Goofballs!

These boys are such goofballs! They make my heart smile.

Arkansas

Halloween weekend my family took off for Bella Vista, Arkansas. Growing up, it seems like just about every summer included a trip to Bella Vista. Then in college and after we got married, Ben and I went with mom and dad several times. But, it had been 5 years since such a trip and finally it worked for my sister to too. Rylee made her first trip to Bella Vista, but unfortunately Sherri couldn't make it due to other commitments. We stayed in a big beautiful house on a quiet street with a golf course in the backyard. The weather couldn't have been better!

Knowing the boys would cry without their farm toys, we brought them with us.


The boys played and played in the leaves! We have very few leaves in our yard at home, so a yard full was a treat.










We explored the woods next to our house...

and found some really big leaves!




It was a true blessing to be able to spend quality time with Rylee. She's a dream of a baby, basically doesn't cry and just goes with the flow. Ben and I were amazed with how long she slept each morning! Our boys had been up for at least 2 hours before Rylee made a peep!




Grandma brought a scrapbook along to help us remember past Bella Vista visits.




There was a fair bit of running and jumping that happened...if you can imagine such a thing happening when Ben, Noah, Levi and ten pillows find themselves all in one room.


We took a morning walk on a nature trail. It was beautiful!




The waterfall was the highlight of the walk.








Skipping rocks with grandpa.


Asleep - I guess the walk wore her out.


Hey, that's me! I don't often make appearances on this blog. :-)


More leaves, which the human rake (that would be me) made into piles for Noah. He had a great time running and jumping into the piles!




It was a fantastic trip! We had comfy beds to sleep in, lots and lots of yummy food and quality time together!

Halloween 2009

Well, it kind of came and went without us taking much notice this year. Noah got to dress-up for pre-school on Thursday, but we left for Arkansas on Friday for the weekend. So, Noah's simple costume from pre-school and some special treats from our neighbor were the extent of our Halloween celebration this year.

Our neighbor gave each boy a little bucket of Halloween treats.


Noah dressed up as a train engineer for pre-school. Thanks to Debbie, our daycare lady, for letting us borrow the hat and vest!


Noah calls these his "shark teeth" - again, from our neighbor.

Our Journey

Ben and I celebrated our 6th Wedding Anniversary on Sunday. Six years feels good.

We walk through this life together

two people, raising our children

through the ups and downs

still discovering who the other is

and who we are becoming.

So on Sunday....we saw Ben Folds (please follow the link, it's to a You Tube video from the concert that features Ben at the piano and the 2 people that opened the show for him) in concert and he rocked! It was absolutely the best thing we've done in a long time, something different, something that we decided to do on a whim, something that was refreshing, inspiring and completely enjoyable.

John Deere + Pumpkins

My dad and I took the boys to the John Deere store, officially known as Prairie Land Partners, in McPherson on Saturday morning. Boy oh boy were they in John Deere heaven (if you watch JD DVDs you'll even know the song....sigh...). I shopped for a 1/64 size loader tractor to replace the one the boys broke a few weekends ago. It's hard to pretend farm without all the proper equipment. The boys climbed on the toy tractors, drove them around the store, parked them, drove them, hooked up trailers to them, pretended to mow and trim, ate popcorn and climbed on the real equipment outside.

Levi's expression just cracks me up in this photo, we see this face all too often at our house.

These two goofballs wouldn't sit and smile at me for a photo, go figure.

Noah's not interested in this, he'd rather be on a tractor.

And he's out, done with this silly picture thing.

Check out the digger Grandpa bought the boys to play with. It digs/scoops/dumps and lives at Grandpa and Grandma's house, thanks Grandpa!

Then we went to Papa's Pumpkin Patch in the afternoon. We had a great time, but it was a little hectic and I don't have any pictures with pumpkins. I intended to get cute pictures of the boys picking out pumpkins but that just didn't happen. We headed out toward the pumpkin patch without a wagon or a cutter-thingy. Thankfully, some nice people let us have their cutter after they had loaded up their wagon with pumpkins. But, that left us with two kids, a camera, two pumpkins, a cutter-thingy, a pretty long walk with some good-sized mud puddles...needless to say pictures were simply not going to get taken. Next year we'll snag a wagon first thing, lesson learned.

The slide is so simple and so great, we had to drag the boys away from it.

You can check out Papa's Pumpkin Patch online or find them on Facebook.