Halloween

Happy Halloween!  It was a beautiful day in Fargo for trick or treating.  The kids were excited, they loved it. 

 

 

After a trip around the block once, Gus ran into his BF from down the street, Caleb.  

It was so nice to not be freezing while walking around.  The streets were packed with kids.

Gus found a group of kids to jump in with for a few blocks.

 Nora enjoyed the view from way up high.

After a long night, Gus took inventory of his candy.  And we have enough.

Gabby's 3rd Birthday

We made another trip back to the cities to celebrate our God-daughter, Gabby's 3rd birthday.  It was a day full of partying and pizza.  And cake.  It was delicious.

Here's the b-day girl!

We headed to Chuck E Cheese at 10:30..A.M.  The kids lovvvved it.  Here's Gabby cashing out at the end of a long morning.

 Holly met us there and brought Gabs a cake. 

After Chuck E's, we headed home and put the tots down for a nap while we geared up for the main event, Gabby's real b-day party at a place called Pump It Up.  With a name like Pump It Up how can you go wrong?  Well, folks, you can't.   For example, here's our entire family zooming down a giant inflatable slide, going way faster than was safe for a 1-year might I add, but so fun.   Yaywhoo!  Pump. It. Up!

The Goin's went faster than we did.  Good stuff!

Here's us with the birthday girl, sitting in another inflatable.  Also, you'd think with all the soft inflatables it would be a guarantee that no child would get hurt.  Well, Gabby (sadly) was the exception to that rule.  During pizza she fell through the picnic bench and smashed her head on the ground.  ouch.  She was also OK.  These kids are troopers!

There was so much excitement going on that at one point, poor Jaime lost Ashton.  We can laugh about it now, but at the time, it was freaky.  Turns out he was stuck in one of the inflatable obstable courses and he was OK, phew. 

Happy Birthday, Gabby!  Thank you, Mike and Michelle for hosting a wonderful weekend of non-stop parties.  

PS - Did you notice the insane formatting of this post?  Somehow I have placed words inside boxes, and all sorts of  word-picture craziness. I have not spent enough time fiddling with the new blogger format so I'm just letting it go.  Thank you. 

Carve it

We moved the kitchen table, laid down some newspaper, and had a pumpkin carving party with the kids.  It was great for the first 10 minutes they were interested in it.  After they took off to play cars or watch a movie, Ross and I finished up the carving and called them back in for the cool part, the lighting of the jack-o-lanterns.

Nora wasn't too interested in the gunky parts, but she did try to eat a raw pumpkin seed. 

 

Gus thought the finished product was so cool! Oh, and you'll notice he is wearing his absolute scariest shirt ever in prep for Halloween.  Frightening!

Later, everyone cut loose and laughed (OK, maybe just Nora).  The guys took this app pretty seriously. 

Happy Early Halloween!

Orchards, patches, and farms

'Tis the season to hit up every apple orchard, pumpkin patch, and fall festival in the tri-state area.  And it's been so balmy we can't help but get out there and enjoy every second of these above average temperatures.

Gus I traveled to Mpls for a 2-day visit the last week of September.  He got to play with Gabby, and Michelle and I got to catch up, so a win-win obviously. On our way back to Fargo, we stopped at the lovely Deardorf Family Apple Orchard in Waconia, MN.  We met Erica and her kiddos there, too.  Here's Gabby, Grady, and Gus on the trailer ride out to the Honeycrisps. 

 It's times like this that we really miss Minnesota.  Look, trees!

Erica and Michelle smiled as they thought about all the baking that was about to go down.  Erica's from-scratch apple pie recipe is a blue ribbon winner, after all.  We didn't just hit up the apple orchard to kill time, people.  Erica needed the perfect apples and I think she got them.

 The weekend before our trip to Mpls, we attended Fargo's Fall Festival.  Nora is tall, but not quite tall enough.

 We met our friends, Jake and Taylor at the festival.  The kids decorated cookies in between playing games and winning prizes.

Finally, we made a family trip to a pumpkin patch just NW of Fargo.  Nora was interested in the petting zoo animals. Oh my gosh, is her dress too short?  Yes.  But she grows faster than most kids, plus it was 82 degrees that day so the leggings had to go.  Also, this dress is too cute to not be worn (thanks, Sofie!). Go with it!

 Gus liked torturing himself in the mini Haunted House (which wasn't very scary).

 Cousins in a super large chair. Just missing Hava!

 Children of the corn.  Cute.

 Christy, Will, and Josh made it through the corn maze with no problem.

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 Nora and Will are buddies.  We love it.

By the way, Grandpa Dave fixed our laptop so this blog is back in biz!  Thank you Gpa Dave.  We owe you.  I trust you more than I would the geek squad.  Our photos and videos are safe so now I have no excuse to not blog.  Dangit, kind of.  I mean, I must admit it was nice to not feel the pressure of an out of date blog.  It was so easy to blame my lack of postings on a faulty computer.  Well, that break is over so I'll get focused again and make this a priority.

Happy Fall everyone!

New shoes!

Gus got new shoes last week and now he:

• Runs super fast
• Jumps extra high
• Sleeps in his shoes

 

 

The kids loves his shoes.  On a related note, Nora loves shoes too which really makes me happy because shoe shopping with her is much more fun than shoe shopping with Gus.

Crash

There's been a crash - our trusty laptop is toast and the next step is recovering all our photos. Oy, it stresses me out so instead of dealing with it, I keep putting it off.  So until I get it together all I have to contribute to our neglected blog are some random cell phone photos. 

The best:  Ross harvested our first official batch of Honeycrisps last night from our new tree.  Delicious! 

We spent the long Labor Day weekend at a great resort in Longville, MN, with the Goins and the Johnsons.  It was awesome.  Gus and Gabs (and Carson and Ashton, whom I did not snap of pic of using my cell phone, darn it), all loved hanging out on the docks and fishing.

This final set of high-quality cell phone photos are proof that Nora has enough hair for pigtails. 

She also let me give her a pedicure last night.  OK, so I had to put her in her hair chair and cue up a Baby Einstein YouTube montage on the iPad so she would sit still.  But whatever.  She has adorable toes!

Back to school(s)

Gus was busy getting back to school last week.  But really it was first-time-to-school because he's never gone to school before.

First up was his Sunday School meet and greet, on a Wednesday night.  Easy.  We'll see how his first day goes.
 



















Our second stop was Small Wonders for his back-to-school night for preschool.  He dropped off all his supplies which is why you see him heading into the building with a full backpack.  

Go Gus!

Oh, I forgot to mention that he got a buzz-cut just in time for all of this back to school craziness. (As if you hadn't noticed the poor kids shaven head.)  But for the record, he really likes his short 'do and has been telling me for the past week that he "just feels like he's 4, or 5". Well, you now look it, too, Gus.  Amazing how fast these little pills grow up!