Preschool Halloween

Ashlyn and her classmates all dressed up!

Halloween 2011

We started off Halloween afternoon going around to our neighbors out in the country and the girls got a TON of candy from the first three stops. Then as we have done since Ashlyn's first Halloween, we went to Joe's sisters house in North Mankato. The exciting thing this year was that Ashlyn and Connor actually got to go house to house trick-or-treating for the first time. They thought it was the coolest thing ever! It was so much fun seeing the pure joy and excitement from those two as they ran door to door yelling 'giddy up cowboy!' or 'THIS IS SOOO FUN!!'.  It brought back memories of all the fun memories I had trick or treating as a kid.

Why is it so hard to a good picture with both girls actually looking at the camera? 

not too bad but not what I was hoping for :)

Very excited about trick-or-treating!


First house

the loot!

Kaelyn got to enjoy a sucker, her favorite!

ECFE Halloween party

I took the girls to the Nicollet ECFE Halloween party last Friday night and Ashlyn had a blast!  She made the rounds playing all the games and doing all of the activities. Her favorite was decorating a cookie - go figure!  She even got her picture in the Ledger this week... just like last year :)  Since Joe was recovering from his finger injury and still trying to get field work done, I asked my friend Desirae' to come help me with Kaelyn since I knew the gym would be packed and kids running everywhere. Kaelyn thoroughly enjoyed being held the whole time. Her favorite part was eating the cookie too!

Desirae' and Kaelyn (kitty witch)

Ashlyn as a Monarch Butterfly

Hammering golf tee's into the pumpkin

our friends Angie and Lincoln joined us too

The only "game" Kaelyn could enjoy was the ball pit

FROSTING!

Kitty nose face paint

Joe's fingers

As many of you already know, Joe got two of his fingers (right middle and ring) caught in a pulley on the evening of Wednesday, October 26th while trying to fix a plugged grain leg. I'll spare you the gruesome details and pictures and just say that he had to have his finger tips and finger nails stitched back onto his fingers and then have surgery on November 1st to have the broken middle finger pinned. Thankfully everything seems to be healing and the pain has subsided for the most part. Now he just has to wait about 3 weeks to have the pin removed then he'll have to wear a splint for a while.

I thought these were blog appropriate :)

Before

After

jack-o-lantern

Ashlyn brought home this cute little pumpkin from Preschool and told me that her teacher said we should light it on fire...  I had to think for a second and realized she wanted to put a candle in it :)  So as tradition goes, daddy helped her carve her pumpkin and she had fun getting the guts (or blood as she kept calling it) out. She even tasted it and said it was good. I'll take her word for it!

Still had some of her makeup from dressing up for school that morning

Smelling the lit pumpkin

11 months

Our baby is almost one! She is on the go and getting into everything!  

Some of the things she is up to:

~Crawling on all fours!
~Sitting on her knees
~Will stand holding on to coffee table etc for long periods of time
~Working on pulling herself from her knees to standing
~Sleeping soooo good 8pm - 7:30am  then 2hr nap once a day
~Loves bath time and splashing
~Always wants to feed you whatever she is eating
~Still eats ANYTHING... lover of food :)
~Waves bye-bye
~Says dada, mama and points and grunts at what she wants
~Shakes her head/body to music - so cute!
~Enjoys playing with Ashlyn and is really good at destroying Duplo buildings and towers much to the dismay of her sister.
~Puts up with her sister dressing her up, taking or "exchanging" toys with her.
~Gets excited about seeing and petting our dog (she used to be a little leery of him)
~Happy happy girl as always :)

Around the farm

We had a big project going on all summer at our place, good thing there were two supervisors on the job!

overseeing the concrete work

work faster! grrhh!

Helping daddy shovel with her new "my size" shovel. She was super excited!

what you lookin at?

I promise more updates soon, we've been pretty busy around here!

10 months old

Not much "baby" about our baby anymore!  She's getting into everything! Still not doing the traditional hand and knee crawling but she army crawls pretty fast! Just this week she figured out how to go from laying on her belly to pushing up and sitting on her butt. Now she does it all the time!  She is working on pulling herself up to standing... she can get to her knees in her crib and likes to bounce. Her favorite word is Dada. I ask her to say Mama all the time and all she says is Dada. She will say Mama when she's crying, it sort of sounds like she's begging me, "Mooomma!".  Hasn't cut any new teeth this month but has been able to handle a lot more cut up food. She LOVES food and she loves to feed herself. Still hasn't refused anything we've given her. Ashlyn is really good at making sure Kaelyn doesn't get into anything she's not supposed to. She says "no, no Kaelyn" many times during the day. Kaelyn had a thing for my plants recently and she tasted dirt and didn't seem to mind at all!  She's also changed her mind about our dog Gauge. She wasn't a big fan of him at first but now she loves seeing him and trying to pet him. She is starting to wave bye-bye. She also has a grunt/ruff sound she likes to make and she loves it when you say it back to her. It's almost like a little conversation :)

I couldn't get her to lay back in her seat for her picture this month... she just wanted to sit up like the big girl she is!

Two princesses

Ashlyn and Kaelyn dressed up as a "beautiful princess"

Ashlyn's 1st day of preschool

She's attending Little Lamb's Preschool at the St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church. She goes Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8-11am. There are 5 boys and 5 girls in her class and her teacher is Mrs. Voigt.

 She woke up so excited to go to preschool this morning. She couldn't wait to put on her backpack! She even made sure that we had her folder inside it like she's supposed to :)

Going down to her room. She knew exactly which hook was hers and she hung up her backpack and jacket and went to play with the kids. She gave me a big smile and wave when I said goodbye. Not scared at all!

Her friend Vivian is in her class and she knew a few other kids already too.


Just like I thought it would happen, she cried when I picked her up because she didn't want to stop playing with her friends! Good thing she gets to go back twice a week!

Ring Pop

We discovered a few weeks ago that Kaelyn really likes suckers. She never gets her own but Ashlyn is always happy to share with her little sister.