo, put on by the Columbus zoo and aquarium. They handed out lots of candy, but really it was just a fun excuse to put the kids in their costumes :)

Poor Jake wants nothing to do with dressing up. So he fell asleep on the way to the zoo and woke up in his stroller dressed as a fire fighter. He handled it really well and didn't seem to even notice much. McKenna had no idea we dressed her up, but she had fun with so many people "ohhing and ahhing" over her. It was fun to have Andrew at the zoo with us and to see the Africa exhibit for the last time of the season. 

We also went to our church Halloween party, which was pretty impressive. They had lots of carnival games and fun things for the kids to do. 

And on Halloween night, Andrew and Jake carved Jake's first pumpkin. Luckily Kim and Darrell were at our place and brought their pumpkin carving kit, which waved a lot of agony for Andrew. 

All in all, if call it a very successful Halloween season!

Weekend Fun

Last weekend we had so much fun with my family. Kim and Darrell came Friday night and helped us carve pumpkins. We had fun staying up late and chatting, and as always, the kids loved having them. Kim and Darrell are awesome at being an aunt and uncle. 

Saturday morning my parents came to join in the fun. My mom, sister, and I did some shopping with Jake as our little side kick while the boys watched sports and played with McKenna. 

Saturday night Jake and McKenna had the 4 best babysitters while Andrew and I had a blast at the OSU football game. 

Sunday my parents went to church with us and stayed for a yummy dinner of Andrew's homemade pizza. We are cherishing the time we have so close to people we love so much! It was a fabulous weekend!

Go Bucks!

This is Andrew's last year as a student (hallelujah!!!), and thus the last chance we have to get affordable football tickets. We split 4 tickets to the Big 10 games with my sister and brother-in-law, and last Saturday was my night to go with Andrew.

I am not a huge fan of football, and I hate the cold, but it was a fun experience to go to Ohio Stadium to cheer on the Buckeyes with my main squeeze. 

It was crazy cold- the "real feel" temperature was 22 as we arrived to our car after the game was over. Brr! Luckily I wore 3 pairs of pants and tons of shirts with my moms warm winter coat. And my dad shared his hand-warmers with us. I didn't really feel cold until the 4th quarter, which I think was related to how many people had left, so the wind was getting to us a lot more. We drank hot chocolate and enjoyed a night out sans our kiddos, cheering the Buckeyes on to victory. And we stayed until it was over! It was a fun experience, but I think my dad is going to go with Andrew to the Michigan game. He'll appreciate the experience a lot more than I would :)

O-H-I-O let's go bucks!

COSI with friends

Friday we went to COSI, Columbus' science center. We hadn't been in several months, and I think the kids are finally at a good age to really enjoy it. 

We met up with some good friends, and it was great for me to have some girl chat, Jake loved having 2 kids to run around with, and McKenna had so much to see that she was happy to stay in her stroller for a couple of hours. 

There is also a great kids area where there are tons of fun things geared towards kids under 5.  I'm pretty sure Jake and McKenna could have stayed all day!

I'm thinking that now that winter is upon us, we'll be spending lots of time at COSI. Thank goodness for inside fun!

Zoo Fun x2

The weather is starting to turn colder now that it's mid-November:( There were several nice days this week with the forecast of extreme cold coming in a few days, so we took advantage of the beautiful fall weather and hit the zoo twice, and we even had Andrew with us-both times!

Monday we picked Andrew up from school and went to the zoo directly from OSU. And yesterday we met up with one of Andrew's friends from his summer internships at Chase Bank and his little boy. 

Last night they were putting lots of lights on the trees for Zoo Lights, which start in a couple weeks. I'm loving that even though the cold is miserable, it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas :)

I love this fun time with two little kids that enjoy the zoo!

Trick Or Treat

We had fun taking the kids trick-or-treating this week.  We had to wrestle Jake down, and it took both of us to get his costume on as he kicked and screamed, but we tortured him anyway and dressed him up as Buzz Lightyear.  And just as I suspected, he was happy to be dressed up by time we got to the 2nd house and he realized he got candy for it.  We dressed McKenna up as a ladybug, and she was as happy as could be and loved all the attention.  She loves seeing people and having everyone dote over her was right up her alley.

