October around the House

*Before you begin, I will tell you that you will notice that Quinn is wearing blue shark shorts in almost every picture.  Mom got them for the boys on vacation this summer.  Q is obsessed with them and lucky for him he has 2 pairs to choose from.  The second they are clean he puts them on.  We do own other shorts, you just probably won't see him wearing them. *

In between all of our travel adventures, we did all the normal things too....

Like grocery shopping!  

He was pumped about Brookshire's new little carts.  

Y'all, this happens ALL THE TIME.  He doesn't even seem to notice.  Strange, but funny.  At least to me.  

Cowboy.  Pants-less cowboy

All 3 busy in the sandbox

She is particularly quiet and focused while playing in the sand.  I guess he takes it pretty serious. 

Kory put her in the car with a pen in her hand.  I didn't know it until I went to get her out of the carseat and her thighs looked like this: 

Brothers, backwards undies, and voluntary hand holding. 

We heart the water table. 

Q got the group pretty bad and all he did one day was sleep. He wanted to go outside with us so he sat in the swing like this for over 2 hours while the other two kids played.  Poor baby. 

When he came inside, he just did this.  

But perked up and was back to reading his magazines in no time.  I think its hilarious to see him sitting around pouring over a magazine (all the toy magazines are coming in the mail, so he's got lots to look through). 

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We have love-hate relationship with bath crayons.  They love them- I hate them.  

Q decided his tummy was the perfect place for a bunch of Superman stickers.  Why not? He currently has a tatoo on his tummy too.  

This is Jaylie June begging me to blow bubbles. She actually wants to blow them...Little Miss Big Stuff.  

Aaaaaannnnd here's another common site around my house: 

then she REALLY turns it on.  

I told Q to go put some clothes on to go run errands....this is what I got.  

Chillin' watching Q play in the rain...

It was a terrible day to run errands, but once I got them done, we came home, the rain slowed down to just the right amount for playing in the rain. 

He insisted on the sunglasses. 

Juney couldn't sit and watch for long, she ended up in the "river" at the end of the drive way.....

The END.

October Travels Part 2

We got back from Abilene and had our usual week, but by Thursday we were in overdrive! My parents got in late Wednesday night so that I could go with Kanyon on his first field trip (with his Kindergarten class) to the Tyler Zoo.  

Mom and Dad did this all day....

While we did this....

The zoo was fun and klp did good. He walked in his walker a lot and I carried him some.  Things like the zoo are just a little tricky for a kid with the vision issues Kanyon deals with. I've explained it in detail before, but basically he has 2 things going on: He can't see very well (he's legally blind without glasses).  The other thing is called Cortical Visual Impairment. Basically what he sees doesn't always process through his brain effectively.  So even if he's "seeing" it, he may not process it and therefore really "see" it.  So pretty much he never saw most of the animals at the zoo.  If they moved, he would sometimes see it, but just the fact that he had to look through glass is enough to throw off his processing and confuse him. He did always find the water in each exhibit.  Whether it was a bucket of water, a "river" or any other body of water in there he spotted it and enjoyed that.  Forget the monkey....he sees WATER! Haha! He had fun though and we were glad to spend a couple of hours outside together.  

He enjoyed several of the animals, but the rocking chairs were his favorite! :) 

Mom sent me this picture while they were outside swinging.  

That evening, I packed up and headed to meet up with another group of college friends in Nashville for the weekend. I was outside telling the kids bye. I'd never left Jaylie for this long before and was feeling like Mama Hen needed a picture with all her chicks.  Below is the result.  I title this: "Why do I even try?"

My parents are THE BEST. They stayed and helped Kory Thursday night, all day Friday while Kory was at work, and Saturday til about 4:00.  I got lots of "updates" from Mom and Dad throughout the weekend. I had no doubt they were having a blast.  

Bow lessons from Paw Paw

Friday afternoon, they took the kids to a fun little pumpkin patch place near our house. Jaylie June LOOOOOOVED it! ha! 

Q was proud of his pine cone.  

The pumpkin patch had a train that they said the boys LOVED. No surprise!

Gay Gay and Juney girl in pumpkin

Farmer Q and Pumpkin Kanyon

Farmer girl Jaylie and Farmer Quinn and Kanyon as himself. 

Paw Paw is the best. I would bet that he does more than most grandpas out there.  He's a trooper and its no surprise my kids think he hung the moon.  

And we all know my mom is UNMATCHED in her skills.  Seriously she does it all and makes it look easy.  She is THE. BEST.  My kids are obsessed with her and I don't blame them! 

Love this! 

I flew to Nashville (alone....hadn't done that since I was dating Kory!) and met up with this crew of ACU friends.  We had a blast mostly TALKING and LAUGHING! It was so much fun to all be together and catch up on each others' lives.  3 of these girls live in Nashville so its always fun to see where your friends live.

