Girls Weekend!

I took Emalyn with me to Texas for a Girls Weekend. I was meeting my bffs from college for a night in Austin and then we went to Fredericksburg for a wedding. Before I met up with my girlfriends, I spent some time with some of my other favorite girls in my life. First I met up with my cousin, Alexa, who happened to be in town from Colorado with her girls. My mom, Aunt Shirley, Alexa, Ella, Quinn, Emalyn and I had a wonderful lunch at one of my favorite Mexican Restaurants, Mexican Manhattan.

This is Emalyn meeting her cousins Ella and Quinn for the first time.

Ella is such a funny girl. One of the funniest things she said was that she's never getting married unless he's a hunk and LOVES Texas! She is in first grade, but she acts much older, and she totally reminds me of my cousin Alexa!

Alexa with her sweet girls.

Emalyn had fun playing with Trey, my mom's neighbor. He was so sweet to her and I think they both enjoyed each other.

Omie had a shopping cart for Emalyn to play with.

Everyone loves Omie's House! I know Emalyn had a great time with Omie because she wasn't the least bit excited to see me when I got back. Maddi and Cade weren't too thrilled that Emalyn got to go to Omie's and they had to stay home and go to school. However, I think it was really a special time for Omie and Emalyn to spend some time alone together. I got to spend time with my friends, and the big kids got to spend time alone with Brett. Everyone had a great time together.

I am waiting for pictures from Leslie from our night in Austin with Kim, Dusti, Leslie and I. We had a lot of laughs together as always. I love those girls! Dusti didn't get to go to Fredericksburg for the wedding, but a lot of other sorrority sisters were there and we had so much fun! This was at the reception in a random room of animal heads.

These are my dates for the night, Leslie and my lil sis Tracy.

This was between the wedding and reception with me, the brides mom, Kim and Wendy.

Before the wedding, it was raining so they put us in this random room filled with guns and miniature manequins. We were trying to pose like the manequin.

Some of my sorrority sisters: Sonya, Kathy, Tracy, me, Wendy, Courtney and Jennifer. It was so much fun seeing all of these girls.

Great Aunt Shirley with Miss Emalyn.

Emalyn with her Omie.

Poor Emalyn started throwing up around 11:30 Sunday night. She was so sick and I was so worried about getting on a plane with her Monday morning at 7:00 a.m. The plane ride couldn't have been any more smooth. We got a row of 3 seats to ourselves and Emalyn fell asleep without making a peep before the plane took off. She slept the entire way and never got sick. I was so thankful it went as well as it did. I had grabbed some kitchen towels from my moms before we left in case Emalyn was vomiting. I laid them on the seats and little Emalyn was quite comfy. It was a fabulous trip with many great memories made!

Halloween at School

Emalyn and I went to a Halloween playdate at church. She looked so cute in her overalls that Maison passed down to her!

She had fun at the playdate doing crafts, but she really had fun playing with my decorative balls that she is not supposed to play with. Caught you, Stinker!

Cuteness!

This is Cade with some of the kids in his class. I went to his party and did the Bozo bucket game. It was fun and the kids were very excited, but not too crazy. I didn't get to see the parade because I was at home with Maddi, who was sick. Poor girl had to miss school that day because she was vomiting the night before. She also had to miss the Monster Mash Bash that night and Emalyn and I stayed home with her. Luckily Cade was still able to go with a friend. Brett was on a plane back from L.A. so he didn't go either so no pictures from the night, but Cade said it was a blast.

Fun before Bed

I continue to be amazed at how much Maddi and Cade love little Emalyn and how sweet they are with her. Emalyn discovered Maddi's room and can often be found playing in there if we are upstairs. I love this chunky little baby sitting in the chair. Maddi was pretending to make baby food with a necklace and pretend feeding it to Em with a hairbrush. Maddi was also singing to her and it was just so cute to watch them interact.

One reason Emalyn loves Maddi's room is because of this red dry erase marker. She knows Maddi keeps it on her table and Emalyn will get it and will scream when we take it away from her. She was practicing her handwriting :)

Maddi helped her write her name. Emalyn is paying close attention.

Now Emma wants to make sure we see what she's doing.

And now she's looking at Maddi like she is the greatest sister ever!

Cade wanted a turn with Emalyn too so he took her in his room and sat on his couch with her. Have you ever seen such chunky thighs?!?

Brother and Sister love! Cade is wearing this light that Brett got for him to read at night. Cade will not get out of his bed to turn off his light (I think he's scared of the dark). In the summer he'll just close his blinds after he reads by the sunlight. Now it's too dark, so he wears this goofy light, but it works and course my little goofball LOVES it!

On a different night we let Cocoa stay in Maddi's room when she went to bed. Brett went in later to get Cocoa out and he found that Maddi had moved to the end of her bed to be with Cocoa and covered Cocoa with a blanket.

Maddi loves Cocoa and I'm pretty sure Cocoa loves Maddi too!

So Much to Catch Up On!

We have been so busy lately and I've been slacking on the blog. I'm going to try and catch up the next few days.


