Family Pictures

 

enjoying fall

We are soaking up this wonderful fall weather! We had a nice weekend together relaxing and doing some fun things. Friday was JJ's day off and we were busy with getting pre-approved for a home loan and having our health exams for life insurance.  Adult things. We are glad to know that we can now move forward with the home buying/building process when we are ready.  Probably closer to spring since we have a year contract with our town home but we can start looking more seriously now that we have our budget.  Friday evening we took family pictures, which we can't wait to get printed and put in the house. We rewarded the kids good photo behavior with some sonic ice cream after. 

 

Saturday morning we got ready and I took the kids over to the farmers market down the street.  We have never been and I have been wanting to.  I wish we would have gone earlier because I got some great stuff! I got a couple spaghetti squash for 50 cents a piece and 3 big zucchini's for a dollar a piece. I can't wait to go back again this Saturday and get more.  The kids loved the spaghetti squash and I am excited to use my zucchini.  We had a few samples and enjoyed walking around.  We then ran an errand and I then let the kids walk around the pet store.  One of their favorite places on earth.

 Lucy had a birthday party that afternoon, JJ took her so I could work on my Sunday school lesson.  They had a nice time and came home to tell us all about the pretty park.  We ate dinner and decided to head back out to the park to go for a nice walk and explore the park a little more as a family. 

 There were a couple of trails and we picked one that was 1.1 miles long.  It was pretty late and we didn't want to go on a long hike and get stuck in the woods in the dark. 

 It was such a beautiful trail and such a fun place so close to our home.  We love finding little gems like that!

 They had so many fields of pretty wild flowers/weeds .  I bet it would be beautiful with the sun hitting them.  We already plan to go back when the leaves start to change a little more. We finished our walk just in time, it was starting to get dark.  The kids played on the playground for a few minutes and we headed home.

 We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and playing at home.  We have had some busy weekends and October always seems to be really busy so it was nice to have a low key weekend.  I know that JJ and Lucy especially enjoy just relaxing at home since they are away all week long. 

 We had a nice weekend and Lucy was ready and eager to head back to school on Monday! She was so excited it was finally her turn to be the line leader at school! I love how a little things like a line leader is such a big part of her life.

Botanic Gardens

Wednesday we went to the Botanic Gardens with our play group.  I haven't been to the gardens in probably 6 years! It was kind of weird to be there and have things be new but familiar.  We enjoyed walking around and enjoying the sunshine and looking at all the pretty plants.  We walked through the little maze, and then went up the look out tower to look down on people in the maze.

 You can kind of see Garrett's little monkey that he brought with him.  Just this week he has become very attached to his little monkey, which he has named Will. He has a friend down the street named Will, I am sure there is some sort of connection. 

 We went to the Children's Gardens, which is new since I have been there last.  It was a lot of fun! They had lots of things for the kids to do, like sand, slides, a cave and this fun little boat area.  You take your boat up to the top and open the doors and let the boat through.

 It was such a fun little area and Garrett loved it.  The water was a little way down and he had to lean over pretty far to get to the water.  I was watching him really close to make sure he didn't fall in.  I turned around to put my camera down and Garrett fell into the water.  He was fine, but just all wet.  There were a couple of other kids that had come over and I didn't see but Garrett said someone pushed him.  I don't know if that is true and I know that he could have fallen in on his own.  He was really upset that his outfit got all wet.  Luckily it was pretty warm still outside so he was able to dry off as we finished up. 

 We ran around a little more to let him dry off a bit so he wasn't soaking wet.  He was having a blast! I should have packed a lunch for us to eat.  It was now noon and we had already eaten our snacks.  It took us a bout 45 minutes to get there so I knew it would be a late lunch unless we stopped somewhere to get something to eat. 

