happy halloween!

Here's Presley as JoJo!We tried to find a Goliath for Addy to wear, but didn't have any luck. I had red paint for Presley's nose, but she didn't want anything to do with that. Hope everyone had a great Halloween today. Ours didn't turn out exactly like we were planning, but with kids you have to be flexible. Addison woke up this morning with lots of yucky green snot covering her face. Took her to daycare and she was kind of cranky there all day and decided to only have one nap. Her nose was full of that goop all day long. We decided to just put her to bed early since she wasn't feeling too well. We actually put her down around 6:30. (Her head ouchy seems to be healing ok, by the way.) Jen, Matt and the girls came by to trick-or-treat at our house and ended up just staying in our neighborhood and walking trick-or-treating here. Presley and I met up with them for the last 3 houses. Reilly just grabbed Presley's hand and held on the whole time they were walking. So cute. Presley didn't get much candy, but that's fine with us. She's not allowed to have hardly any anyways. When we got back to the house, Cindy, Ben and Gabi stopped by for a quick visit. Before bed Presley was able to pick two candies to eat. (She didn't know that we would "dispose" of the rest after she went to bed.) Unfortunately didn't get too many pictures of Addison in her costume tonight. We are going to dress them up sometime this weekend and take them to Aunt Hildy's so she can see them too. Hopefully we will get more pictures then. Enjoy.

ouch!

We had a big ouchie at our house today. It just wasn't a great afternoon for us. First of all, I picked the girls up from daycare and they were lucky to bring home 3 balloons from their party. One latex and two mylar balloons. We decided to stop and see Daddy at basketball practice before heading home. So I drive to the school and Presley would not leave the latex balloon in the car, so fine, we take the balloon. Addison ran into the corner of a table while she was running around on the stage. No biggie. A little whine, and she was back to running. While the girls were playing on the stage and Daddy was coaching, Presley decided she wanted me to hold her balloon. I take the balloon and all the sudden, Pop! For no apparent reason, the balloon popped. Surprisingly Presley seemed ok with it. She just wanted to make sure that we go to the store and buy a new one. So now we are down to two balloons that are thankfully still in the car. We walk to the car to load up, and as I open the car door one of the mylar balloons flies out of the car and I can't catch it. Great. Now we are down to one balloon. I get the girls buckled in and get home. We had just walked in the house. I set Addison down and went to let Queenie out of her cage so she could go outside. All of the sudden Addison is screaming and starts to run to me. I look at her and she has blood dripping down her forehead and down her nose. I'm not exactly sure what happened. What I figure is Presley was taking down all of our bears from our bookshelf in the family room and tried to get T.J. down too, and I think it must've hit Addison when she dropped it to the ground. He is pretty heavy and it must've hit her just right. I picked her up and got a little nervous. She had a pretty deep cut on her forehead. The cut wasn't all that long, but it looked deep and the blood was rushing out pretty fast. We had probably been home about 3 minutes by this time. I called Chad and told him I wasn't sure if Addison would need stitches or not. He told me to load up the kids and take her to MedPoint. I wasn't sure I could do it alone especially with Presley too. So we decided I would drive back to his parents and he would meet me there. (His practice is a block away from his parents.) I load the girls back up and Addison is still crying. She won't let me touch her forehead to wipe it or to put ice on it. On the drive to his parents she stopped crying and the bleeding seemed to slow down as well. I didn't think she probably needed stitches at this point, but decided to keep going so someone else could agree with me. Thankfully everyone did agree that she probably didn't need stitches, she would just have a yucky black and blue egg right in the middle of her forehead and possibly a scar. Coincidentally both Chad and I have scars in the middle of our forehead too from accidents when we were both kids. Maybe it was bound to happen. We brought her home and gave them a bath and it started bleeding again when the band-aid came off. We finished up quickly put more ointment on it and another band-aid and it seems ok for now. We will check again in the morning to make sure it looks like it is healing ok. Tough little girl. Funny that just yesterday in my post I was mentioning that she was our little daredevil. I had a long talk with both girls after this and told them that they are not allowed to do that again to me, especially when I am home by myself with them. I can handle the scraped hands and skinned up knees, but nothing else. :)

15 minutes...

