Trunk or Treat, Grandparents, and a Baby Blessing

On Wednesday we had our ward trunk or treat. Eleanor was a ladybug (last year's after Halloween $2.50 special at Big Lots). Unfortunately this is the best picture I could get of her before we left...

Andrew had night class and I had to help with the Beehive's cookie decorating booth and face painting booth so I was worried things might get out of control with Eleanor and Penelope. Luckily things went pretty smoothly. I think Eleanor was a little spooked out by everyone in costumes so she basically stood by me the whole time. It also helped that she could just sit at the little table and shake sprinkles on her cookie to her heart's delight and then lick them off. And Penelope was a trooper, she just sat in her carseat and took in all the sights. Andrew showed up just in time to take Eleanor trunk or treating while I cleaned up. Eleanor was so excited to fill her pumpkin bucket with candy.

On Friday Andrew's parents drove up from North Carolina. On Saturday morning Eleanor was excited to see them and show off all her tricks...
Like feeding and burping her baby

and playing with her train tracks


The girls with Grandpa Doug

and Nana (check out Eleanor's size 8 feet!!)

On Saturday we headed off to explore another pumpkin patch. They had cute little crafts to look at and a treehouse to play in. As you can tell by our attire, the cold weather is here to stay!


On Sunday we blessed Penelope at church. She was born on Friday the 13th and blessed on Halloween - spooooky. I thought about painting her nails black but Andrew wouldn't let. Here's our obligatory inside the church foyer, after baby blessing, end of church, past naptime photo op :)

And here's our precious little Penelope.





Does it get any cuter than this??

A 2 Year Old and a 2 Month Old

We celebrated the arrival of fall a couple of weekends ago and went to a pumpkin patch that also had some other activities.

Eleanor played on a train

we went on a hayride

we milked a pretend cow

we ate ice cream

we saw a lot pumpkins

and we had our picture taken :)

Last week we got back from a trip to Utah. Andrew's school sent him down to the BYU law fair to do some recruiting. They paid for all of his accommodations, so since Eleanor wasn't quite 2 yet, we were all able to go for just the price of my plane ticket. It was so fun to see my brother and 2 sisters that are at BYU and my dad even came in town. We celebrated Eleanor's birthday a week early with them and made her a practice birthday cake. I really should have taken more pictures, but unfortunately this is all I've got.

Another great thing about our trip is that we got flight vouchers! Score!! We have gotten so many vouchers in the last couple of years. I think Eleanor is some kind of good luck charm. Our flight out of SLC sat on the runway for almost 2 hours because there were some mechanical issues so we missed our connection in Denver and had to spend the night there and fly out the next morning. As anxious as I was to just get home with my overtired children, I think all the hassle was worth getting some vouchers!

In other news, Penelope turned 2 months! She still loves to be held and rocked, but ever since we put her on medicine for her reflux she has turned into our little angel baby. She is so sweet and smiles and coos so much. She sleeps like a champ - at night she'll go from about 11 pm to 6 am then eat and go back to sleep until about 8:30 am. She is in the 95th percentile for height and weight! And I'm sad to say this is one of the only recent pictures I have of her. I really need to pull my camera out more often. She sucks on her hands all the time and I bet she'll turn into a thumb sucker like her big sister one of these days.

Before the weather gets too cold we are trying to take advantage of our beautiful fall here in Ohio. So over the weekend we went to the Cleveland Zoo.

Andrew and Eleanor aren't that great at showing how excited they really are in pictures. I promise, they were really having a good time!

Eleanor really got excited about the polar bear

She really didn't like having her picture taken


She loves giraffes and says they are "toooolll" (toe-l) (translation: tall)

She loved playing on the playground

she loved riding the elephant

she loved riding the tram, which she insisted was a choo-choo

and she loves her dada!

On Sunday Eleanor turned 2! So i made a little cookie cake and she opened her presents.

She was very excited about her Buzz, Woody, and Alien pool throw toys that I got on summer clearance at target...best $2.48 I ever spent!


A birthday celebration has to last at least a week, right?? So on Tuesday we took Eleanor to Chuck E. Cheese with her buddy Katherine. This clock ride was by far her favorite thing there!

Happy Birthday to our little Eleanor!

spooky

Eleanor has recently learned the word spooky. I first started saying spooky when we would watch Snow White, and at the beginning that bad guy who works for the queen is chasing her and it's dark and she's running through the forest. Now that there are Halloween decorations up places we go, I've been saying spooky to describe stuff to Eleanor. We recently checked out Home Alone and Dennis the Menace from the library. I know, I know, not really the best choices for an almost 2-year-old, but I kind of wanted to watch them :) Anyway, whenever there is a bad guy, I also say, "oh, that's spooky."

Fast forward to today at Target. We were standing in line to buy our weekly popcorn combo when Eleanor starts pointing and saying "poooky". I thought she was just pointing at all the halloween stuff in the dollar bins, so I just repeated her and said, yeah that's spooky. Well she kept pointing and saying it louder and louder, so I turned to see what she was pointing at and it was some scruffy looking old man with a beard sitting at one of the tables. Hopefully he didn't hear her/understand what she was saying!

Today

I thought it was time to capture Penelope's cute little smile. She had her first "real" (awake and actually looking at me) smile at about 4 weeks. It was almost as if she was saying thanks mom for putting up with me while I've been so fussy and not a good sleeper! She really didn't smile much after that. But the past couple of days she's really gotten the hang of it. She has the cutest, sweetest, kindest, most loving smile. I just love it! It makes me love her more and more every time I see her smile.



Eleanor wanted in on the action, too!

And here are more pictures, just because I think she's so cute. And really, how do you just pick one??

Oh, and Eleanor's been working on her personal progress :)

The days are definitely long, but I love my girls!!

eleanor loves animals

A couple of weeks ago we went out to Amish country for playgroup. They have this farm where you can ride a wagon and feed all the animals along the way. Penelope was still kind of in her scream all the time, everywhere phase so I was hesitant to go, but I knew Eleanor would really love it. So my friend lent me her Baby Bjorn and we gave it a go. I didn't think Eleanor would be as fearless as she was, but she definitely loved being so close to the animals. Most of our little friends that we went with were pretty scared to be so close, but Eleanor was loving every minute of it!


Loving life!

She was very generous with her feed.


Eleanor was trying to kiss all the animals. The camel wasn't really into her.





She DID get a kiss from the llama!

Very pleased with her first kiss!

Self portrait time! The Baby Bjorn worked like a charm - We didn't hear a peep from Penelope the whole time (well, except the hour car ride to and from the farm!).



When we were all done with the wagon ride we had a picnic lunch and played with our friends.
Here's Eleanor jumping around with her buddy Hannah.

It was such a neat little place! thanks to all of our playgroup friends for showing us fun places to explore!