Trick-or-Treat

We had so much fun this year trick-or-treating! The weather was perfect! A beautiful fall day. We had a flower fairy, a Great White Shark, and a very hungry caterpillar! The were super cute and hilarious! We were afraid that Charlie would not want to trick-or-treat this year. He is a little timid sometimes. He was scared of all of the costumes we were showing him. But, he has been in love with sharks, whales and dolphins lately, so when we heard that Pottery Barn had a shark costume, we thought we would take him to see it. They didn't have his size though, and he didn't like the big hood on it, but the lady working there gave me a great idea! So, we bought the trick-or-treat bag and then just went to Wal-Mart (my mecca!) and got a grey sweatsuit and I used my super human Martha Stewart skills and made a fin for the back! And Tom made his Shark hair and we were all set!

We walked around with some neighbor kids and the kids had a great time filling up their buckets, all except our little caterpillar who slept through the whole thing in the stroller! Their bags were getting heavy by the end, but both kids refused to hand over any of their loot to try and lighten their load. It was pretty hilarious to watch Charlie dragging his bag by the end!

We hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Meg's School Halloween Party

Here are some photos from Meg's Halloween party at school. The kids were all super cute! We love Meg's school. We think it is really helping her come out of her shell, slowly but surely! We think she look pretty beautiful too!

Tom is officially old!

I love these pictures! You could put them in a flip book...before...deep breath...blows them all out...and he's pleased with his work!

Tom turned 30 a couple weeks ago. People keep asking me if he's been affected by that. My response is: He doesn't care, he still looks 18!

We had Tom's parent's and Jen's family over for dinner. We had beef stew, mashed potatoes, rolls, berries, German chocolate cake and homemade ice cream. It was a lot of food!

We all love Tom very much and wouldn't know what we would do without him. He continues to be everyone's favorite person! We are loving having him around more now. He works a mile away and comes home most days for lunch and is home for dinner. What a blessing. The kids just can't get enough of Daddy! Happy 30th Tom!

Circle S

We had to make our traditional trip to the pumpkin patch this year. The day we went it was absolutely freezing though. We had fun in the hay barn where the wind wasn't as bad, but the hay ride to pick out pumpkins was pretty torturous, not to mention the fortune it costs to go to as well! I think our new tradition might be driving around Grandpa Kiehl's farm on the riding lawn mower then stopping at the garden to pick pumpkins there! The kids were great troopers though and had a ton of fun!

The Baby Elephant

We love going to the zoo! We are so lucky to have such a wonderful one close by. Here is the new baby elephant. I couldn't get over how cute it was. Brand new, fuzzy and wrinkly...very cute!

Charlie is obsessed with the zoo and would love to go everyday if possible. He is especially in love with sharks, manatees, dolphins and whales. Unfortunately there are not dolphins or whales at the Columbus Zoo, but he still loves going. We need to make a trip to Sea World sometime!

The Neighborhood Kids

Tom has been in Texas finishing up work for the past few weeks, so we have been without him here, which is not fun. We have some great neighbors though, and two little boys that live right next door who are 7 and 8 years old. They are pretty much Charlie's heros. They go outside almost every night to play football with their dad and some other kids from the neighborhood. Charlie likes to go out there and "play defense" as my dad says. He just kind of stands in the middle of all of them and runs around having a ball! You can see a slight shot of our house in the bottom picture, it's the one on the right.

Charlie's First Day of School

Charlie started pre-school last week. He is really loving it. He goes on Monday and Tuesday from 9am to 11:15am. He is really doing well. It has been really helping him learn to socialize better and work on transitioning from one activity to the next. I wish he could go every day, he really benefits from structure like that. Henry is still not of the best schedule yet, so you never know, from day to day, what our schedule might be.

Charlie's teachers are Mrs. Butcher and Mrs. Gavin and he loves them. It's just down the street from us. It is very nice to have so many things close by.

We love our little Charlie.