Fall recap

Well, let's see, we left off with some fall fun on tractors at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Since then, there has been plenty of happenings, just no blogging....I just plain old suck at this anymore! There are plenty of excuses, but none that really matter, so with that, I'll just post an update on our lives.

Hannah and Nicholas ared donig great. They are totally buds, most of the time. They love to play together and make each other laugh. It's hard to remember what Hannah was like as an only child. They couldn't be more different through. Hannah is still so sweet, gentle and peaceful. Nicholas is crazy, ornery and loves rough housing. Here they are though in a sweet moment having their bedtime snack together on the steps. Not sure why, but it was cute! Sorry for the grainy pictures.

Nicholas is really getting into watching TV and movies now. Unfortunately, his list of favorites is limited....Elmo, Wiggles and Hi-5. He loves them all though!

We took the kids to a fall fest place last month for my company picnic. Unfortnately, we didn't get to spend a lot of time there because we had other running around that day. It was a really neat place though in Hartville. Here is one of the couple pictures I took of them playing in the corn pit.

Then came Halloween. Of course, it came really quickly. I hated it being on a weekday night too...made it a little hectic, but I picked the kids up a little early to give us time to run home, eat and change before trick or treat.

Hannah was Rapunzel (so not a blonde!)

Nicholas was the cutest dragon ever!

They sure had fun being dressed up and going trick or treating.

We teamed up with Hardins as we always do. Laura and I sat out to hand out candy and Tony and Aaron took the kids.

Unfortnately, I forgot to give Tony the camera during trick or treat, so we didn't get any of Nicholas going up to the doors, but he did pretty good. He did come home sitting in the wagon, but he got out at each house to get his goods!

Here's a funny picture of how Nicholas fell asleep one morning while Hannah and I were at church. He slept like this for almost his whole nap!

Hannah's gymnastics session ended a couple weeks ago. The sessions always end with "Show what you know" where they go out to the floor and show what they've learned and we take pictures and then there's a ribbon ceremony. Unfortnately, this time, Tony went out so I had to take both kids by myself. Nicholas was actually really good during class but then the inner monster in him came raging out when the floor opened. It was AWFUL!! Really, it wasn't his fault at all. To him, it was like a dream come true for this giant playground to be opened up to him. He had no way to know he couldn't play and it was so hard for me to keep him in check while watching Hannah and trying to take pictures. He's getting too big to hold and won't just stay by me if I tell him to. I turned into the psycho mom for a while. But anyway, here are a few of Hannah doing her stuff!

Then while I was in full psycho mom mode during ribbon ceremony (becasue I just wanted to sit there and watch while Nicholas saw no one playing on the equipment that was calling his name), Hannah was super excited to receive her RED trophy!!! I had told her that I thought she was only getting a medal again this time, because I really thought she was. The look on her face when she realized she got all 4 ribbons and her trophy was AWESOME, but of course, I missed taking a picture of it trying to hold Nicholas down. We were so proud though of her the entire way home!!!

I actually won our last poker tournament! That was good - hadn't won in a while and it felt good to play so well.

Hannah got her first report card - all very good marks! Exceeds standards in many areas, especially reading. She's reading at a 2nd grade level right now and can actually read some 3rd grade books! We also had our first parent teacher conference - all very good things to say about her! I'm so proud of her!

We finally got our new carpet in the bedroom. We put our furniture back in the room differently to open up the windows. I really like how it's arranged now because it makes the room seem bigger, but now I'm on the wrong side of the bed! It's really awful - I can't sleep like that! So I may have to give up being next to the clock and get back to MY side of the bed so I can sleep!

Hannah's also been participating in children's choir at church. She loves it. The kids sang last week at church and it was really sweet. Tony came to watch too, so of course Nicholas came to church as well. He was so cute when it was children's sharing time. When he saw the kids were going up, he was curious and wanted to go, but was hesitant. He went about half way down the aisle, then came back and kept going closer and closer and then he spotted Hannah sitting up there so he ran to her. She was awesome and put her arm around him to comfort him and they were so cute sitting there together. (sorry for the poor pics in church).

Luckily, Nicholas came back to his seat just before it was really over because that's when the kids choir sang. If he's have still been up there, we'd have made a scene trying to get him to come back and not stay and sing. He saw them at practice and stood up there because they were doing super fun hand motions to their song.

And then this past week was Thanksgiving alread! Hannah had no school Wednesday, so I took the day off with her. We hung out at home all morning then went running around and then to see the Muppet movie. It was fun to hang out with her all day...she's so grown up!

We went to dads for dinner. Nicholas had fun playing with their new puppy, Maizy.

We went to Dawns after that for the rest of the evening.

I did some shopping on Black Friday and we went to the lighting on the square and we got our outside lights up yesterday (in the awesome 60 degree weather!!)

It was a really long weekend, much needed, but I'm actually ready to go back to work and school and our crazy, busy schedules!