...of wonderful. Chad surprised me and got me a 15 minute chair massage for Sweetest Day a couple of weeks ago. (I didn't even know he had ever heard of that holiday before. :) Our school had hired a masseuse to come and do chair massages all day for a discounted price. Well without me knowing, Chad had signed me up. It was wonderful. I just wished it lasted longer than 15 minutes. I told Chad it was great and now I needed to have a whole body massage. hint, hint, Christmas present? Chad are you reading this? :) Seriously though, I got my head, neck shoulders, back, arms and hands massaged and it was very relaxing.

Didn't make it to the Harvest Party at school tonight. Just too much going on. By the time Chad got home from practice and we ate dinner (chicken broccoli rice casserole) it was just too close to Addison's bedtime. So we decided to go do some delivering and get some ice cream. Presley got her first ice cream all to herself. Well, I guess we made her share with Addy, but usually she just gets a little of what Chad or I get. She loved it. She got the cutest little dish of vanilla ice cream with sprinkles on top. She thought it was the neatest thing. Everytime we get ice cream and ask her what kind she wants, she always says she wants green. Not sure why, but that is always her answer. I guess we lucked out because there were a few green sprinkles on top this time.

While I was cooking dinner tonight and getting the house picked up, I put a show on for Presley and Addison to watch. Presley will sit still and watch the whole thing until it is finished and Addison will wander around, occasionally stopping to see what is going on. I was in the kitchen and all the sudden noticed Addison hadn't been out to see me in awhile. She usually will come and try and get me to pick her up so she can see what I am doing every minute or so. Anyways, it was quiet so I went to see what she was up to. Didn't find her in the living room and realized I didn't put the gate up on the stairs. Sure enough I went upstairs to find her playing in her room by herself having a great time with books. That little stinker decided she didn't want to watch a show and wanted to go play. She is definitely my little dare devil. Not afraid of anything.

Need to get ready for the girls' Halloween party tomorrow at Daycare. It got moved up a day so all the kids could be there. Can't wait to see pictures from it. Should be fun.

a year

come and gone. I just noticed that I missed my "one-year bloggiversary" on the 24th. That's the day/night we were crazy busy with Parent/Teacher conferences. Glad to have those over with. It was a long day. Teaching the kids until 11:30. Conferences from 12:30 - 3 and then again from 5 - 8. I had all but one parent show up, so that was great. Of course the one that didn't come I really need to talk with, but I think that's how it always goes. I love how they back up conferences with our Fall Break. After our long day Wednesday we had a half-day Thursday and then no school on Friday. We got lots done. Yard mowed, patio furniture and kids outside toys put away, laundry washed, folded and put away, house cleaned, errands ran, groceries bought, Mawmaw and Papaw over for early Halloween presents, spent time with Papa (missed Nana, she's in Florida), signed the girls up for $1,000 scholarships to attend my college, lunch with Aunt Hildy, Aunt Jenny, Uncle Matt and Reaggie and Reilly, shopped for new beds for the girls (just looked), worked in the nursery at church, Chad got some paintball in with friends, sprinkler system blown out, pizza with Papa and Aunt Hildy and then finished the weekend by getting Boo'd again by someone. Too bad the girls were already in bed. Presley decided she didn't need a nap today and just laid in her bed talking to her previously mentioned Halloween present for over an hour before I finally got her up. So needless to say, she went to bed early, and I didn't hear a sound from her. I will save the bags for them to find in the morning. Thanks, whoever it was. :) So overall it was a great nice long weekend. Nice to have a break before the busy week ahead. Let's see what's coming up, tomorrow a Harvest party at school for the kids. Not sure if we will go or not. Practice for Chad all week, Halloween party at school and daycare on Wednesday, trick-or-treating to family on Wednesday, and then cards for me on Thursday. Looks like another busy one, just like normal. :) Have a great week!

thanks...