Kyla, Chelsea, Katie, Sharon (holding sweet Posey Bea), Me, Kasey (holding Ninas sweet baby Walt), Erin, and Nina 

We didn't just sit and talk in our PJ's ALL weekend.  We went out to eat Saturday night.

We got to see Sharon's other 2 girls after their fall festival.   Its so fun to see the kiddos we hear so much about! 

This was part of the crew headed to the airport Sunday. It was sad to leave but we had  a GREAT time!

How can it not be great when I get to snuggle with Posey Bea's rolls! 

And I was getting frequent reports from the home front.....

My parents left Saturday afternoon, so Kory was on his own.  He's a CHAMP and even got everyone to church on time! IMPRESSIVE! And Jaylie had a bow! :) Thanks to my parents and Kory for the get away! 

He made my whole weekend by sending me these 3 pictures.  It does a Mama's heart good to see this!

The month of October was full of some of my very favorite people in the whole wide world! It was SO MUCH FUN and it does my soul good to be with friends....and then come home to the best husband and kids in the world!

October Travels Part 1

My cousin Nathan got married the first weekend in October.  I managed to only take a few pictures, but we had a great weekend in Huntsville with our whole Spencer Family!   

We stayed in a hotel which of course is a JACKPOT for little ones.  klp worked so hard getting this blanket all spread out on the bed. Here he is with it juuuuuust right.  

The dry cleaning paper was Q's "map" so he was busy reading the map all morning. Obviously he wasn't busy getting dressed. 

This is the only picture I have of the wedding.  Bummer.  They had cute little coloring books for all the kids at the wedding.  The cousins managed to color the whole book out in the hallway before the wedding started. Congrats Nathan and Megan!!!! 

A couple of weekends later we were on to our next adventure.....ACU HOMECOMING! (my 10 year reunion....ouch!) 

Jaylie got her first shiner just in time to go meet all her future roommates/grub dates.  She fell off a bench at a store...on to carpet. I missed the whole thing (bad mom) but it was pretty much a carpet burn.  Sorry jjp.  She made it a whole year without a black eye, thats pretty good, right? 

We made the almost 5 hour drive to Abilene without stopping.  The boys were AWESOME. Jaylie was the opposite of awesome.  But we made it.  Kamryn was waiting for us to get there Friday night because we had a baby! Too bad the baby was as big as her! 

Me and Beth introducing Jaylie June and Molly.  Yet another forced friendship for Jaylie.  At least I pick the best, cutest, sweetest little friends for her! 

They will hang this in their dorm room, right? 

We had so much fun Friday night hanging out at Tamara's and letting all our kids play. We were having so much fun that we never stopped to take a picture of all of our kids.  I'm SO MAD!  It was so fun to watch the kids play and get to actually meet all our friends' kids! 

These are out of order, but oh well.  Saturday night we had a kidless reunion dinner that was really fun.  Fun to hang out with our crew and to visit with so many other ACU friends we haven't seen in years.  

Here's  most of "the girls". We were missing a few.  Hard to believe its been 10 years since we LEFT good ol' ACU, but I love that our friendships are as strong as ever.  And our memories had us laughing til we were crying! 

We took this exact picture on the steps of some museum in Chicago our senior year.  There was not a single picture that someone wasn't dying laughing....

Great, lifelong friends Eric and Amber

Saturday morning was the parade and it was COLD.  FREEZING COLD.  This is how my boys sat until the parade started (nothin' but J's poking out).  Q ventured out of the stroller when he heard they were gonna throw candy, but klp stayed UNDER the blanket the entire parade.  Peeking out only to ask if the parade was over yet.  Jaylie was bundled up in Daddy's arms.  

We opted to not wrestle our 3 kids all through chapel so we went and toured the new work out facility. It was really nice.  We spent most of our time in the gyms.  

We spent the weekend at Ricky and Cindi's house and had a BLAST.  They moved from Longview to Abilene almost 5 years ago and we miss them so much! We had so much fun staying with them and getting to hang out with their kids and catch up with each other.  The Colliers came over for lunch too. It was so fun to be together like the old days!  

Aubrey holding Jaylie, Laurel, klp, Trent, Quinn, Cooper, and Addison

SILLY PICTURE!

Pruitt's kids are old enough to take pictures, so we got one of the adults.  I LOVE THESE PEOPLE! 

Thanks to a stomach bug at our planned babysitter's house, the Pruitts ended up with our 3 and the Colliers 2 kids while we went to the reunion dinner! Great friends! They sent us this picture while we were gone.....  assuring us that Jaylie was having fun! 

As cheesy as it sounds, it was so great to be back in Abilene at a place that holds SO MANY great memories for us.  It did my heart good to be back with friends, together in the place where it all happened. They truly were the glory days...it was fun reliving them!! Go wildcats!