Festivities and an Early Christmas

Rory is really great about crafting with Madelyn. They made a gingerbread house together a few weeks ago. 

She was very careful about putting all the candy on. It's been hard for her to understand that she's not supposed to be eating the candy off the house though.

Lily lending moral support.

Finished product.

We also decorated Christmas cookies.

And before our long trek to Idaho we decided to open a few presents. They were so excited.

Thanks Grandma Jo!

Family Game Day

We suddenly realized that Madelyn is old enough to play board games! So we went to the store and got a few. She loves them. I guess I know what we'll be doing for a while now.

Lily just wants to eat the games.

Birthday and One Other Thing

Our little Lily turned 1 last week. She is suddenly such a big girl! Her hair is coming in, she learned to crawl and she can pull herself up to standing. She also really likes to walk around when holding someones fingers. Madelyn tried to help  her once but found out Lily weighs a little too much for her. It was funny to watch them weaving around the room.

Helping Lily with her presents.

She loved her cupcake. I turned around for a second and when I turned back it was gone.

And the One Other Thing: Madelyn is really into building 'bird nests'. This one was built during nap time. Looks comfy cozy.

Madelyn's Big Dance Recital

Madelyn has been taking dance lessons for the last couple of months and she has loved every minute of it. Today was her last day of class for the year and the teacher had them give us a small performance. So below are the three songs that they danced to.

Act 1 - We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Act 2 - I'm A Little Snowman

Act 3 - Happy Holidays

Hope you enjoyed the dance recital as much as we did!

And so it Begins

We filled about 20 big bags of leaves this morning and that was only the front yard. The trees have plenty more leaves to drop too. 

The girls had lots of fun running/jumping/sitting in the piles.

Halloween

We did a Peter Pan theme this year. I'm so happy with how Rory's costume turned out. People didn't even recognize him. Plus who doesn't love seeing their husband in a long, curly black wig?

Lily was a pretty ferocious crocodile.

Fall Walks and Treats

Madelyn wanted to push the stroller on our walk the other day. She's actually big enough to push it in a semi straight line now! She was pretty pleased with herself.

The leaves have all started falling. Time for jumping in leaf piles! And then dealing with all the bug bites afterwards.

Lily loves sucking on the hose. Yuck.

I feel like I get a lot of pictures like this. Don't get too close to the baby when holding a camera.

Madelyn and her besties Brook and Aubrey at Spooktacular. That's our little zoo's trick or treat activity.

Happy Crocodile.

Jesus causes frogs to morph into butterflies according to this booth.

Crocodile that is done with this trick or treating business.

A&H Pumpkin Patch

Tis the season! We decided to try a different pumpkin patch this year and we weren't disappointed. 

Madelyn's favorite was the huuuuge slide. It's the first thing you see when you walk into the pumpkin patch and we had a hard time getting her to leave it.

Rory liked it too. Pure joy on those faces.

Lily thought it looked fun.

So Daddy took her along.

There was a petting zoo.

And a shed full of corn kernels. Supposedly there was buried treasure in there but we never found any. We still had fun digging around though.

Classic Madelyn.

Lily wanted to eat the kernels.

There were bounce houses. 

And a sorghum maze. We got slightly lost.

Dead end. We told her we'd have to live there if we never found our way out. She wasn't thrilled.

All in all it was quality Kansas fun. Kansan fun? You know what I mean.

Picking Apples

We went up to Nebraska City this weekend to pick apples with the Birches. Unfortunately I got slightly lost so we actually only saw them at the orchard for a few minutes. Haha. That's ok, it was a fun mommy daughters date day. (Rory had to work).

Madelyn picked about 20 lbs all by herself. She loved it.

Nom.

There were some little ponies there that Madelyn just had to ride. She had the hugest grin on her face the whole time. Well worth the $5.

We also got apple doughnuts. De-lucious.

We did end up hanging out with Jake and Sara and girlies at their house but no pictures. Just fun.