Cade had his first Delta swim meet October 16th. Here he is relaxing at home before he had to be there.

We were all there to cheer for Cade!

Emalyn was a good girl and had fun at the meet.

Cade did so awesome! He is in the far lane and you can see he was far ahead in the race. He won all but one of his heats and placed in the top 8 in 5 of the 7 races. He was disqualified in the 100 IM for some reason. We're still rookies at the whole swim team thing but we are so proud of him and happy that he is enjoying it so much.

All smiles with one of his prizes in hand after one of the races. This particular meet gave prizes for the winner of each heat.

Maddi was so excited for Cade and she would go down on the deck after each race to congratulate him. The boy he is sitting by is his same age. We couldn't believe he was 8! He is so tiny and Cade is so big, they look so funny together.

Cade's biggest fans (minus dad) after the first day of the meet.

Thanks Columbus!

Thanks to Christopher Columbus, the kids were out of school Monday so we decided to go to the Morton Arboretum with some friends. Cade has been there a few times and wanted to go this summer but it was always too hot or raining when we had planned to go so we never went there. I wasn't sure what it would be like, but it was wonderful! I think everyone in the Chicago area went there on Monday, but once we got inside it wasn't too crowded.

Maddi and Emma had fun playing in the childrens garden area.

Emalyn loved the water fountains and was trying to crawl in them. Silly girl!

Such a big girl.

It was so hard to get a decent picture of the three little munchkins.

Another try at a picture, but not so great. Cade looks like he's angry and hurting Emalyn and she looks like she is holding on to them to save her life. I promise that's not really what happened.

Emalyn thought playing with the pumpkins was really fun.

The big kids thought painting the pumpkins was fun. It was a great fall day with so many fun things to do. Our favorite things were the caramel apples, pumpkins, childrens garden play areas, and the mazes. We never did make it to the lake to see the scarecrows even though we were there for almost 5 hours.

I threw these pictures in to show how good Cade and Emalyn play together. Maddi is often at dance so it's just the two of them at home and Cade is such a great big brother to Emma.

You can see they were both having a blast as Cade pulled Emma around the kitchen on a card board box.

Times like these make my heart melt.

Running and Scarecrows

Friday the kids had a Fun Run at school for their school fundraiser. Maddi's class was the last in their grade to start and she was near the end of the pack and after the first lap around the school she was almost at the front of the pack. She thought it was a race and was passing everyone trying to win the race. She thought it was 2 laps around the school.

It was actaually 20 minutes of running and she ended up doing 8 laps. Probably about 1 1/2 to 2 miles! After a few laps, most of the kids would run really fast when they were by the parents and then they'd walk around the rest of the way until they got back to the parents and then they'd run really fast. So funny!

This is Cade's class with Mr. Struck, the teacher, before they started the warm ups and running. Emalyn was napping when Maddi's class started so I didn't get a picture of her class.

Cade did 8 laps in 20 minutes as well. The kids in his grade did the same thing with running in front of the parents and then walking. After school the kids were talking and they said it shouldn't be called the fun run because it wasn't fun. Ha ha!

Emalyn and her friend, Jack, were cheering their brothers on during the fun run.

Cade poured his water bottle over his head when he was finished to try and cool off.

Cade wanted to take Emma over to see his class after the race because he's a proud big brother!

Saturday we went to the Scarecrow Festival in St. Charles. We got there early when it wasn't very crowded yet and we all had a great time. First stop was for tatoos for the girls. This was Emalyn's first tatoo!

Emalyn's tatoo says "Girls Rule"! She didn't notice it for a long time, but when she finally did, she tried to pick it off.

There was a very cool Lego Train display. Apparently there is a Northern Illiinois Lego Train Club that puts this together. I don't know why, but I think it's so odd for grown men to be so "into" Legos. However, I can also see Cade as part of this club when he's old enough. Hee hee.

This is the Millenium Falcon that Cade has wanted for years. It's only like $500, not sure whey he hasn't gotten it yet.

The kids were enjoying making crafts and eating their lollipops. This was the tie dye butterfly.

Emalyn enjoyed watching all the people and I think this smile was because she saw a doggy. There were so many dogs and many of them were dressed in costumes. I can't imagine ever wanting to take my pet to a festival, but whatever, it entertained our kids.

The next craft was a pinecone bird feeder. They don't make them with peanut butter anymore, they use crisco. Too many kids have peanut allergies and they said peanut butter isn't good for the birds either. Who knew?!?

These were some of our favorite scarecrows.

Noah's Ark was mechanical and the animals popped out and talked. I'm not sure how that's a scarecrow, but it was very cool!

Cade liked the swimmer scarecrow.

We all liked Shrek!

Maddi liked the upside down scarecrow!

I liked the scarecrow that looked like me! Maddi pointed it out to me that it looked like me. It was for a store called Jeans and Cute Tops. We actually passed this store walking to the festival and I commented that it was a cute name for a store and I'd love to go back and shop there.

We all had a great time, as usual, at the Scarecrow Festival! Fall is such a great time of year here in the Midwest.