October in review

Other than our visitors this month, we had a pretty quiet time. The weather has been at its best this whole month, so we've been going to parks and walks and everything we can to be outside as much as possible. I've been doing a little preschool with Dane during Graham's morning nap, and we are both really enjoying doing worksheets and little learning activities together. SUPER chill and mostly just focused on having fun together, but a more structured fun than just playing trains. And Graham has been eating a lot of solid foods this month. And otherwise, there's not all that much that has been going on! We've got the most exciting life around here--but we've mostly gotten into a SOLID routine that is working really well for everyone. Walks, time at the gym, park time, library story time, errands, and naps--and we are all happy.

Dane saw a little bit of Robin Hood at the Fun Club and wanted to watch it. So we had a family movie night/picnic pizza dinner while watching Robin Hood. Dane loves singing "Ooo-de-lolly, Ooo-de-lolly, golly what a day!" now.

Graham is a big boy eater!

Giving Dane a much-needed haircut.

Looking VERY handsome in his argyle sweater and ready for church!

Graham LOVES playing on Dane's bed. We're in there every day before Dane's nap and he just thinks it is the most fun thing ever.

We got a chair at Ikea and the box makes an excellent fort!

Graham's able to wear my FAVORITE baby clothes we saved from Dane... Love this rainbow striped sweatsuit! So dang cute.

Dane's (finally) sleeping in a big boy bed! He's pretty dang excited about it. The cheapest kids' bed covers that were on sale at Target happened to match his room decor perfectly, so it was a win-win and his bedroom looks great. Although I guess at some point we will have to get him an actual bed and not just a mattress on the floor...

This guy is SO dang happy whenever he gets any one of us talking to him!

He's in the phase where he's obsessed with water bottles--just like Dane was. Any time we're drinking out of one, he cries and cries because he wants it SO BAD.

HA, he won!

Green eggs and ham for lunch one day.

Graham's first time in the swing--and totally loving it!

So much loving going on around here. Too much, in fact.

I love watching him hold his own bottle. Those chubby little hands are so dang cute.

I LOVE these funny kids, even when they are crazy and make huge huge messes!

He loves his daddy--and is starting to really love raspberries too.

Big A, little a, what begins with A? (Part of our preschool activities last week.)

One thing I love about having a smart phone--taking pictures of my sleeping baby. Never worked with a regular phone (not good enough quality) or with a camera (makes noise). I LOVE IT!!

Uncle Kurt and his med school interview

I'm basically writing this so that Callie can see pictures of Kurt coming to visit us--hi Callie!

Tommy's little brother is a total genius, and is currently applying to and interviewing for med schools right now. And lucky us--he really wants to go to a med school in Texas because they're so much cheaper than other schools around the country! And even luckier for us, one of his favorite options is right here in Dallas: UT Southwestern! (Which I seriously have never heard of other than Kurt interviewing here, but that's more that I am totally not up on anything here in North Texas.) So he came out here to interview there and we are just CROSSING our fingers that he gets accepted and then chooses to go there (because he's already got several great options available and could go anywhere). He was only here for about two days, because he has been missing so much school flying to his interviews everywhere around the country, but we got to take him out to dinner and gelato, and Dane got some much-awaited playing time with him.

We are seriously hoping that UT Southwestern is the one. But if not that one, than at least one in Houston--just a four-hour drive away. It'd be so awesome!

Grandma and Grandpa and KENZIE come to visit!

Okay, I have been terrible about blogging lately. I am really feeling like part of being a grown-up is feeling like stuff is always falling through the cracks. We're never DONE with everything we're supposed to be doing. And definitely not like blogging is something I'm SUPPOSED to be doing, it's just something I'd like to do in order to keep in touch in the most basic of ways. We have been making a lot of progress lately on other things in life, like getting close to getting our house kind of put together, and dealing with other things like doctor's appointments and oh yeah, our two demanding kids, so taking care of our pictures is not working out like it used to. I haven't blogged because our pictures are just PILED UP on our computer in unnamed folders and not organized in any fashion. It's just too overwhelming! But here's a stab at it for now...

