Thanksgiving 2008

I started the Holiday by picking up Kevin's mom to spend Rachel's birthday with us, as well as spend the week. It was nice to have the extra set of hands, even if we all seemed to get her sick (Sorry about that Peggy). I was able to make home made pumpkin pie this year. I do have to say it was easy to make and tasted wonderful, so it may become a staple during the holidays. I was also able to make some zucchini bread, apple crisp and these cute little rice krispy treats for the kids.

This year was filled with lots of guests; the Mortemore, Miltz and Mooney families joined ours. We had a wonderful meal with contributions from everyone!

I especially liked Aimee's soup, but there were so many good things for sides that very little turkey was eaten. Do you like my thrown together table? I guess we are going to have to work on getting a real dinning room table if we want to do a big dinner again, but borrowing Judy's folding table to put with ours worked out well. It was nice to have the extra company, I know Rachel enjoyed playing with Adam and Caleb and all the extra adults (you know we never pay her any attention). Here are some of the pictures from the day...

By the time everyone left, things were cleaned up, turkey had been picked clean (Thanks Molly and Aimee), and everyone was full and tired. Rachel and Aidan took a while to finally go down, but I think they were both just overly tired and full of the excitement of the day...what do you think?

We loved having everyone over and hope to be able to do it again in the future!

Happy Birthday Rachel and Aidan's 9 month checkup!

This past Saturday we celebrated Rachel's 3rd birthday and it always reminds me how we have such wonderful family and friends! Rachel of course had a mini birthday celebration the day before at the sitter's, so she was uber excited Saturday! I picked up Peggy on Friday, so she was around to help wrangle the kids so we could get the house up to par (I realize it is always a loosing battle with 2, but hey it was a special occasion). My parents came in from Elkhart and Paul and Lise came down from Hobart. It was also nice to have Cathy over (she is expecting her first and has been very ill). Also the Dorans and the Mortemores came, so it was nice all around! Rachel received many nice things that should keep her entertained for a while. Here are pictures of the day, as you can see, fun was had by all!

On Thursday, Aidan went for his 9 month check-up. The doctor said that he was doing really well (even though he is only in the 25Th percentile, but he is really active, so no worries). He was running a slight fever which could have been from teething or a virus (though my suspicions are that it was from teething), but everything looked perfect! So no more well-baby checks until January, though we will continue to see the nurse for vaccines due to our alternative shot schedule.

Our wonderful Halloween!

We had a great time getting ready for Halloween this year. On Wednesday we carved pumpkins. Rachel did a GREAT job cleaning out her pumpkin and even helped Kevin clean out his when her pumpkin was all done. Aidan had some snacks and supervised...

Rachel decided the shape for her mouth, nose and eyes to make a "scary face" and Mom carved it out for her. This year I decided to do a face with Rachel and Kevin, being the wonderful hubby he is decided to make a "Twilight" pumpkin for me to enable my addiction (www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilightseries.html). I think they turned out wonderful!

Halloween Day: I got them all decked out in pumpkin garb and got a couple pictures before they left for daycare.

The kids had a costume party at Daycare, so Linda was already going to have Aidan in his costume and Rachel into the bulk of hers (like I was going to send fairy wings with a 3 year old to daycare), so when we got home, Rachel got a couple snacks, Aidan nursed and we waited for Kevin to get home from Dr. Julie's (www.aboutlifechiropractic.com/) so he could take them out for a little while and I could get the pizza in the oven. A friend of mine from work came over (She's our Halloween buddy) and she and I took Rachel back out after dark. Rachel hit the motherload as every house would let her grab handfuls or give her a handful themselves. She was good at saying "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you", even if at times it was only a whisper. Here are some pictures of the kids waiting for Kevin to get home.

Overall, the night was good and the kids made it to bed at a decent time. We had a few trick or treaters and Rachel seemed to enjoy herself! Mr. Blonde on the other hand was exhausted by the whole process....

Our first adventure to the Indianapolis Children's Museum

Last year at the ARC conference (http://www.arcind.org/), I bid on a set of Children's Museum tickets. With eveything that has gone on this year, we had forgotten about them until recently. Which is a good thing, they were going to expire at the end of this month. So we decided to go there this past Saturday....we should have know it was going to be one of those days! Even before we left the house Rachel was being more than her usual WILD. (We even forgot the camera, so the pictures enclosed here are not the greatest, but Kevin's phone did a pretty good job!) Overall it is a nice place to visit. The musuem has 4 different floors of exhibits. We started at the top and worked our way down....

As I keep mentioning, it is a Children's museum, so it is meant for little ones to get out of their strollers and interact with the different exhibits. So of course Rachel gets out and does well with these exhibits....

But this is where we start to loose her (literally some moments)....

Kevin and I both we chasing her every which way....but again it suppose to be interactive, so we were letting her go a little wilder than normal...but finally put it to an end when she let go of Kevin's hand and bolted in the opposite direction.

This is the last of picture time....

It was a good thing that at this point most things could be just looked at rather than touched all the time....She really loved the dinosphere and so before we left we hit the gift shop and found a great dinosaur floor puzzle by Melissa & Doug and Aidan got a little T-Rex finger puppet.

I think we decided that the Museum was a great place to visit once a year, but that investing in a membership would not be well advised for us until Rachel and Aidan are both a little older. Wish us luck next year when we take them again!!!

A beautiful fall day!

Again this weekend was full of wonderful weather and plenty to do! On Sunday we decided to get what leaves have fallen (no where near all of them) and fill our Halloween lawn bags and close the remaining summer things down (Rachel's sandbox, picnic table, etc). Rachel enjoyed playing in the leaves. It had not occurred to me until she was jumping in the leaves that we didn't get to play in the leaves last year as it was still miserably hot and I was just plain miserable! Here are some pictures of Rachel and Aidan in the leaves enjoying some time in the cool Autumn air.

Aidan did not like falling in the leaves, so its a good thing Mom was around to save him...

Most recent updates on kids

As I eluded to before...Rachel is potty trained! She hasn't been in diapers in....wow, I cannot even remember when. We did have some struggles with keeping her dry at both home and sitters, but that seems to have been resolved with having the sitter give her the option of using the floor potty or the big potty. She is doing well and we cannot be happier to not have to change toddler diapers anymore!!

Aidan has been crawling for several month, which really surprised us as he went from rolling over to crawling/pulling himself up on things in about 2 weeks. He has gotten very quick as well. If anything hits the floor that he is not suppose to have, he has already found it! As you can see in the above picture he is wearing his teething necklace (Amber chips). I am in love with it and plan to get one for Rachel when she starts teething her 3yr molars! We keep it close to his skin and it has been a life saver! We don't go through as many teething tabs and he seems to be in much less discomfort. Hopefully we will be cutting a tooth or two soon!