Just Some Etc.....

Just trying to play catch-up here.  Nothing too terribly crazy has been happening with us.  ;)

A couple of weekends ago, we set out on a 4+ hour drive to see the beautiful Colorado colors.  It had been a loooooooooooooong time since we had done it, so we thought it would be fun to do again! We didn't get pictures of everything we wanted to, but man, the pictures we DID get were absolutely breathtaking!

Ever heard of the Child Training Bible?  What about the Virtue Training Bible?   We highly recommend researching them and putting one or both of them together.  Jen got together with some friends from church a couple of weeks ago and put together the Child Training Bible.  It took a little over 3 hours to put together, but what an amazing resource to have on hand!  They all plan to get together before year's-end to put together the Virtue Training Bible.  Such a neat way to help shepherd your child's heart.

So it seems we have turned a little bit "crunchy" these days.  Organic fruits/veggies/meat/etc, all-natural of anything else that we can't find organic, shark mop with water to replace the chemical-filled Swiffer, etc (the list goes on).  And if you've been around Jen long enough, you've probably heard her say plenty of times, "there's an oil for that!"  :D  Well, as crazy as it sounds, we've been using essential oils since March and have seen quite an improvement in the health of our family!  Not an ailment comes our way that we can't usually successfully treat with essential oils.  We started little, but now there's SO much out there that contain essential oils that we have decided to just start switching things over.  We hosted a class this past week for a bunch of people who have been interested in learning about these oils and how they have helped our family. Everyone learned SO MUCH and walked away on information overload.  ;)  We recommend them highly and can't imagine life without them now!

Now that things feel a little more "normal" again, we've been able to spend more time with friends again.  It's been fun being able to go to friends' homes again, having our friends here, meet friends out and just getting back into the social groove again - which is good timing since the holidays are fast approaching.  :)  22 days till Halloween (eh...), 49 days till Thanksgiving (yum!) and 77 days till Christmas (yay!)!  ;)

5 Months Old!

5 months doesn't even seem possible.  No.way.  No matter how hard we try to hold on to every little moment, savor every little second with her and try to soak in as much of her as we can, time still seems to fly by as if we hadn't done any of that.  And even though we do all of that, and even though it's only been 5 months, we still find ourselves trying to remember things about her.  Which is sad, because we take about a million pictures and videos and try to write down as much as we can about her - she just changes and grows and brings about new things almost every day.  Every.  It's hard to keep up!

New things this past month include:
* Her starting on real food.  She's had sweet potatoes, carrots, sweet peas, and squash so far.  Which seems awfully early since we didn't start Noah on real food until he was 6-months old.  Guess things have changed in the last 4 years....
* She loves dropping off and picking up her brother from school.  Not to mention she loves all the attention from the kids and parents.  ;)
* She loves to go swimming!
* Loves to talk while she eats - which is totally disgusting and food gets ALL over her hair, arms, legs, clothes, US...
* She blows raspberries ALL the time.  Needless to say, she's a slobbery mess half the time.  ;)
* She's had quite a few little play dates already.  My goodness does she love kids!  She wants to play and keep up SO bad!
* She's been scooting all over the room.  All over.  You can't not keep an eye on her anymore.  She also gets up on her knees and then gets up on her feet and does baby push-ups.  Pretty soon she'll be crawling - she's trying so,so, SO hard.
* She's found her feet and loves to play with them.  :)


Here's some of our favorite pics of her lately......

Here's a picture, as promised, with Noah and all of his Cubbies stuff.  Isn't he ADORABLE?!?!  :):):)

Swim Little Fishy

So Noah started swim lessons this morning.  Woo hoo!  :)  We'd planned on starting before Emma came and then somehow life got away from us.  So then we decided to put it off until we felt like we had life a little bit more under control after she was here.  Well that day came and went awhile ago..... but all of the class days/times that worked the best for us, apparently worked best for everyone else and they were all filled up. FINALLY we caught a break and got him signed up for some good days/times..... so..... here we go!

Yes, goggles.  Amazing goggles!  Whatever it takes to make him feel comfortable putting his head under water - and cool.  ;)

Greg also started in a fall softball league this past week.  Feels good be back in the game. :)

Noah Goes to Awana

A certain someone started Awana Cubbies tonight - and loved it!  (vest, book and bag to come in a couple of weeks - may have to post more pics!)   He is seriously THE cutest little Cubbie we have EVER seen!

SO much going on in Noah's little world lately!  It's gonna be a great year! 

Noah's First Day of Pre-K

Well we all survived Noah's first day of Pre-K.  :)  Talk about the weirdest and most sad thing ever!  He's just growing up WAY too fast and today just proved that even more blatantly.  :(

He woke up excited and ready to go this morning.  So after getting dressed in his new clothes and taking his new shoes with him, he went downstairs and saw that a surprise was waiting outside on the porch for him:

After that, it was breakfast, along with his favorite kind of doughnut - to help make the morning extra special:

Then, of course, we had to take the obligatory pictures:

And then we headed off to school - 2 out of the 3 of us had lumps in our throats......

But he was excited to be there, excited to stay, said he had a great day and couldn't wait to go back on Thursday!  :)  Hopefully he always stays this excited about school.

Tonight, we finished the night off on a high note and celebrated his first successful (and great!) day at school by going to a "special dinner" and bowling!  The Bass Pro Shop by our house has THE coolest bowling alley inside the neatest restaurant that serves some pretty darn good food.  He was elated and probably would have played more games if we had let him!  :)

We'd say it was a pretty good day.  :)