Little Farm Girl

 Look at me everyone!  Look what I'm wearing.  Papa gave me his hat.

And I think I'm pretty cool!

There Goes The Tree

It finally happened....Evie knocked over the Christmas tree.  It didn't bother her at first, but after we made a big deal about it she started crying (think she felt bad.)  We called Gracie to come see what Evie had done.  She walks out into the living room and says, "Oh. My. God." as she's slapping her forhead.  It was really funny.

Happy 2nd Birthday Kade!

 Kade loves lions.  He was roaring in this picture.  We celebrated his birthday December 12th with a nice lunch and cake!

The kids had tons of fun playing with each other.  Kade did a good job blowing out his candles and Amanda made a great lion cake!

The Most Popular

The computer is the most popular item in the household, besides the t.v. and food.  It's probably that way everywhere you go.  Thought this picture was funny, but Evie actually prefers the real deal.

Sister Love

 Lately, Gracie and especially Evie have been liking to go and sit in the chair in Evie's room and look and look at books.

 Gracie was really getting Evie to laugh!

 Giving a kiss or just making funny noises, whatever it was, it must've been funny!

 Can't forget the wrestling match!

 Looks like Evie is interested in what Gracie has to say!

We really do LOVE each other through and through!

Can We Please See Santa?

So, we decided we would take the girls to see Santa at Bass Pro Shops Santaland cause you get a free picture.  Evie fell asleep on the ride over so I thought we could look around for a while before we go over to see him.  An hour so later, Evie wakes up. We walk over and are greeted by an elf who hands us a card that says your photo time to see Santa will be at 3:30pm - or in a hour and a half! OMG. There were a lot of people there - kinda figured there would be. So, we went to Westroads to visit Santa.  Gracie was so excited!  She got pretty shy once she got to sit on his lap, but she did say she was a good girl and Santa asked her if she would like a baby or barbie doll - she said barbie.  Evie, reacted as I expected. She didn't want to let go of me as I was handing her to him. Poor girl, but we all did it.  I think most of mine with Santa when I was little was pure fear. Anyways, turned out to be a pretty comical picture.

Fall Fun At Schram

I've said it before and I'll say it again...I love this place.  It is just so peaceful and a guess makes me feel connected with nature.  It was such a nice day.  We fed the geese, ducks and fish some popcorn.  We sat by this Gingko tree for quite some time. It had really different leaves.

 Gracie was having fun throwing the leaves in the air.  They were really soft - not crunchy.

 This was Evie's attempt at throwing leaves up in the air.  Poor thing just put her hands up and let the leaves fall.

 Mostly, she just wanted to eat them - probably had all sorts of bird poop on them.

 Here Hoff was throwing leaves on Evie. I like how she shuts her eyes in anticipation.

What a nice little fall picture this would be had I noticed that dumb stick by Gracies face.  We spent about 3 hours out at Schram that day.  In addition to playing in the leaves and feeding the animals, we walked a little of the nature trails.  A little challenging with the stroller, but it was a good walk.

Feeding the Cows

We went up late to trick-or-treat in Genoa.  While we were there, we took full advantage of the nice weather and went out to feed Dad's cows.  Gracie had a blast and she was even able to pet a cow.  This was Evie's first up close and personal with cows and she got really excited and was mooing.  Evie was mostly feeding herself the corn. Yuck!

Halloween 2010

Halloween was lots of fun. We trick or treated mostly people we knew, but still ended up being around 10-15 houses.  We gots lots of candy!  Evie was done about half-way through the process and I was too get both kids in and out of their carseats.  It was funny cause we trick-or-trreated mostly people we knew so we usually were invited into the house.  So, the occasional couple houses of people we didn't know, Gracie just trotted right into their house thinking that's how you're supposed to trick-or-treat. It was funny.

Carving Pumpkins 2010

 Here Hoff and Gracie were taking the gunk out of the pumpkins.  Gracie was just loving it.

 Evie didn't really know what to think about it. We brought over the gunk for her to play with and I had to make her touch it. She wiped her hands on her shirt. She must've thought something was fun about it.

 All Gracie wanted to do at the end is play with the stuff. She'd transfer it from one bowl to another, put it back in the pumpkins and decided to put it on her head cause she thought it looked like hair. Oh my! What a mess!

And the finished product!

Freaky Frolics

This was the first year we attended Freaky Frolics, Ashland's Halloween celebration.  They had cute little halloween themed games such as the one above of Gracie throwing pumpkins into a cauldron.  They also had a costume contest and Gracie won 1st place for her age group.  She was pretty interested in Blue from Blue's Clues.  She even made the paper.  She won a plastic medal and a mini pumpkin. Whooo whooo. Good job Gracie!

Lincoln Children's Museum

So, for Gracie's birthday, I wanted to do something fun.  We had never been to the Lincoln Children's Museum.  Let me tell you, it beats the hell out of the Omaha one.  It had such cool stuff for the kids to do....we will definitely be returning.  Gracie has so much fun; Evie did too!  It was slight chaos trying to keep an eye on two girls when there was so many kids running around.  Poor Gracie had a sharing complex.  As you can see from the picture above, she was trying to hold as many stuffed animals as she could hold.  She loved all the frogs and turtles and would get really upset if somebody stole her animals.  We left the establishment with Gracie bawling hysterically (she wanted to keep a frog and not go) and Evie whining (hungry).  Nice morning and very impressed with the place - although pricey $18 for us three.

Happy 3rd Birthday Gracie!

Gracie's all dressed up in her gear she received from her birthday. Whoo whooo....looking good girl!

Here she is getting all excited to open gifts from us.  She is such a goof.  Her favorite toy from us was a couple $3 rubber frogs.   Guess I didn't have to buy her all those nice ones.

Here she is with her new Tom and Jerry DVD....her new favorite cartoon!

Gracie saying she's three!  She got so many nice gifts and we had a good time hanging out with family.

Vala's 2010

 The girls playing in one of the new attractions at Vala's.  They both had a lot of fun playing in the corn....maybe I should get something like this for my basement for some winter entertainment.  I think I may know someone who I could get some from.

 The girls out in the pumpkin patch where all the big pumpkins are.  I would love to get one of these someday, but I think the smaller $11.40 pumpkin we purchased there was quite enough.  That would probably make this a $50 pumpkin at least.

Every year, we have to hit up Vala's. This year, Gracie seemed to enjoy it a lot more, although she was a lot more scared of things.  Here we are taking a little tractor ride. We had never been on this and it was a lot of fun. Wonder what new things they'll have next year?  I think they may run out of room/ideas at some point.

Havelock Family Fun Day

So, the Burlington Northern Havelock shops have an annual family fun day and we decided to attend this year.  This is where Dave (Hoff's dad) works.  They had a couple bounce houses, free pop, cotton candy, funnel cakes, just all sorts of good stuff.  We walked around the shops and I wanted to ride on the mini replicas of trains giving train rides, however Gracie was "scared" of the train.  As you can see in the picture above, they also had a big engine that you could explore through.  Pretty cool!