Iowa Trip and Aunt Diana and Uncle Bill Come Visit

October has been such a fun month! Well, at least after we finished our last round of sick kids. It's been a bit ridiculous. Bradley was star of the week for his preschool class and was supposed to get to go on a bunch of adventures with the class bear. But due to illness I got to hide the bear out in the car for most of the week and brought it around for a nap time "adventure" the day before he got to go back to school. We took pics for homework purposes.

Bradley was very into being the star of the week and his self portrait was my favorite part of the activities he got to do as a part of the esteemed title. 

If there was any doubt that Bradley is my child, here is his happy dance after winning a game of Candyland.

And Eleanor joining in

Daddy's birthday was at the beginning of the month and we had our best birthday decorating experience yet!

 
Patrick thinks birthdays are just the best.

And Nathan and I got a date to a fun Brewfest at the Arboretum as part of his birthday festivities!

 It was so much fun, this could be an annual birthday tradition as far as I'm concerned.

Our friends Lindsay and Bryan joined us. It was a pretty fabulous afternoon and evening. We left the champion babysitter with our three rambunctious children for almost five hours and everyone survived. Great success!

Nathan made a new friend at the event. It's pretty amazing to be able to go out and do things like this again, I feel like we've been on hiatus from grownup events for far too long.

The kids are pretty precious though, we obviously love the kiddie stuff too, it's just nice to get to be a grownup again every once in a while.

Hmm, are they cuddly enough? What is this "personal space" of which you speak?

I recently crammed 18 month old Patrick into a 2T sailor outfit for one last hurrah before he grew out of it. I might prefer him wearing it when his little belly sticks out whenever he lifts his arms.

And we went back to the arboretum with my friend Julie and her little girl Mabel. 

Mabel is going to be in the same year of school as Patrick and I like to take practice prom pics of the two of them.

We finally got to go to Iowa to visit Grandma Colleen and Kerry. It was such a fun time!  We were a little terrified of the 4.5 hour car ride with Patrick but he did far better than we anticipated.

We had a nice little break on the drive there at a fun park.

And the kids LOVED Grandma's garden

 

I am very proud of myself for remembering to take a group photo at the beginning of the trip instead of waiting until the end. Look at all these happy faces!

The hotel we stayed at was a big hit because of 1) the pool and 2) the breakfast buffet. They may have lost money on us, Patrick in particular can put it away. 

All five of us fit into a single room with two queen beds and everyone did far better than we expected. Patrick in particular was a champ. 

We got to go to the Fairfield farmer's market and see Grandma Colleen perform with her community choir.

Patrick tried to run up to Grandma during the performance and was very happy when he finally got his snuggles when she was done. At one point during the trip he refused to come to me because he was so happy and content in Grandma's arms. It was pretty sweet to see how much he loved his Grandma, even if he was very proud of himself for being a bit of a stinker.

I dragged us out to a cultural experience where we went to an old farm of some historical significance. I tried to make my children watch rope get made and instead they found dirt to play in.

And the photo below is a pretty accurate depiction of how this trip went for me. Anything new going on meant the youngest two would prefer to be carried by Mommy. 

Here we are back at breakfast. Patrick was the celebrity of the breakfast buffet. Tales of his eating feats may be passed on for generations. 

Patrick's second breakfast with his adoring fans. 

We mostly went to a bunch of very impressive parks and swam in the hotel pool while we visited. The kids have been begging to go back, we hope this can be an annual tradition. 

But it certainly can tire a person out, all that fun. The kids only napped for 40 min of the 4.5 hour car ride. Patrick and I played catch in the car at one point. It would be super awesome if the cute boy would tolerate watching a show for times like this.

Nathan and I probably just need to record an NBA game and show it to the kid. This was his reaction to football:

Patrick's obsession with balls and sports cannot be overstated. It's cute but it's difficult when throwing a ball around is the ONLY thing he wants to do for 90% of his waking hours.

Throwing rocks with his friend Marcus will also do in a pinch.

Fortunately for me, my Aunt Diana and Uncle Bill came to visit and Patrick got record amounts of attention.

Patrick is giving Diana the look of love already and they had been here only 30 minutes.

Bill is strong

Having extra adults is always a good thing around here, it means everyone gets to do the things they've always wanted to do.

Bill read a lot of stories while they were here. He always had an appreciative audience. 

Patrick insisted on going over to Diana to eat for one meal. The kids were serious fans.

Patrick couldn't believe how much catch he got to play

We even made some festive pumpkin cookies while Diana and Bill were here. 

The cookie decorating crew

I am proud to say that the following is the best group picture I got while they were here. 

Nathan got to carve pumpkins with the kids, it's safe to say they were interested. Patrick likes to run up to the pumpkins and point at them while yelling "BOOOOO!!"

Patrick was slightly less sure about decorating his pumpkin with a cute paint hand print.

