Visiting Grandma and Grandpa

The week before last David had to go to Atlanta for a week for some training for work. Instead of sitting around the apartment the entire week, the kids and I went home to see family. I really miss being around my brothers and sisters more, so I really enjoy the trips we get to take when we aren't going for a big holiday or something, but rather just to get to "hang out" with my family. Cailin got sick the last two days we were there, but overall it was a nice visit.

My parents have six chickens, and while I was there, my mom got a HUGE lot of day old bread (not good for people to eat) to dry and mix with the chicken food. The problem was, she needed a way to dry it all before it molded. So, she filled up both dehydrators, but still had way too much bread left over. It was going to take forever to dry that much bread. Her solution? Lay a bunch of bread out on the trampoline to dry. It was a bright sunny day, so the bread was going to dry pretty quickly. The problem? Kids+a trampoline covered in bread= this:

Never in my life have I been in a bread fight before, and it'll probably never happen again, but it was sure a lot of fun.

Also while we were there, we went to the lake to feed the ducks. Katie fed the ones that were on the grass...

...while Cailin fed the ones in the water and watched Sam fish.

Elijah was scared of the ducks at first, but warmed up to what we were doing after he figured out he was allowed to throw stuff. I can't believe how fast this guy is growing.

I'm not sure what happened here, but Elijah started yelling at the ducks "No, Ducks!" followed by a long jumbled sentence I didn't understand. Whatever he was yelling at them about, they better not do again.

Even with kids throwing bread in the water and all the noise we were making, Sam still had success fishing! Way to go Sammy!

Just F.Y.I., fish can pee. This one wet all over my hand when I was holding it so we could get the hook out to set it loose. Very, very gross.

Halloween and Snow!

Guess what? I'm updating our blog! It's about time. I guess I'll start off with a picture of how big my baby boy is getting. This is Cole about two weeks ago, at my parent's house. He's now 7 1/2 months old and over 14 pounds! He is a very happy and content baby that is loving the fact that he's learning how to crawl, but not loving his first teeth he's trying to cut. Next up, Halloween. These pictures in this post are in backwards order (time wise), but I don't feel like fixing them right now. I don't have any great pictures of the kids in their costumes, but Cailin went as a princess riding a unicorn, Katie went as a Monkey, Elijah went as a cowboy riding a horse (but the horse was hard to keep on, so he sort of just went as little boy wearing a cowboy hat), and Cole was a bat.

And then the snow! A few days before Halloween we had a crazy huge snow storm that brought 2+ feet of snow to our town. This is the "snow monster" that hung over our roof. The day it got hot enough for it to start to melt, I kept hearing snow bombs hit the bushes below us as this snow would fall off in chunks.

David plopped Elijah in the snow, but Elijah didn't like that much.

Cole wanted to join in on the fun.

The girls playing in the snow. Cailin would do these Rockettes-type kicks to try to walk through it. As far as house hunting stuff goes, we were outbid on a couple houses (they went for 15-45k over asking price), so we're still in an apartment for a while. We are hoping that we can start doing some more serious looking after the first of the year. We want to find something that is within a 20 minute drive for David to get to work. These apartments aren't so bad, and it'll be worth being in them for a bit longer if we find a house that can meet our needs, and that we are happy with.

Katie's map

A couple of days ago Katie drew a "map" for me. It's a bunch of squiggly lines with circles every now and then. The circles represent our apartment, Carrie's house, Grandma's house, and other places that we go often or that she likes going. Yesterday we were leaving the house to go to Carrie's house and once we were in the car, Katie got upset because she left the map in the apartment. I told her I'd be fine I think I could get to Carrie's without the map.

Well, I turned the wrong direction on one street (not sure why, I've been to Carrie's plenty of times). When I turned around, Katie asked what we were doing and I said "I turned the wrong way so I need to turn around."

Katie's response - "Ugh! See, Mom, THIS is why we needed the map!"