A few weeks ago Tommy's parents and youngest sister Kenzie came out to visit us for a week. Kenzie had only a few days of school that week and we were super excited to have guests to have an excuse to do fun things with. There are some cool places here in the Dallas area that we never go to because they are a 45 minute + drive away, and are too expensive for me to want to go with just the boys and myself on a regular day. But we had lots of fun plans for when our fun visitors came. We showed them all the best things we could, did some fun things around our own neighborhood, and tried to stuff them full of all the best Texan food (barbecue, soul food, and tacos) we could find. And Greg and Jackie are the best kind of visitors--happy to play with the kids and do nothing, happy to go do stuff, and really happy to stock up our pantry full of food from Costco, which was definitely appreciated :).

We've always heard great things about the Dallas Arboretum, but it falls into the far-away-and-expensive category, so we'd never gone before. We had SUCH a good time there! They have a Children's Garden dedicated just to kids (kind of like a huge outdoor science museum) and we all really had fun.

They also had an enormous fall "pumpkin village" with tens of THOUSANDS of pumpkins, which was really cool. We didn't get any GREAT pictures because it was already way past Dane's naptime at this point and he was totally not able to cooperate any more, but it was really fun to look at.

On Monday, October 12--MY BIRTHDAY!--we went to the Texas State Fair! As you can imagine, it was ENORMOUS and crazy and PACKED and really fun. We went to a kids' petting zoo, Dane went through a little toddler play farm where they got to pretend to be farmers and do all their chores, we got a lot of fried food, and rode on the HUGE ferris wheel. 

Feeding the camel with Grandpa!

Graham was such a good sport. He was totally exhausted with no regular naps from all these outings but he would eventually just go to sleep on Tommy's shoulder and look so dang cute.

Big Tex--the mascot of the Texas State Fair. My cousin Ethan said, "He's really big and creepy, and he has a bottom chin. Ew." Hahahaha. Enough said.

My main goal for the day--eat fried fair food!

Riding on the giant ferris wheel. Boom!

Some fun snuggles with my boy on my birthday. Love this boy.

Graham really loved being held by Grandpa. He fell asleep on him like this several times.

We took them to Babe's Chicken Dinner House--the best EVER--and we all did the hokey pokey when it came on!

And since it was my birthday the day before, I had to wear the chicken hat while they sang happy birthday to me!

Leiningers--UNITE!

Dane loves his Grandpa.

We also took them to the Heard Museum to see the dinosaurs there--we knew Kenzie would love it as a recovering dino-holic :) Dane was VERY BRAVE and didn't act totally terrified this time. As long as Grandpa was there to hold him as he walked past each dinosaur, he was okay.

We also took them to our favorite pumpkin patch and carved pumpkins with them!

AND made doughnuts from scratch!

Of course, since we're in Texas, our carved pumpkins were rotting within three days because the sun was beating down on them in the 90 degree October weather. But they looked awesome while they lasted!

The big hurrah--on their last day we took them to the Fort Worth Stockyards to see the cattle and the cattle drive. This is the most stereotypically Texan thing I can think of to show anybody--the Texas of the 1800s, at least--and it was a lot of fun to go together. Dane really wanted to wear his cowboy hat and was very proud of himself.

Another day, another petting zoo--what a lucky guy. This time he let the llama eat out of his hand and he was really brave about it!

Dane's reaction after being licked by the llama.

Reenacting his cute picture from when we went to the stockyards a year ago. 

Watching the cattle in the cattle drive. We met up with Tommy's cousin and family there to watch the cattle drive and have lunch before Greg and Jackie had to take off to the airport. 

We did more fun things this week with the Leiningers visiting than we have for the last three months--not even kidding! It was awesome and of course it was so nice to just be able to spend time with them. Dane and Graham were both so happy to get so much attention and to have so many fun playmates around all week. Thanks so much for coming, Grandma and Grandpa! Come any time!!