It turns out Jake and McKenna both go gaga over chocolate- they really are my children :)

We let them each eat several pieces of their spoils when we got home, and we could definitely tell at bed-time that they'd had way too much sugar!  I guess you'd call that a Halloween success.

Father's and Son's Campout

Andrew wrote a blog post about his fun camping trip with Jake :)

Jake and I went to the fathers and sons camp out this weekend. It was his first time camping, and he was in heaven. Because I had to work earlier that day, we didn't get there in until after dark, but he thoroughly enjoyed taking stuff to and from the car. He kept calling the tent our "castle", because Barb and Jerry have a little castle tent for him to play with while he's there.  One of the times were walking back to our car to get more stuff, I saw a mouse, and told Jake to come over. Unfortunately, he didn't see the mouse, but every time we walked past that spot, he said "mouse  sleeping?" Right in the same area, there was a dried up ditch that he liked going up-and-down. He really likes running up and down hills, and will say "down da hill" and "up da hill". He also thought the campfire was cool, but was pretty cautious about it, because he knew it was very hot. Andrea has trained him really well what he is supposed to be afraid of because it's hot. 

He and I stopped and got KFC on the way, which we ate in our little camping chairs next to the tent after we put it all together and moved all our stuff. We went over to the fireside by the mission president. It was a nice little message. Jake was having more fun throwing dirt at me then listening, but it was fun.

This whole time, from when we first arrived at the campsite, it was dark outside. Jake was having a blast carrying around a flashlight. It was really nice having him hold it as I put our tent together in the dark, and we moved all our stuff from the car to the tent. He was truly in heaven when I pulled out my laser pointer. He thought that was the coolest thing he'd ever seen. And all the seven-year-olds were incredibly jealous, I don't think they could believe that this two-year-old had such a cool thing. Note that it was a green laser, which at least at this point in time, are a lot more rare compared to the commonly used red ones. I was a little worried someone from the stake young men's presidency was going to come over and have a little chat with me about how lasers were dangerous, but it never happened.

After the fireside, Jake can I returned back to the tent. He wasn't ready for bed, but thought it would be fun to hang out in there. He then proceeded to eat most of our entire bag of caramel and cheese popcorn, Chicago mix, that after a couple of kernels he decided he absolutely loved. When I first heard about Chicago mix popcorn, I thought it sounded super nasty, but since we used to live in the Chicago area, I figured I had to try it. I'm very grateful that I did!  And apparently Jake is grateful too!

We took a few more trips around with the laser. We spent a little bit of time talking with the Zimmermans, and walking around the campsite with them. Brigham, an eight year old, also really thought Jake's laser was cool, and he persuaded Jake to let him play with the laser  for a few minutes which was a miracle. It is a pretty good evidence of Jake's improving social skills. He is getting along a lot better with people, and really seeking out friends.

Jake was a little sad we had to go to bed, and he crawled up in a ball in the very corner of the tent, not wanting to sleep on his nice mattress with lots of blankets. He didn't end up going to bed till around 11:15 though, so I think he had a pretty good evening. Fortunately, he fell asleep before I did, so I was able to put him on his mattress and tuck him into a large quantity of blankets. He woke me up maybe two or three times throughout the night and needed a little bit of attention, mostly he stayed asleep though. He does move a lot in his sleep.

The next morning, we ate a nice breakfast provided by the stake and did some more exploring. Jake threw rocks into the reservoir, which he thoroughly enjoyed. It was fun to see how excited he was just to throw a few little stones into the water. There are mostly leaves right by the bank, so we had to walk up the trail little bit to get rocks, but I guess they give us more steps for the day.

Jake again enjoyed packing up the car. He really wanted both times to ride on top of his mattress instead of in his car seat, but obviously that's not doable. We had a really nice time together, and I am grateful that we had the chance to come. It's really nice spending good quality time with little Jake by himself.