Recent Happenings

I'm so behind on everything because I really have no free time anymore, folks.  So here is a snapshot of our recent happenings--

1. Auntie S came for a visit in the middle of September.  As usual, she brought cooler weather and rain with her.  This was actually her longest visit ever--4 days!  We had such a great time with her and the kids didn't want her to leave.  We ate yummy Mexican food and BBQ.  We went to the Botanical Gardens to see the Dinosaur Stampede.

And after visiting us for years, we finally took S to the Alamo.

I was thankful that S was kind enough to keep my kids entertained whenever I had to nurse Eulee.  She was Evie's playdoh buddy, Eli's dinosaur buddy, and Elina's whatever-she-wanted-to-do buddy.  She even rocked the baby for us!  What a wonderful aunt!

2. Zoo Campout--On 9/22, A took Elina and Eli to the zoo for a campout.  The kids had fun, but I think the thing they enjoyed most was staying up late ('til after midnight!) and telling scary stories in the tent.  My kids just know too much about animals and aren't easily impressed anymore.  It's quite sad.  At the campout they take out animals for the kids to touch.  Elina said, "Mom, they brought out a frog and a snake.  Why did they bring those out?  I've already seen those before."  Tough crowd!  But they did enjoy the armadillo and owl that the zoo brought out.  They loved the s'mores and the silliness with A.  The next morning, they even stayed at the zoo just to walk around and see more animals.  We're lucky the kids have so many awesome aunts!

3. Bike Rodeo--Elina had a Bike Rodeo at her new school on 9/28.  Honestly, we haven't been bike riding as much lately because our new house is in a hilly neighborhood.  (I kinda miss the flat sidewalks in our old neighborhood.)  Because Elina hasn't been practicing as much, she wasn't as confident on the bike.  Later she told me that she thought she did terribly at the Bike Rodeo.  How sad!  I explained that she did fine, but that it was hard to do well since we haven't been taking her out on her bike.  I told her we have a whole year to practice more so that she can do better next year.  Of course, she wasn't satisfied with that response since she kindly pointed out that a year is 365 days away!

4. Pumpkin Patch--Since Eulee doesn't enjoy long car rides-or ANY car ride-we couldn't make it out to a "nicer" pumpkin patch this year.  We decided to go to a new, local one and we were pleasantly surprised!  They had a few bounce houses, a hay ride, a barrel train ride, and lots of pumpkins.

The day we went, it was actually windy and cold (low-50s, which is freezing to us!).  So all the cute fall clothes I bought them for the pumpkin patch pictures got covered up by coats and jackets.

Boo!!  Oh well.  I guess it was nice to actually go to a pumpkin patch on a real fall-like day.  We got to take a nice family picture there since J and V went with us.  We promise Eulee is with us...she's just bundled up in the big blanket because it was windy and cold. (Although we DID joke around that we could just be holding an empty blanket for show instead of actually taking Eulee out of the stroller.)

So those were the highlights for us for the past few weeks.  Life has been a blur, but still loads of fun!