Merry Christmas!

We hope you are all having a fun filled Christmas.  We have been playing with hot wheels, having nerf gun wars, enjoying princess castles and baking cookies, building forts and building lots of Legos.  Santa sure was good to us.  

I hope you and all the kiddos in your families are enjoying the magic of the holiday.  We are loving our time spent with family.

Merry Christmas!!

8 is Great!

Hey....my posts seem to finally be going through!  Zach turned 8 earlier this week and it was amazing.  I’m in such awe of the boy he has grown into.  He is super smart, kind, willing to help and sometimes even shows all of those aspects of his character to his siblings.  Zach loves Legos currently and is strong in math.  We spent his birthday celebrating with a birthday party with friends and s family dinner topped off by a chocolate piñata.  

I love that we have been parents for 8 years but it makes me sad at the same time because time is moving too fast.  If anyone knows how to keep them small please let me know.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Looks like this didn’t post last week.  Here goes another try.....

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  We hope you are all having a great day with family and friends.  We are having fun in NC and soaking up the sunshine and warmer weather.  We took a quick trip to Greenville, SC (Falls Park wins me over every time) have gone to Lazy Five Ranch, gone shooting and have fed the ducks.  Fall in the south is pretty nice!

Lazy Five....

Falls Park....

Shooting Range..... this was Gunnar’s first time!

Ducks at the park...

And the week isn’t even over yet!  We can’t wait to see our family in VA tomorrow.  

Happy Turkey Day!!

Happy Halloween!!

Eek! It’s scary to see I haven’t posted anything since August.  I’ll have to do a long winded update post later.  Tonight we just want to wish you all a happy Halloween!  Hope you had as much fun as we did.  Zach deemed this the “best Halloween ever!”  The boys had a costume parade at school and we expanded our trick or treating boundaries.  We have a LOT of candy!

Happy Halloween from our Ninja, Green Lantern and Pua (the pig from Moana)!

And this guy.....

First Day of School

Gunnar started Kindergarten today and Zach headed to 2nd grade!  It’s hard to believe they are both in big kid school now. They were both excited and Gunnar had no problem leaving us in the dust to join his class. I’m so excited to see how they learn and grow this year.  Gunnar is especially fun to see when he is in his own element and Zach of course has everything all figured out.

Now the big question is how will Hazel adapt to having Gloria all to herself and not having her boys always in tow?

On another note, Rich and I may have started a new tradition.  We both took the day off and it was so much fun.  We are considering starting up an annual event for a bunch of the other parents at the school.  Why should the parents all go have a fun day when the kids start school?!

Where Did Summer Go??

I haven’t posted for a while because this has been a busy summer and every time I try to update the blog my app crashes.  Ugh!  So....here goes another try.

We ended June and started July with one of the hottest days of the year in which Rich cut down a huge dying tree in our yard.  He had some good helpers and managed to take a break for a baseball game.

4th of July had us celebrating with friends, family, fireworks and parades.

The second week of July was the highlight of our summer.  We headed to the Outer Banks of NC for family vacation.  Our quickest route was via flight and a quick stop for a battleship adventure in Norfolk.  

Then we were off to the beach!  Our kids are still asking when they will see their cousins again and Gunnar was disappointed to learn that Eli wouldn’t actually be in kindergarten with him.  Bummer the schools are so far apart!  Needless to say we had a lot of fun and can’t wait to see everyone again over the holidays.

We climbed the nearby lighthouse and rented bikes to get around and see the sights.

And then we had more family beach fun and even checked out some wild horses.

I love these kiddos.....

And to finish off vacation we took a ride in a monster truck!  It was awesome!  Who knew we would get to see the real life Gravedigger?!

Finally we headed back to Chicago and back to reality.  Real life has been busy hence the delayed post but I’ll try to get another post in soon with an end of summer recap.  Before that though.....be ready for our first day of school photos!!

So long for now!