Fun times in October

I love October - we always seem to do lots of family-fun activities in the fall!

This year has been no different, we are staying busy and having a wonderful time enjoying the unseasonably warm temperatures.

We decided to go with the Lego Movie themed costumes this year.

Colin is Batman Lego, and Maggie is Unikitty.

My mom has worked hard on their masks, and just like every year, they look fabulous!

The kids wanted to paint pumpkins earlier this week, 

and as luck would have it, they both wanted to paint  the same face on their pumpkin

The finished products - I think they turned out pretty cute!

We have been in baseball heaven in October.

The Royals are in the play offs for the first time in 29 years.

Brian loves that he can share this experience with Colin, considering he was about Colin's age when they went to the World Series last.

Go ROYALS!!!

The kids got all dressed up for Trunk-or-Treat at our church last weekend.

We stopped by the local YMCA first to see what they had there.

All of the kids were shouting "hey, those are the lego movie guys", which makes me feel good considering sometimes I wonder if people know who we are.

And finally, Brian and the kids did some pumpkin carving on Sunday.

They picked 'one happy guy and one scary guy' to carve.

Our yard is looking very festive with the ghosts hanging in the front

And our witch is there to great you

and our finished pumpkins - I just had to paint a Royals pumpkin in honor of their World Series run!

And all of this was done while Maggie was incredibly sick this past week.

She had a virus that has been going around - with crazy high temperatures (around 104 degrees), with a nasty cough.  She hadn't slept well for almost a week, but finally this weekend she got to feeling better.  Poor girl was miserable!  and I am NOT comfortable with her temperatures that high, she was literally burning up!

Now all we have to do is get rid of her fever blisters that appeared all over her lips.

Hopefully we have all the germs out of our family!!

Trip to Omaha for our "benture"

Last weekend we went to Omaha to visit some friends and spend some time on a little mini-family vacation.  Omaha is perfect cause it's only a couple hours away and we have some old college friends that live there with kiddos the same age as Colin and Maggie.

We didn't tell the kids about the trip until a day before because neither one of them really understand the concept of "time" and what "one week" means.  So, they were pretty excited to learn that we were going on a special trip, which Maggie immediately began calling an adventure, and in 3 year old speak, that was a "benture".  

We left around noon on Friday and checked into our hotel and then made it to our friends, Nick and Gina's house around 4.  The kids played a while, we had dinner, and then made it back to our hotel by around 8:30 or so.  Nick and Gina's family are coming to KC in a few weeks, so we can return the favor and can hang out at our place soon!

Maggie refused to sit on the couch with all those boys (she was the only girl!), so we convinced her to sneak in the picture by standing behind the couch.  She is so funny!

There was Maggie, Bennett, Nolan, Colin, Colin (again), Sutton, and Jackson.

The kids table at dinner

Then we recruited the kids to take a picture of all of us adults - I think Colin did pretty darn good!

On Saturday, we spent all morning playing at Coco Key water park, made it to noon mass on Creighton's campus, ate some lunch and took a nap, and ended the day with more swimming.

We ordered pizza, jumped on the beds, ate some popcorn and watched Elf on TV.  

The kids thought they were in heaven.

We spent more time at the water park on Sunday before heading home around lunchtime.  

It was a quick, really busy few days, but we all had so much fun!

Out of all the things to do at the waterpark, this was one of the kid's favorites:

They would climb across this hanging rope ladder and just get right back in line again.

They were the smallest kids in line, by far, but both got really good at it.

Maggie even attempted jumping from pad to pad at one point, it was pretty funny to watch!

Colin loved doing all the slides - you can barely see his arm sticking out while going around the curve

Maggie liked the smaller slides - and especially liked going down them with Brian!

Mags and I held hands going down the smaller slides - she thought that was awesome!

I, on the other hand, got really good at sliding into about 12 inches of water without hurting myself.

Here we are eating pizza in bed!

Being silly and jumping on the beds

Colin took a video of Maggie and I going down the slides holding hands

Overall, we had a wonderful "benture"  :)

Ordinary Days

Decided to clear out some pictures on my phone

While decorating for Halloween, we stumbled across this witches' hat.

Colin immediately ran into the garage and came back with this broom.

Requesting a picture, I didn't have the heart to tell him he was about to fly backwards :)

We have been to a couple swimming birthday parties at the Gladstone Community Center

Colin and Maggie with their friends from school at Jeanelle's birthday party

Maggie and Colin are almost done with their gymnastics classes we enrolled for in the fall.

Maggie has especially liked it. Colin was in a class with MUCH bigger boys, so that has been a bit intimidating for him.  

And lastly, Maggie and I went to get our hair cut the other week.

Maggie wanted "medium" hair - so that's what she got. 

I'm so glad her curl came right back after we cut it - it's pretty cute right now!

My big girl - she's looking so grown up lately!

Pumpkin Patch 2014

We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch this week.

The weather was perfect and the kids, once again, had such a great time.

Right when you first walk in, there is a huge bin full of corn that is usually a big hit for Colin and Maggie.  We let them play for a few minutes and then hurry them along to the next attraction.

But, I'm sure they'd play all day in there if we let them.

At least corn isn't quite as messy as sand :)

I always think these signs are so cute...

After feeding the goats and pigs, and checking out the donkey, there were lots of slides and play equipment to explore

Love this picture of Brian with the kids

And the huge rocking chair is always fun to sit in

We checked out the combine again

Kindof a dark picture, but Maggie loved 'driving' it and honking the non-existent horn

Then we rode on a tractor that pulled us out to a field to pick out pumpkins - we hadn't ever done that before and the kids thought it would be fun.  So we tried it.  Little did we know, the pumpkin patch was about 20 minutes away, so we immediately hopped on the next tractor to get back.  

But, I was able to ask someone to take our picture while we were waiting for the tractor to pull us along.  I think it turned out pretty cute!

Maggie was getting tired of me taking so many pictures :)

Now the kids are requesting we start some pumpkin carving.  We've had requests for batman, hello kitty, and princesses.  Wish us luck!