Fun While Daddy's Away

 Last weekend was the weekend Erik has been looking forward to all year - his trip to College Station for a weekend with friends and an A&M game. The boys on the other hand were dreading him being gone so I decided to take them and have a fun day together to make the time pass more quickly. We headed to Cincinnati to the Duke Energy Children's Museum.

All three boys love it there and can find age-appropriate activities. When we arrived we noticed a special science experiment area set up in the main lobby. The boys were fascinated by the different experiments and Malachi impressed me by making a hypothesis and correctly explaining his reasoning for one of the demonstrations. He kept telling the "real scientists" how much he likes science. Now if we could just get him to embrace that attitude at school!

Fall Festival of Leaves

We were so excited to see it come and pretty relieved to see it go, the 46th annual Fall Festival of Leaves is now history! I didn't take many pictures, but I do have just a few of the boys having fun on the rides. We spent most of the day Friday enjoying the festival along with GranMols, Kelsey and Walker and the kids' friends, Carson and Bella. We got to see lots of friends who were in town for the festivities, ride lots of rides, eat lots of festival food and play silly carnival games. After a disappointing trip to the Paint Valley football game that evening, we woke up early Saturday to run the festival 5k. In spite of his injury, Erik was able to defend his title and win for the fourth year in a row! I also ran but my time wasn't quite as impressive. The boys got to hang out with GranMols all day while Erik and I both worked at the store. The weather was rainy and chilly but there was still a crowd and we were pretty busy until we closed. Sunday morning we attended the community worship service put on by the Bainbridge churches and then went to work again. This time Malachi and Elliott hung out at the store so they could get some more ride time in after the parade. We had a very fun weekend but I think we're all ready for some time to relax!

Thursday Nights

 Thursday nights have become kinda special. Malachi has Cub Scouts on Thursday evenings so Erik takes him and Elliott to the meetings and leaves me and Jonas at home. One-on-one time with Jonas doesn't happen too often so it's been fun to have these evenings together, just the two of us. A couple weeks ago we got a treat to share from Dairy Queen and then played in the driveway and last week we took a bike ride together. We rode to Grammy Jane's house and picked some apples then headed up the road to our neighbors' house to visit their donkeys. Jonas was a little hesitant at first, but finally got brave enough to climb the fence and feed them!

Fun with Friends

I wanted to share a few updates from last week. The boys have been enjoying their playmates, Kylee and Bryson, who I babysit three days a week. They don't always get along and there are often time-outs, but each morning they still get excited to see each other and each night Elliott prays for God to help him be nice to Kylee and Bryson. 

We also got to enjoy an evening at our friends', Ryan and Beth's, fall farm party. It was bigger and better than ever this year with a bounce house, hayride, pumpkin carving, pony rides, petting zoo, rope swing and zip line, live music, lots of food and tons of friends to visit. Thanks for having us again this year, it was wonderful as always!

Kitchen Mini-Makeover Results

Our kitchen/dining mini-makeover has been finished for a few weeks with the exception of a couple details. I finally took the time to get those accomplished and can now share the results! I love the way the tile backsplash completely changed the look of things and there is lots of extra room by the door since the table is now moved back into the window seat nook. My workers (mom and Aunt Laura) did a fantastic job and we are very grateful for their talents and willingness to work for free!

Birthday Celebration

 When we agreed to host the church cookout at our house on Jonas' birthday I decided to do something a little different to celebrate him. This past Sunday we went to the zoo, along with Yaya, GranMols and Papaw; Blake, Kim and their kids; Kelsey, Mike and their kids and Grammy Jane. We didn't tell Grammy Jane the plans for the day because we were afraid she wouldn't agree to go with us (which she confirmed) and I'm pretty sure she was upset about not knowing the full day's agenda, but I'm also confident that she enjoyed herself immensely, as did the rest of us. I mean, who wouldn't enjoy a zoo trip with 18 people?!

After spending a few hours checking out all the animals, we all picked up dinner and went to Goodale Park to eat and enjoy cake for Jonas, Grammy Jane (who celebrated her birthday last Saturday) and Meg (who will celebrate her birthday this Friday). It was such a fun day together and we are so thankful to have spent it with our family!