museum

After dance class last week Jenna said she wanted to go to the Children's museum, so we headed over to check it out. It was the 1st time that we'd been there w/o Andrew, so it was a little strange for me, but Jenna seemed to enjoy being able to go where ever she wanted w/o having to convince an older brother he needed to follow her. Here are some pictures from our visit:

Driving the bus:

Boat racing:

Checking out the slide in the beaver dam:

Getting her groove on, on the video screen:

One of her favorite parts of the day was painting her face at the spark cart....she thoroughly enjoyed all the color options, and was VERY proud of the job she did.

She wants to go back again soon, but says she wants Andrew to go with...isn't she sweet? So we're planning for a Friday evening or Saturday trip.

Halloween 2010

This year Elmo & Batman were in the house for Halloween. Both kids loved their costumes, and it took convincing to get them off. We participated in the annual neighborhood Halloween parade, and the kids made out like bandits. The both made me laugh when people would let them pick out their own candy....each of them would carefully select 1 piece of candy, and would make sure it was something they liked. Most people looked at them like they were nuts since a lot of other kids would just reach in and grab a handful.

The neighbors joined us for the parade, and the kids really enjoyed having Macie ride with them. Macie wasn't too impressed with her costume, but seemed to enjoy the ride.

After the parade, Grandma & Grandpa took over and Bruce and I were able to sneak away for a bit. We enjoyed dinner out with neighbors, and the kids enjoyed their their time with Grandma & Grandpa.

Andrew & Grandpa had fun shooting Andrew's BB gun at some of the pumpkins. Both of them seemed to enjoy it. It brought back memories of going out to the gravel pit with my dad when I was younger to zero in his guns. Plus I don't know who had the bigger smile, Andrew or Grandpa.

We hope that everyone had a good Halloween, we sure did!

Carving Pumpkins

The kids had a blast carving pumpkins this year. We were lucky and were able to grow the pumpkins in the garden, so there were 'big' decisions about which one each of them would get. Jenna chose the 'baby' pumpkin, while Andrew chose one of the bigger ones.

Jenna wasn't very impressed with cleaning the pumpkins out, and opted to have Andrew & Bruce do that for her. She loved that I gave her a marker to draw a face on the pumpkin tho.....he was a very marked up pumpkin by the time she was done with him! Side note - look she let me put a pony tail in her hair!!! She even kept it in for the rest of night - amazing, but apparently it was a fluke since she hasn't let me put anything other than barrettes in her hair since.

Andrew seemed to enjoy getting all slimy taking the 'guts' out of the pumpkins, and did a really good job cleaning them out. He insisted he carve his own pumpkin this year (we did help a little), so I was glad we had some safety knives on hand. He did a good job carving, although after we thought we were done, he decided to carve a big chunk out of the back of the pumpkin, which we weren't sure what it was supposed to be (that's why you can see thru the nose on his pumpkin).

The kids and the finished pumpkins

Almost spooky :-)

Out on the front porch with the pumpkins....Andrew was trying to hide behind them.