Happy Pumpkin Day!

We took full advantage of Halloween falling on a Saturday this year! Especially because we were gone the previous two weekends, I feel like we sort missed out on a lot of our annual Halloween festivities. But we got a lot accomplished in one day!

First we headed to Marshall's Farm Market to pick out some baby pumpkins to go along with the bigger pumpkins the girls picked out with Nana and Papi during their visit.





Andrew found a GIANT pumpkin (or the GREAT PUMPKIN, if you will) at a pumpkin patch we drove by. It weighed as much as Lily! 39 pounds! We spent the afternoon making glitter pumpkins, carving the larger pumpkins, and then getting ready for trick-or-treating. Here's a slide show of more of our farm market photos and our afternoon:

Just before trick-or-treating:




The trick-or-treat gang (l-r): Isabelle, Claire, Hope, Sumi (Isabelle's friend), Ella and Lily. We also picked up our neighbors Noor and Farah along the way. So we were running around the neighborhood with 8 kids and 3 adults. It was a lot of fun as I realized we knew so many more neighbors this year than we did last year (when I practically knew no one!). Andrew even told me we had a few people come to the house who seemed disappointed to find him opening the door with the candy. They asked, "Is Holly around?" ;-)

After trick-or-treating, we headed over to B-Pa's house to trick-or-treat at a couple more houses (just the neighbors we know) and to help Sam (my step-brother) celebrate his birthday:


The two kitties cuddling with each other. ;-)

And just chilling at the end of the day.

Skol Vikings!

With the Vikings having such a good season so far (7-1 after an awesome win against the Packers in the Border Battle. Whoo hoo!), we were very excited to go to the Viking/Baltimore game on October 18th. And we brought our friends Kelly and Robb. As usual, Andrew was able to snag some extra perks for us. We were able to go to the VIP tent before the game and indulge in a large amount of food at the buffet, including drinks and dessert. There were also some Viking alums there signing autographs (sorry, I have no idea who they were).

Kelly with a random fan who traveled all the way from Idaho (or somewhere). ;-)



After filling our stomachs and enjoying the amusing VIP tent company, we headed into the stadium to watch warm-up down on the field.

Left: Bernard Berrian and right: teeny tiny...there's Favre.

We'll consider this my 24-week belly photo since that's a pretty good shot of the mid-region there.

On the right there, that's Andrew with our Knox friend, C.J. He now has a full-time job with the Vikings (he interned last year). So we said hi to him while we were hanging around the field.

And here's a little slide show of some photos of Andrew/The Famous Group's work on the Jumbo-tron screen as well as few game shots:

Fall Randomness: Part 2

Here's a few more random fall tidbits.....

October 3rd, we ventured about an hour or so northeast to go to Jody's wedding in Forest Lake. If it had been nice weather, it would have been an absolutely gorgeous place to have a wedding. It was a bit chilly with the wind and rain sprinkles, but a very nice ceremony and reception. We had fun seeing the girls' little friend Arie as the flower girl.



The girls were invited to a neighbor friend's swimming birthday party at Foss Swimming School. We really had no idea what to expect from this kind of party. And honestly, I was a bit nervous about Lily and what she would think/do since she has been consistently scared about swimming in pools. Lately she has gotten a little more brave and fortunately, they were well prepared for kids who were not able to swim at all.

She spent all the time in the water hanging on to an instructor's back, riding around like a little princess. She LOVED it! :-)

And there were a LOT of kids there! They all had a great time playing games in the water.



The weekend of October 23rd, Andrew and I traveled to Galesburg, Illinois to attend our 10-year college reunion. Can't believe it's been ten years already! We had a really nice weekend even though we didn't see as many people as we might have liked. BUT, we did get to see Harley for a good bit at the football game. It was so fun to chat with him for a good 20 minutes or so. When we see him in June at the golf tournament, he's so busy that it's tough to chat with him at all. We also had fun hanging out with Sarah Gortenburg again, this time without kids.


Andrew and I really enjoyed the weekend to ourselves without the kiddos. It was nice to just get away the two of us for a couple nights.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my mom and Dave were watching the kids (Thanks Mom and Dave!!). And Dave happened to try on our Man in the Yellow Hat costume (complete with Curious George) for a halloween party they would be going to. Thought there might be a few readers out there who would get a kick out seeing him in the costume. I heard from my mom that Dave actually won for both Best and Worst Costume at the party. :-)



And finally, just a fun photo of the girls. This was while Daddy was in charge. They don't sit on the island, eating dry pancake mix from bowls when I'm in charge. ;-)

Where is our beautiful October weather?