... for all the well wishes. We are really excited here. I had another Dr. appointment this past Thursday with the Dr. and got my ultrasound scheduled for next month to check on the baby and to hopefully see the gender. They finally gave me an official due date, April 29th. A nurse came up with April 24th and then the ultrasound said the 29th, so that is what they are going with. That means I will be 14 weeks on Tuesday. They were able to get a few good shots of the baby during my first ultrasound this past Monday. The baby kept kicking and putting its hand behind its head like it was very relaxed. So cute. This is a picture of that. (the head is on the left laying down in case you can't tell) Hopefully we'll find out if we are having a boy or girl the week after Thanksgiving. Chad was joking around about not telling people what it was this time, but I'm not sure he was serious. We'll see. They did tell me that the heartbeat was 165. I think that is close to what the girls' were, but I need to check their baby books to make sure. Any early guesses???

It's nice to have family and friends know now. It was hard keeping it a secret for so long. Chad and I had a feeling in mid-August, but didn't test until mid-September. Then we kept it a secret until mid/late October. That's a record for us! We weren't sure how much longer we could wait or I would be able to hide it. We wanted to wait until we had a date, so thankfully we now have one.

working on sharing

So, I've mentioned before that Presley isn't so great at sharing. We've been working on it with her at home. We decided to start the sharing with her clothes. So here is Addison trying out Presley's old sweatshirt.

What do you think? Do you like it?

We also found this tonight while cleaning the oven. :)

last outing...

...for the season. Saturday morning we finished packing up the trailer and took off for Potato Creek. We were surprised when we pulled up to the gate to hear that the campground was full this weekend. Good thing we had reservations. We were meeting our friends there. Friends from school and their families. There were 12 of us that camped there and then two more came up for breakfast. They were planning on camping too, but got tickets to the IU football game (homecoming) at the last second, so they went there and then met us Sunday morning in time to cook breakfast for all of us. Between all of us we had two trailers and two tents. It was nice having Gracie and Brady (Gracie's cousin) there for the girls to play with. I think Gracie was really liking Addison this trip. Probably because she shares better that Presley. :) We had great weather. Just about perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. Just about perfect. It was a tad bit windy, but nothing awful. We got the camp set up and ate a quick lunch before putting the girls down for a nap. We took a couple of bike rides, played at the playground, played cornhole, ate, sat by the campfire, talked, and did lots of laughing. The trees were just starting to turn colors. I think in a couple of weeks it will be just beautiful there. I was really surprised at how nice the lots were. They were really big and seemed well maintained. Looking forward to going again sometime. Good times, good friends. Pictures here.

just say

BOO!

We got boo'd a couple of weeks ago by someone??? :) (For those who don't know what getting boo'd means, you have a mysterious package show up on your porch, someone rings the doorbell and then runs away so you don't know who it's from. Then you have to go boo someone else with a little gift.) Inside the girls' goodie bag we found these cute shirts. giving kissesthis is what happens when you try and run to get to the camera, trip and fall and then get back up. gotta love her.

Fall Fest at Yogi's

Enjoyed our last weekend camping at Yogi this season. It was true Fall weather. A little chilly, but nothing like the last time we camped. It was just about perfect, especially when there was no wind. We headed up Friday after school. The girls didn't sleep well at all on Friday night. I think it was mostly Addison who didn't sleep well, but since they both sleep in the back, that means that Presley didn't sleep too good either. And of course, if they aren't sleeping, neither are Chad or I. We all got up bright and early at 6 on Saturday morning. We were ready in plenty of time to go see Yogi and Boo Boo for pictures. After pictures we went to the camp store and got yummy donuts. After donuts Addy went down for a nap and Presley and I went with Gabi and Cindy to make carmel apples. I don't know why I went, because I know that Presley isn't much of a fan of carmel. In fact, I'm not even positive she's ever even tried it. When she gets a Happy Meal we always get the apples, and she won't even touch the carmel dip. She just eats the apples plain. I guess I was thinking that maybe if she saw Gabi eating it, she would want it. Nope. So we made a carmel apple for Daddy. Actually, after Daddy ate all the carmel off the apple, Presley wanted it back to eat the apple. Daddy enjoyed some yummy bean soup and cornbread that the camp was making over an open fire for lunch. Addison took a great morning nap, maybe too great because she didn't want to sleep to much in the afternoon which once again meant Presley didn't sleep too well. We figured out that the key is to only let Addison sleep between 45 minutes to an hour in the morning if we still want her to take a good afternoon nap. Otherwise we just have to keep her up and give her one nap. She's at the stage where she's getting close to going just for one nap, but not quite there yet. I want to keep her at two as long as I can. That night we gave them both a bath in the camper and they slept without making a sound from about 7:15 until 8:00. Yeah! I think it's the combination of a bath and the fact that they were tired out from not sleeping well. They always seem to do better the second night we stay in the camper. I think it takes them a night to get used to it again. We had lots of good food as usual - popcorn and cinnamon apple cider cooked over the fire, pizza and fruit and cream cheese pudgie pies, chocolate marshmellows. And those were just some of our snacks. We had all that along with our yummy meals. Saturday night Chad grilled potatoes and ocean perch. Yum.

