Thursday, October 21, 2010

Fall fun!!

I am loving this fall weather we have had so far. The kids were ready to carve the pumpkins we got at Dewberry Farm so one Tuesday, since we don't have soccer on Tuesdays, when they came home from school we decided to get it done. Here is Emily with the pumpkin she traded her little Cinderella pumpkin for:

Todd helped them by cutting out the tops and help scoop out the seeds:

JT got right to work:

Daddy helped hold Dylan's steady so he could cut:


Emily working hard:
JT finished:

Dylan finished:


Then Emily:


We put them by the front porch, left to right, Emily's, Dylan's then JT's:

Here they are glowing at night:


While at Dewberry the kids wanted to get a pumpkin to make fresh pumpkin pie with, here it is after it was baked:
All the kids started out helping:

But Dylan and Emily got bored so our little chef JT had fun making it himself:

preparing the pie crust:


Here it is ready to go into the oven:
Now all finished:

JT wouldn't eat any, but Dylan and daddy have enjoyed it!
Another fun part of fall is the county fair. We didn't do any animals this year, things came up and just couldn't, but we plan on being back next year. My nephew Hank did raise goats, here he is with his girlfriend getting ready to show his bigger goat:

In the arena showing:


He didn't do too bad, finished 12th in his class.
Dylan's art work was chosen to go to the fair this year, he got a second place ribbon:

He was so excited.
JT loves science and wanted to try the diet coke-mentos experiment one day so here he is setting it up:
This is what happens when they mix:



We are in the middle of soccer season and the kids are doing great. Emily's team has only lost one game and the boys are still undefeated, playoffs here we come. Here are some pictures from the last few weeks of all of them. Emily (yellow #3):

Waiting on the throw in:

Emily's team shaking hands with the other team after their game:
Then both teams take off through the tunnel, I think this is their favorite part of the game:
Dylan protecting the ball:
Dylan and JT (in orange)

JT making a pass:
JT and Carlos double team the other team:
A few weeks back Emily played one of her best "boy" friends team, this is their only loss but they put up a good fight and didn't beat us by a lot:


This is Emily going toe to toe with her best"boy" friend:
Emily and Katelynn watching the boys game:
Dylan making a pass:
At this game we got up like 5-1 on this team so we moved kids around to let them try out different positions than normal, well Dylan, who is only 8 playing against 9 and 10 year olds, said he wanted to play goalie, this makes me very nervous, but he did great, no goals scored on him and I got this great shot of him going out to block a shot:

JT dribbling up the field:
One of JT's goals:

As I have said once and will say again, we have the BEST players and parents, now two dads have gotten vuvuzela's and play them on every goal:

Dylan:
Dylan trying to score, but the goalie got it:

Dylan dribbling up the field:
JT making a pass:
JT :
JT going for the goal:
I am very proud of my kids and all the players on our teams, they are doing awesome and that makes fall that much more fun!!!
October is a busy time of year, but from here on out it just gets busier. Also want to wish my niece Lucy a happy birthday it was yesterday and my sweet mother in law who will celebrate her birthday Saturday! Hope everyone else is enjoying the blessing of fall.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Fall is in the air!

It's that wonderful time of year were the weather starts to cool down and leaves start to fall. I love fall and it has been great so far. The weather has been just beautiful for awhile now, the only draw back is my allergies, boy are they giving me a hard time. I never had this problem until about 4 years ago, now about this time every year I get miserable for a few weeks. That's ok, I am not going to let it ruin my fall fun! One fun fall thing to do is go to a pumpkin patch or a farm were you can go and pick your own pumpkins. Well that is what we did, we took a drive out to Dewberry Farm:




There you can see pig races:


Emily needed to get on Popsy's shoulders for a better view:






The kids can have rubber duck races:

then go out in the pumpkin fields and choose your own pumpkin:





This is the pumpkin Emily wanted at first because it is a Cinderella pumpkin, but by the time the wagon ride got to the front and seeing her brothers pumpkins she traded hers in a got her a big one, didn't get a picture of her with her big one though:









Todd and I on the ride back in from the pumpkin patch:


A favorite was getting sno cones you get the ice:


Then you come in here and pick out your flavor and put it on yourself:






The slide is always fun:









so fun even daddy wanted to take a ride:


The zipline was also a blast:









But the kids had so much fun inside this pipe while daddy and Popsy rolled them around:





The farm flinger is great too, just hop on and go for a ride:









and lets not forget the haystack jump:











This is kind of like a swing, the kids were cracking up laughing trying not to fall off this:



The corn maze, the kids didn't really want to do it so they found the fastest exit and headed out:


They also had a blast on the pillow jump:




It was a great time and a great way to kick off fall.


Todd had to go to fire school in Louisiana so the kids and I tagged along. While he was in class I took the kids to the Lake Charles Children's Museum. It is a nice, small little museum, but we pretty much had the place to our self. The kids had fun in the pretend store and restaurant:











They have this little thing at the Houston Children's Museum, so they tried it here too:

Emily being a monkey:


This was neat you put your hands on this sensor and the drum would beat at each beat of your heart:



JT brushing these huge teeth:


They had a lot of fun on this twirling thing:


The boys loved this train town they had set up behind the glass. You pushed different buttons and the train would go or make the sound of the place the train was going by like the farm or saw mill:







The bubble room was a blast:










They also had this karaoke room with insturments:





This was fun, you squeezed a bottle and smelled it and tried to guess the scent, then you would lift up the block in front of the bottle and it would show you what it was. Here Dylan had just smelled pine cones and it made him gag:



The kids put on a puppet show for me:


Played with magnets:



and built dinosaurs:



They also had this little tunnel maze and it had different areas to stick your hear out at, here is Dylan and Emily trying to squeeze into the same hole:



JT peeking out when Dylan stuck his head in there too:





They had a lot of fun with this water table, they set up mazes for the boats to flow down through:






The kids really enjoyed it. After Todd got our of class that day we took the kids to play some putt putt and hit a few balls in the batting cages. Todd and Emily both had a hole in one on different holes:
















JT being goofy pretending he was falling in the well:















Then we got hungry and found this Japanese hibachi steak house and went for dinner:


The kids favorite at every hibachi is the onion volcano:


The funny thing the kids and I don't really like oriental food in general but Emily did enjoy her hibachi steak:


JT and I ate chicken fried rice:



Dylan had hibachi chicken:



The cook trying to flick squash into Dylan's mouth, the other two wouldn't even try:

The second day we were there I had found a really nice park called Millenium park. It was very nice and made out of splinter free wood:


It was right next to Lake Charles and was a beautiful day:



Part of the fort had this huge slide, but the kids said it kept schocking them as they slid down:




I climbed up in the fort, but wouldn't slide down the slide, but made the kids come come back inside for this cute picture:




Emily loved this giant chair swing:




The boys getting ready to get dizzy on the tire swing:




They must put on concerts and plays at the park as they had this big hill going down to this stage. My crazy kids:




It was a nice little mini vacation, it is always fun just to get away and see different things.