What a beautiful sight

The other night I was making supper and looked out our window and saw these two beautiful deer.  Yes, they were right outside our house!   There is an apple tree in between our house and our neighbors house and the deer like to come and eat the apples.  It was so amazing.  We showed Logan and Kaitlyn through the window, and Kaitlyn was amazed.  ROb quietly opened the door and we got to stand out on our deck.  Both kids did a very good job being very quiet while we took pictures.  The one looked right at us.  Katilyn started waving at the deer and started saying "hi"  and then the deer took off and Kaitlyn started crying.  It was really neat!! 

Logan and Kaitlyn

Just some pictures of the kiddies.  Enjoy!!

Extreme Makeover Home Edition

Extreme Makeover Home Edition came to the Peoria area this past week.  They were in a town Pekin, about 10 miles away from Peoria.  They started building the house on Thursday, and when mom, Logan and I went on Saturday morning, they had the house up and siding on the majority of the house.  It was quite amazing to see all the people there helping out.  The show will air sometime in January.  No, we did not see Ty Pennington, but we do think that the guy in the red shirt in the first picture is one of the designers.   

Darn Leaves

Here is it, the end of October and we are raking leaves.  This is the only part of fall that I HATE.  We have 10 trees in our yard, not to mention that all of our neighbors have about the same,so you can about imagine the amount of leaves we have.  We decided that this year we were going to try to keep up with the leaves.  When we have a bunch, we rake.  Well, we have already done 14 bags of leaves last weekend and 3 garbage cans full from the previous weeks.  This week we are setting out 12 bags and 1 garbage can out for the trash men.  We are tired of the leaves.  This is our second weekend devoted to raking, and as we look at the trees, there are 6-7 more BIG trees around our yard and the neighbors that the leaves are still green.   HELP

Logan was a great help opening up the leaf bags!!

Of course, you have to jump in the BIG pile of leaves

Logan earning his Boy Scouts bag- helping his family!!

Say a little prayer

We got a call yesterday from Rob's aunt Pat saying that Rob's grandpa had a stroke and is in the hospital.  The doctors are not optimistic for a recovery.  Please keep Rob's grandpa in your prayers along with the family as we are going through this difficult time.  

FALL

I think my favorite time of the year is fall.  The cool crisp air the changing colors of the trees.  Everything about fall, it great.  This morning, as I lie in bed at 6:30 I thought to myself, "I should get up and go for a walk".   I have not been walking religiously for a while now, and what better time to go when everyone is sleeping and I have an hour to myself.  By the time I got up and got ready it was about 7:15 and 37 degrees out.  I headed out without my MP3 player and went for a nice walk.  I noticed all the trees changing, the birds signing, our adopted chipmunk gathering his nuts for the winter, and a deer sitting across the road from our house!!  This is great!! As I walked my normal 2 1/2 mile walk I thought about fun things- no work.  It was nice to take this time for myself and realize how the simple times are so much more valuable then the planned hurry hurry activities.  

As I turned the corner to our house I saw all the leaves laying on the ground and right then I new that my relaxing thoughts were gone.  I started thinking about ALL the leaves we are going to have to rake, all the bags of leaves we are going to have to haul out on Tuesday garbage day, all the blisters on my hands from the raking.  And because of those thoughts, I have to go back on something I said at the beginning of this blog entry- "Everything about fall is great"!  I can no longer say that, because what is so great about hours of raking leaves?  I will let you know how many blisters I get from this round of raking.

Our weekend

What a weekend we had.  There was nothing dull about anything we did or that happened.  

* Rob's mom Sue cam from Iowa on Friday night and spent the weekend. with us. 

* Sue brought Chinese from Webster City (our favorite).  There are no good Chinese places here in Peoria.  

* We all went to an apple orchard on Saturday.  Logan and Kaitlyn picked out their own pumpkins in a pumpkin patch.  

* Both Logan and Kaitlyn rode ponies!!!

* Logan red Green Eggs and Ham to Grandma R. and then started the Cat in the Hat!!

* Kaitlyn put a cheese curl in her mouth with her toes.

* After months of complaining, I finally bought a new camera!!!

* My best friend from Iowa and her husband Jason were driving through Peoria on their way to Indiana.  Charleen dropped off

   a little tikes car for Kaitlyn to "drive"

* Kaitlyn got a little tikes car that she can "drive" She loves to get in and out and steer the wheel.  - Thanks Charleen.  

* I went to Barns and Noble and got an Educators Discount card.  Now I will be able to get special discounts on work and personal        items!!!

* I got all the Laundry done in one weekend!!!!!

Hope everyone has a great week!!!

More picts from the apple blossom

Kaitlyn kissing her new goatfriend

Crashing into Logan on the slide!!!  Watch Out!!!

Perfect apple for a perfect day!!

YUM YUM YUM

Best Friends Forever

Apple Blossom Farm

A couple of weekends ago we went to Apple Blossom Farms.  Our little family had such a good time playing, picking apples and just hanging out with each other.  It was such a simple afternoon, but will print a lasting memory in all of our lives.  

We started out the day going into the play area.  Both Logan and Kaitlyn loved playing in the big bouncing ballon.  I was surprised that Kaitlyn had a good time since just a couple of weeks ago she went into one and did not like it.  Her and Logan would bounce and then go down the little slide.  She screamed when we took her out to go on to the next thing.  At the apple farm they have a 80 ft. slide that you go down on potato sacks.  Logan remembers it from last year, so he was one his own, I took Kaitlyn up, and we came down and she LOVED it.  I could hear her laughing the whole way down.  We went up and down and up and down and up and down a dozen more times.  She thought it was funny when we would run into Logan at the bottom of the slide.  Once again, she screamed as we went onto the next thing.  We then went to feed the goats, which she tried to eat the food and kiss the goats- YUCK and then on a hayride.  We ended the day going into the orchard and picking our own apples.  We all had a good time with lots of laughs!!!