Woke up to some good news Sunday morning that Michigan State had beat Indiana on Saturday night. Since we were camping we couldn't watch the game and couldn't get it to come in clear on any radio station so we waited until the morning and then called Dad D to get the results. We knew he would know. I had on my MSU t-shirt while Chad had his IU shirt and Presley had her IU socks on. I am all for IU except when they play the Spartans. Sorry about your luck this year Chad. ;)Sunday we took our time getting cleaned up and packed away. We played on the playground a while before heading home. Pictures here.

It was nice having today off (teacher prep day for conferences next week). We got to clean up the house, finish all the laundry, run some errands and relax before going back to work tomorrow. Chad starts try-outs for basketball this week and then practices start next week. Things are about to get even busier.

looking for sunshine

and warmer weather. Grandma and Grandpa Jones left this morning for their "winter get-away" in Florida. We went over to say goodbye last night. They hadn't seen Addison since she has been walking. We are praying for a safe trip for them and looking forward to their return in May.

in the news

Here is a story about that student of mine that was hit by a truck a few weeks ago. The paper called last week and said they were going to do a story on him. They asked what my class did, so I got a little mention in the article. He's doing lots better now, back in school and anxious to get out of that wheel chair.

Saturday - Market and Patch

Saturday was a busy day for us. We got up early to head over to the new Farmer's Market to check out the deals. We didn't come home with a whole lot but what we did was GREAT. We got some yummy cinnamon bread and a few other baked goodies. We actually used the cinnamon bread for french toast this morning. Double yummy. We also found the perfect white pumpkin. So cute. I think I will go back without the kids sometime when I have a little more time. There was one store in particular that I really liked, but the stroller wouldn't fit back there so I didn't think I should spend time looking around much while Chad walked back and forth in front of the store.

After the Market and a quick stop at Wal-Mart to buy Presley a new fish (to go with the other two new ones we bought Friday night here) we went home for lunch and naps. I ran to the store while the girls napped. When they got up we headed for the Pumpkin Patch with Mom and Dad Brugh. It was our first time checking this place out. It was a cute little place. Presley and Addison especially like the cow train and the animals. I had bought these cute fall outfits weeks ago thinking they would wear them when we went to the Pumpkin Patch, but with the 90 degree day out it just wasn't going to work. Instead they had to wear tank tops and were still really hot. It was a scorcher, even later in the day when we decided to go. It was fun anyways. We rode the cow train, saw the animals, took a hayride out to the field to pick pumpkins and then had a snack before coming back home. We were thinking about doing the storybook maze for the little kids, but just couldn't imagine spending 15-30 minutes wandering around in the corn.

Mom and Dad Brugh then came over for dinner. Thinking it would be cool I had planned on having a nice chili dinner and decided to just go ahead with that anyways. I guess it was kind of cool in here with the air conditioner on. :)

Enjoy pictures from our fun fill day here.

shots - part 2

Poor little Queenie had to go in for shots last night. Chad dropped Presley and I off at Queenie's Dr. and then he took Addison to run a few errands and pick up a pizza from Barnaby's. Queenie was obviously nervous and shaking pretty bad while we were waiting and Presley was trying her best to comfort her. She kept saying, "It's ok Queenie. The Dr.'s a nice boy." $80 dollars later we left with a couple of shots and her nails clipped. Yikes! $80! For a little dog? That's more than we have to spend on both girls combined for shots. Maybe we need doggie insurance? :) Dr. said she was looking good. She has lost a pound since last year, but he said it was normal with age. She is almost 11 years old now (November). She now weighs 10 pounds. The good news is her allergies looked great! No allergy shot this time and no medication. Yeah!