Oh man, I really hope our October weather is no indication of the winter to come. We had snow on October 10th and 12th! And not just some little flurries in the air. Full on INCHES of snow on the ground. We woke up to a world of white. The girls of course were very excited. I, on the other hand, buried my head into the pillows and wished the snow away.


This (to the left) was the way the backyard looked that Saturday morning that Ella had to play soccer. I believe that was Oct. 10th. This didn't stay very long. Then, on Monday we woke up to LOTS of snow and I had to scramble through our front hall closet to find snow pants, boots, hats, and mittens as well as take the tags off the girls' new winter coats that I bought on sale at the end of last season. I actually didn't find Lily's boots right away, which is why she's wearing her rain boots in these photos. I did find them later though so we are all set now!

Here is Ella on her way to school that morning! She had her snow pants stuffed in her backpack so she'd be all set for recess.

And while Ella was at school, Lily and Andrew played outside!

Do you see how big that snowman is?!

And here's a slideshow of the rest of their snow fun:


Ella and Lily actually played outside for a good hour or more after school, making baby snowmen. But I didn't get any photos of it.

Thankfully, we've only had a few flurries since then and cold temperatures. I'm hoping winter will stay away for a bit yet. Knock on wood, we have had a few nice days lately.

Fall Photos of the Girls

I LOVE LOVE LOVE taking fall photos of the girls. There's just something about the autumn colors, the layers of clothes, the light. I don't know, I just love it.

So here's a slide show of this year's photos:


Andrew and I also decided (though this is subject to us changing our minds) that we probably won't do the girls annual portrait photos in June like we have for the last two years, we're going to just wait and do all of our annual photos in the fall next year!

If there are any photos that anyone would like prints of from these, just let me know and I'll get them for you!

Mid-Autumn Vacation!

Every year, every school in the entire state is off the third Thursday and Friday of the month for the MEA (Minnesota Educators Association) conference. All the teachers attend and the kids have a few days off. We decided this would be a perfect time for a little family getaway. Andrew usually travels a lot in September and October because The Famous Group is working on NFL, NHL and NBA packages simultaneously. We thought it would be great to spend some time away from home and away from work so we headed over to the Great Wolf Lodge in the Dells. We went there last December and had a great time and the kids were very excited about going back again!



Believe it or not, Andrew and Ella are both under that deluge of water!! A bell clangs every few minutes to warn you and then that big bucket at the top dumps water on all those below. Ella did it once or twice, but the girls got a big kick out of Andrew standing under there and getting soaked.

We were so proud of Lily. She branched out quite a bit from the last visit and had so much fun! She did two other waterslides, crawled across these log stumps and played in a splash pad area. Ella of course did any and all slides she was tall enough to go down. Sidenote: I was at the waterpark and in the water despite the lack of photos of me. Andrew just never grabbed the camera to shoot one of me. :-)

Great Wolf had a new feature on this visit to the hotel. A virtual scavenger hunt game called MagiQuest. Basically, you purchase a wand and game and then go through the forest area collecting treasure, gems, objects and other things just by flicking your wand toward various objects. A laser reads your wand and stores information in the game piece attached. You go to multiple video screens throughout to find out your status in the quest based on what your wand has collected. The girls really enjoyed this!



Before we left for our trip, we received an email from the hotel letting us know they were doing a trick or treat trail through the hotel and also a family storytime. So we threw the girls' costumes into our bag. They were excited to get to wear their costumes a full two weeks before Halloween.




After trick or treating, we headed back to the room to get pajamas on and then ventured out in the hotel for a special quest in the Magiquest game. They had one that went through the hotel.


And then we settled in for storytime. Can you spot me and the girls? ;-) We don't have any other photos but we went to the waterpark again the next morning before heading back to MN in time for Lily to go to a friend's birthday party. We had such a fun time and it was great for us to get away with just the four (well, 4.5) of us. We don't often get away from the house or Eden Prairie with just us to do something fun like that. It was such a nice change of pace!