Add Farmer To My Resume...

Yesterday afternoon I decided to get all cozy in a pair of overalls that Pratt so kindly pointed out to me that I have had since college. When I walked out of the room to check on the kids the first thing Shelby said to me was, "Mom, you look like a farmer!" She had the funniest little smirk on her face. To me, the fact that she made that connection was funny!!! I tell you, these kids grow so fast!!!

We have been running all around lately. Last weekend I took the children up to Clemson for our annual mini family reunion/homecoming trip. It was a blast. Shelby and JP sat through the game right up to the middle of the 4th quarter. It was great. The three of us shared a hotel room, which really made me nervous, but of course proved to be wonderful. I can't tell you how great they did.

Unfortunately, I was a bad mom and didn't take any pictures, but they were cute as buttons. Shelby actually wore her orange Clemson sweatshirt!! I couldn't believe it. Of course, it was so cold that she probably would have worn anything that day.

Halloween Pictures...Finally.

So, did you vote today? I hope so, because you know what they say...if you don't vote you can't complain....I don't know who they really are, but after only 45 minutes in line I was done. Shelby and JP did such a great job. They both sat patiently in the stroller and were really very good. Of course, I did entice them with lollipops so maybe that had something to do with it. Anyway, onto Halloween.....

We had a wonderful time on the hayride through the neighborhood. Shelby really shocked me with how she ran up to the houses for trick-or-treating. There was only one house that I had to walk up with her because she wasn't so sure of the skeleton on the porch. Here is a picture of Shelby, aka: Ariel, and JP, aka: Coach Swinney, on the hayride. The funniest part about Shelby's costume, well, there are two funny things...the purple part which is supposed to be Ariel's bathing suit, Shelby kept calling her braids and then she also insisted on having the one side hanging off of her shoulder. Everytime I tried to fix it she would put it back and give me a stern, "that is how it is supposed to be mommy!!!" with a look and hand gestures to go with it.

I couldn't do a post on Halloween and not show you the artistic ability of my husband. This was the first year that we carved a pumpkin. All the years we have been married we have always bought pumpkins, but we never did anything with them. I was so excited to carve a pumpkin this year. The children loved watching and they both even touched the "guts", although, I don't think either one of them really enjoyed that too much.

This final picture I had to include. Lately, JP has been falling asleep while we are in the carpool line waiting for Shelby to get dismissed from school. This is a classic JP picture right now. It really sums up a lot about him. First, notice the hair twirling, yes, he even does it in his sleep. Second, notice the death grip on the box of raisins. This is by far his favorite food right now. The dentist is going to love me!!! Finally, notice his mouth. It is kind of hard to tell, but he is sucking on a mouth full of raisins. He packs his mouth full of raisins and then sucks on them. Thankfully he hasn't choked yet and hopefully he never will.

I can't believe it is alreay November

So, apparently I slept through the month of October because I have absolutely no idea where it went. We are a busy family, but not so busy that a whole month can slip by just like that.

Let's see....since my last post...we have been to two pumpkin patches, a church fall festival and a trick-o-treating hay ride.

The first pumpkin patch was at Cahill's Market. We did our annual family trip to see the pumpkins and pick out the perfect pumpkin to grace our door step. As you can tell by the picture it was warm and we had a great time. Shelby and JP found a beautiful pumpkin with a great stem on it. JP wasn't too sure about the hay in this picture, but who can blame him...he had shorts on and we made him sit on it.

The second pumpkin patch we went to was at Hampton Lake. They had a really fun Saturday planned. They put 500 pumpkins in a field and asked that you make a minimum of $3 donation for each pumpkin you took. It was amazing, I mean, these were really nice pumpkins. All the donations went to the Bluffton Fire Department. They were on hand for the event with a firetruck and their dog mascot. Shelby was scared to death of that firetruck. We almost didn't make it to the pumpkin patch because we had to walk by the firetruck to get there.

I will have to leave you hanging with that as my camera is down stairs with the pictures from the church fall festival and the hay ride. Hopefully I will get those pictures up this week as there are some really cute ones...well, I am a little biased; they are my kids after all.

Shelby can write her name...

I really have too much to do right now, but I couldn't go on without first posting this picture of the first time that Pratt and I have seen Shelby write her own name. She wrote it with a marker (long story to that) on our driveway...here is the picture:

JP Climbing

This video is of JP climbing a wall at the playground in the mountains. We already knew how much he loves climbing up on anything he can, but after we saw him do this I think we really realized how much trouble we are in for with this one.

Pictures from the Mountains

These two pictures were taken at the playground that we went to. Shelby's favorite thing about that trip was the playground. She thought is was really funny when her, Meme and JP all slid down the slide together.
Here is a picture of the sun setting over the mountains. Shelby and JP were so well behaved. There were several times that we just let the play on the back porch and watched them through the windows. Isn't this just beautiful??? And people say there is no God, I just don't get it.
Here we are on the train. At this point we were just waiting because they were working on something on the train. We sat like this for about 15-20 min before we got started and then once we got started she rode the rest of the way like this.This is a picture from the top of the mountain looking back over the swinging bridge. Shelby had no problem climbing up there with her daddy or walking across that bridge.

Mountain Weekend

So two weeks ago (I know that I am a little, well, a lot behind on this, but better late than never) we went to the mountains with Meme, Aunt Suzy and Uncle Patricio for a little family weekend getaway. What a wonderful and relaxing time!!! We went to Boone, NC and it was just beautiful up there. It was my first time and I really look forward to visiting there again.

While we were there we ate, watched tv, looked at the mountains, ate, went to Tweetsie Railroad, slept, ate, climbed Grandfather Mountain, played at a fabulous playground, ate, oh and did I mention that we ate??

Unfortunately since it has been so long since the trip I can't remember too much of anything funny that the kids did even though I know that they did plenty of funny things. There is one little story about Shelby that I am still trying to figure out. Maybe you can help me with this one...The first full day we were there we took the children to Tweetsie Railroad. It is like a little theme park for children. They have a real steam engine train to ride, a carousel, a farris wheel, and other little rides like that. Thankfully JP is kind of still to little to protest much and I made him ride the carousel with me; Shelby, on the other hand, would have nothing to do with any of it. Finally just as we were about to leave we picked her up and before she had time to protest got her on the train for a quick ride before we left. She rode the whole time with her hands covering her ears cuddled up in her daddy's lap. She really is a very cautious child and doesn't explore too much and prefers to watch alot of times over participating. Here comes the baffling part. The next day we went to Grandfather Mountain. It was so beautiful. They had a little animal exhibit with bears, cougars, eagles, deer, etc. We walked around that a bit and then went up to the top of the mountain. At the top they have a swinging bridge that you can cross and then this rocky ledge that you can climb up to get a little higher and have a wonderful view for miles and miles (on a very clear day you can see the Charlotte Skyline). Anyway, we get up there and Shelby doesn't even think twice about walking across that bridge and climbing out on those rocks!!! Seriously, I couldn't believe it. I thought that I was going to have a panic attack walking across the bridge and she did like she was walking down the sidewalk in our neighborhood. Go figure....

Okay, for some reason I can't upload pictures right now so I am going to try that in a separate post.