I had forgotten my phone that day and I missed it.  I wished I had it so I could try to get a hold of JJ to see if we could come visit him shortly at work.  It was only about 30 minutes away and on our way home.  There are lots of places to eat by his work and I thought about just grabbing something while we were out.  I had forgotten that he had a lunch meeting with the Bausch and Lomb representatives that day. We got to his work just before 1, which I thought we would barely be able to catch him since he usually has a patient at 1.  We talked with the office manager and he was still at lunch.  She sent him a text for me and we drew him a little picture and left a note.  Just as we were walking to the car to head home JJ came out the front door.  He had just gotten back and walked in the back door.  He didn't have a patient at 1 so we decided to go get some lunch together.  It was fun to visit with him and eat lunch outside to enjoy the weather.  We got home with just enough time to relax a little before getting Lucy from the bus.  Lucy had dance that night, JJ and I walked the neighborhood together with Garrett in the stroller while she was at dance.   After dance we headed to the mall to do a little shopping. It was a fun day and we were all exhausted from being so busy. 

Owls

Tuesday morning we headed to story time at the Library.  They talked about owls, read some cute books , sang some cute owl songs and then made this fun owl.  I think the owl is so cute! Garrett really likes the feathers that he calls wings.  I love going to story time and watching Garrett participate and listen so well.  He always goes right up front and sits right in front of the story time lady.  We then of course played with trains and checked out some new story books.  We went to my parents house for dinner that night.  The kids loved running around their yard and helping Grandma and Grandpa with things around the house.  My Mom was so excited to have company come, she has been lonely since Jordan has gone to college.  She for the first time is an empty nester.  She had the table set all nice for us.  JJ meet us there for dinner, and then JJ and I headed to the dentist and my parents watched the kids for us.  JJ had his teeth cleaned and I am having the dentist make me a mouth piece to wear at night.  It will open up my bite a little more and hopefully give my ears more room to drain properly.  It might be a long shot but your jaw and ears are so close together that it may just work.  I am willing to try anything! With fall coming and all the weather changing my little health break sure didn't last long.  Oh well, 2 months of feeling well was sure nice. It would seriously be an huge answer to my prayers and a miracle if something so simple as fixing by bite solved such a huge thing in my life.  When I woke up sick again I was just so frustrated.  It is sometimes hard to keep positive in life when you are always feeling sick.  It is hard to socialize when you can't hear people talking to you, or go to church and barley be able to hear the teacher and the most difficult, not be able to hear my kids that sometimes talk so softly.  That Sunday was really hard but it made my day as I was fixing Lucy's hair we were listening to some church music over the Internet and the song "I am a Child of God" came on.  I teared up as I listened to the words of the song.  Just knowing that the song is what I needed to hear to head to church with a positive attitude.   Luckily not all days are horrible and I know that keeping my eyes and heart open I can see little things in my days that remind me how much I am loved.  

Choo Choo

One morning this week Garrett and I played trains together.  He loves to play trains! I gave him an empty oatmeal canister that I cut the bottom out of.  He uses it as a tunnel, more specifically his time tunnel.  He enjoys watching "Dinosaur Train" on PBS and so he copied it from there.  We also got out some blocks and made a train station.  We had fun playing and using our imagination to create different things. 

 

Grocery Shopping

That is one full cart! It reminds me of when I would help my Mom grocery shop when I was younger.  Garrett gets to ride because he can't listen.  He starts out walking, make that running around the store.  We give constant reminders to be good and to walk by us.  After all his warnings are out he puts up a fight and rides in the cart.  After a few minutes he is fine and happy to be riding in the cart.  We have changed our shopping to only doing our big trips every 2 weeks with small trips for a few produce the weeks in between.  I am happy to say we did pretty well for this past month, I am done shopping for September.  It has been nice to have more time together in the evenings and not have to go grocery shopping each week.  Garrett goes with me on our little mini trips and does really good helping me, I think he is worse when Lucy is around.  Hopefully as we continue with this I will get better at keeping to our budget.  We both agree that we did really well this month. We are excited about how much we were able to cut back and save this month. I like to think of this as a part time job, it seriously takes a lot of time and planning to be prepared and plan ahead for so many meals.  It is nice to only have to be meal planning every 2 weeks.