While Bradley and Eleanor were in preschool we went back to the arboretum (it's my favorite place these days) for a walk through their sculpture trail.

We took pics in front of art that I'm pleased I don't have to explain to my children. 

We decided that Abe Lincoln statue with a hole in the center was obviously a photo prop.

I need to practice my pose on this one. If you zoom in close you can see that Patrick is cracking up as I lift him up.

But Patrick's favorite part of the visit was, as always, the bridge.

It was such a nice visit, thanks Aunt Diana and Uncle Bill for coming out to see us! 

Especially since it meant Nathan and I got in another little date ... dates are kind of a big deal around here. Two dates in one month?? What a beautiful thing!

We went Trick or Treating at Nathan's office the afternoon after Diana and Bill left. We're not used to the kids being this good at getting candy, it's not even Halloween and we already have an absurd amount of sweets. Eleanor was Rapunzel, Bradley was Batman, and Patrick was Superman.

Patrick couldn't believe that his brother and sister were so tired after trick or treating. Coincidentally, Patrick was the only one who took his nap earlier in the day. 

Bradley has actually graduated completely from naps. He does really well with quiet time in his room and I've started going in to him after he's had 30-45 min of quiet time and I read a big kid book with him. Sometimes things get a little too cozy.

After the trick or treat event at Nathan's work I thought it would be fun for Nathan to take the big kids to the Spooktacular at Deanna Rose Farmstead for the cute Halloween activities I'd heard they had.

I stayed home with Patrick and we mostly threw nuts in the creek.

And it turned out that the Deanna Rose event was more food and candy focused than I anticipated.

Kettle corn

'smores

Chocolate milk

But I'm told they did things besides eat and they ran around and had a blast with Daddy. They're actually back at Deanna Rose right now with Daddy while I'm writing this blog post.

Daddy may have gotten a lot of street cred for this fun evening out

Safe to say the kids have been rather tuckered out with all this fun and excitement. I might love sneaking into their room in order to take pictures of how cute they are snuggled up together at night.

Okay, and often their sleeping positions are a bit hilarious.

But this is the best one yet. This is after we got back from Iowa and they were a bit wrecked. No idea how Eleanor ended up under the pillow that Bradley was sleeping on.

My mom recently made Eleanor the best of all princess dress up outfits. Eleanor begs to wear it constantly.

And then the same girl who plays princess will become "doggy" and put shoes on her hands and crawl around with a ball in her mouth. 

She also demands to be barefoot and tries to climb trees at the park.

And she is rather adorable singing I'm a Little Teacup in the bath.

Bradley has been getting better about playing gently with Patrick and is reaping the benefits of many Patrick cuddles. Patrick is also his little shadow these days.

The other day Bradley was rolling around on the floor pretending to be a ball for Patrick and begging for the baby to come play with him. Patrick doesn't know how lucky he is to have such devoted siblings.

And this is how we do the regular grocery store now. As long as no one is fighting I'm basically fine with anything.

These boys are so cute together. They've amped up Bradley's speech therapy a little bit which means he goes to speech therapy on Monday mornings now instead of just being visited in his class once per week. He loves it and Eleanor has been whining and begging to get to go to speech therapy as well. 

Fortunately they have a very cute playground there and she and Patrick get some fun play time together. 

 

With fall comes lawn care and Nathan and I are very lucky to have not one, not two, but THREE great helpers!

They like playing hopscotch

Nathan also gets a lot of help driving the car into the garage whenever we're playing outside when he gets home from work.

Patrick has started giving me smooches and it might be my favorite thing in the whole world.

I finally took a picture of Eleanor's latest school project. They dressed up the kids in construction hats and had them construct a building of their choice. Eleanor's ice cream shop is no great surprise. And incredibly adorable.

Speaking of adorable, we just got the kids' school pictures!

These sweet kids. I make them call me "wise and beautiful mother" when I'm teasing them about asking for more milk or something at a meal and for a while they would tease right back by calling me a wise and beautiful train station or monster, etc but now it's taken a turn and Eleanor likes to call me "wise and beautiful princess" and Bradley says "wise and beautiful queen" when he's being sweet. So it's cute ... but it looks a little bad when they do it in public. Sigh. I guess it serves me right for teasing them.

This is how we go into the cold section of Costco, by the way. Bradley calls this his "Eleanor blanket"

And oh my Patrick. This face is so perfectly him (while doing "exercises" on my yoga mat). The other day he threw a ball hard enough across the island in the kitchen to break my full mug of coffee which caused a bit of destruction as there were quite a few other items on the counter. Who knew the toddler would be the reason we would start having to limit ball usage in the house.

The only way he's happy in the car now. The basketball seems to be the king of the balls in Patrick's opinion.

It's sometimes too much work to be such a big boy.

This guy. Talking so big and doing all the things these days.

It's no surprise everyone is so crazy about this guy.