Fair Time

Saturday we packed in the fun. JJ went to work in the morning and as soon as he got home he took Lucy for a daddy-daughter date to the fair in our town.   I had read about it in the paper and it sounded like fun.  I didn't think it would be that big since we have been to other things at the park and not very many people came.  JJ said they had a lot of fun and Lucy was able to jump in some bounce houses and do some fun little games.  They walked around there and then got a slush drink at Sonic.  When they got home we headed over to a friends house to have a BBQ.  They invited us and another family over to swim.  It was pretty chilly but our kids wanted to jump in so JJ swam with the kids.  Luckily the water was heated so it wasn't bad.  We enjoyed a yummy BBQ and visited with the families there.  After the BBQ we headed to St. Peters to go to the fair. When I read about both fairs on the same day, the one close to our house and the one up in St. Peters it seemed the St. Peters one would be a lot bigger.  That is why JJ and Lucy just went in the afternoon.  We sat in traffic to get to the fair for about 30-40 minutes and turns out way more people came then they thought.  They didn't have enough parking and just a few cars behind us they started to turn people away.  We were glad that after making to drive and sitting in traffic we were able to go.  We parked pretty far away and just walked over. They said they had rides and that was one reason why we wanted to come to this fair, we thought it would be fun to let the kids ride some.  When we got there we were a little surprised to see how small it was.  They only had a couple of rides and I am not sure the kids were even tall enough to ride them.  The lines were really long to ride them too. 

 

 We decdied to just skip the rides and save our money.  We decided to get some funnel cake and then just head back home.  They had a band playing that we could hear as we walked around, they were pretty good.  They only had one food vendor there so the line was pretty long for that as well. I felt so sorry for the 2 ladies working in there.  JJ said when he ordered our funnel cake the lady said they had been there running around just the 2 of them all day long.  How stressful! 

We loved our funnel cakes and they were gone pretty quickly.  The kids enjoyed running around in the grass while waiting for our funnel cakes and thought it was just fun to be at the fair. 

 I am glad we went, but a little sad we didn't go to the fair in the evening closer to our house.  It probably would have been a better time but oh well.  We didn't stick around for the fireworks, which we wanted to but after sitting in so much traffic just to get there we wanted to avoid that on the way home.  Luckily we saw some at the balloon glow the night before.  Atleast we were still able to spend some time together as a family and next year we will know which fair to go to!

Balloon Glow

Friday evening we headed to Forest Park for the Balloon Glow.  I love fall and all the fun activities there are to do.  The weather is finally cooling down and everyone is excited to get out and enjoy things.  This weekend we had a lot going on and we wanted to be able to fit everything in.  They have a big celebration on Saturday with all sorts of fun things to do and then the balloons race.  We had plans on Saturday and so we decided to come to the balloon glow Friday evening.  I think the balloon glow was more fun then watching the race on Saturday.  I am glad we decided to come! We got there right when it started, it was pretty crazy trying to find a place to park but we got a good spot not to far away.  We walked up and all the balloons were all blown up and ready to go and see.  They had the area roped off while they blew up the balloons and right when they got there they were taking them down so people could walk around and look at all of them up close.

 They were all so pretty and fun to see, so bright and colorful and some were really fun like a bag of popcorn, a golf ball and the energizer bunny that would serve as the rabbit for the race. 

 The kids really enjoyed looking at them, I am not sure that they have really seen that may hot air balloons in the air and for sure not one up close like this.  They loved it.

Every once and a while they would blow a fog horn and all the balloons would light up their flames.  They really did "glow" and it was so cool! I wish I was a better photographer to capture it better.  It was so pretty with the sunset in the background and all the bright balloons with the fire. 

 

 This is one of my favorite pictures, the St. Louis balloon.

 One balloon let the kids get inside the basket.  Lucy was so excited and jumped right in.  Garrett got in and then freaked out and got a little worried it was going to go up in the air with him in it.  He was glad we quickly pulled him out. 

 As it got darker outside it was more impressive when the horn would go off and they would all light up together. 

 Garrett was a little unsure about the balloons and the fire.  He would cover his eyes when they all did the flames at the same time.  Lucy was sweet and would rub his hands and comfort him. 

 After walking around and seeing all the balloons up close we found a place to sit down.  We watched the balloons come down and get packed up.  They come down so quickly.  After all the balloons were packed away they finished the night with some fireworks.  It was so fun to finally see some fireworks this year.  We really felt like we missed out this year without any on the 4th of July. It was such a fun evening and we would love to go back again next year!