The Doctor is OUT...

like a light.  As in, in bed.  And the cute little duck is too, for that matter.  But I thought you'd all like to see a few pictures:

Dr. Caroline

She was way into this Dr. business

Ellie...not so much into the duck costume

She has had her eye on this pumpkin for weeks now.  A close up was a bit more than she could stand...she literall screamed in excitement when we took this picture!

We did some trick-or-treating for about a block, but handing out candy on our front porch was way more fun.

Caroline took her job very seriously...one piece of candy per kid, and she had to be the one to put it in their bucket.  Oh, and she decided it was a good idea to hand out all the candy she didn't like and keep the M&M's for herself.

Ellie decided the duck wasn't so bad afterall.  But she still didn't feel much like smiling about it.

Happy Halloween!  Hope you all had fun and don't make yourself sick on candy tonight :-)

I try

I try to take pictures that might be worthy of a frame some day.  Heck, even worthy of printing.  I have thought so many times, "How hard can it really be to get a good picture?  As long as I have a cute subject (which I do), surely I can capture the beautiful picture I see in my mind's eye!"  But alas...I can not.  Oh every once in a great while I get lucky and the camera magically falls to the right angle to capture the right lighting and the perfect smile, but it's rare.

All that to say, I have to rely on the artistic eye of others (namely my sister) and their wonderful lenses to capture my family when I want a picture worth framing.  After several repeated attempts on my part to get some cute pictures of the girls together in their matching dresses (which I'm afraid Ellie has officially outgrown now), I off-handedly asked a friend of mine with one of those magical "eyes" and the use of a great camera if she'd take a few for me.  She went above and beyond and even brought her husband for help (because he's got one of those really great eyes, too) for a real-deal photo-shoot of our family this morning!  It was an interesting experience as Caroline was up around 5 am and Ellie was not in the best of moods (of course), but I think Amy still managed to get some great shots.  I'm so excited to see them!  While I wait for those, I thought I'd share a few of my best efforts here.  For a good laugh (mostly for my sister who will find many of these quite humorous), and because my girls are cute no matter how poor the photographer's skills.



Fall!!!

Before Fall passes us by altogether, I thought I'd get up a few pictures from some of our recent Fall activities.  And since I'm hopelessly behind on this little blog of mine, we're just going to start with last weekend.  We'll see how much updating gets done on what I've already missed!

We have a wonderful pumpkin patch about  5 miles from our house, so with the gorgeous weather, we have already made several trips.  Caroline LOVES this place!  And I really think the farmer that turned his farm into a childrens autumn paradise must be a genius...because I'm pretty sure he's making a pretty penny.  They have hayrides, slides made of giant pvc pipe, a "train" made of plastic tubs pulled by a lawn-mower, hay bales to jump around on, a corn maze and hay maze for the little ones, plenty of farm animals to see up close (imagine...cows right in front of your nose!), and of course pumpkins as far as the eye can see.  It's an interesting thing for a former small-town girl who has since lived in the city and now lives in a semi-small town that almost qualifies as the suburbs - people paying for dead corn stalks and a chance to jump on some hay bales.  But I guess that's another story for another time.

You may remember a similar picture from last year...but I don't have the time to go look it up and give you a handy dandy little link at the moment :)

This picture is a little blury, but she was moving so fast it was the best I could do!  After I crawled through tunnels and hay bales with her a couple of times, she decided she wanted to do this one by herself.  And she did...about 5 times!

Daddy & Ellie with the new tree Dan just planted in our back yard.  And see those gigantic rocks?  He dug those out of our garden (I need pictures of that, too) and moved them across the yard by himself.  And he's slated to have shoulder surgery next week...is it any wonder?  (I'll explain more about that soon - he's alright)

Then on Sunday we were able to go to an open house at Avan's Farms, a beautiful rural farm about an hour from here where we've stayed a couple of times (Thanksgiving in 2009 for the first time).  It was another beautiful October day, and we enjoyed the time outdoors immensely.  Here's me and my beautiful girls:

Daddy thought they needed walking sticks for a hike:

Can you see the pigtails??

While we reveled in the beauty of nature, Caroline's highlight seemed to be this little toy train with Elmo as a passenger.  Here she is telling him good-bye.

Actually, this was the highlight of the day for everyone...Caroline and Daddy on a horse!  I'm not sure who enjoyed it more.  I was so proud of her - she wasn't scared at all!  She's been talking about that horsey ever since.

Welp, I hear Ellie...that's all for now!

Ellie girl

My sweet Ellie-girl is growing like a weed these days.  A very cute weed though, of course :)  I took these pictures about a week ago and I feel like she's already changed some more.  She hit the 7 week mark on Tuesday, and this week we have started having some nice long stretches at night - including one that was 10 hours!!!  Her schedule isn't nearly as consistent as Caroline's was at this age, but I suppose that's the nature of a second child and the slightly more chaotic circumstances of living with 2 small kiddos. 

She seems to be a rather serious baby, studying the world around her as it is slowly coming into focus.  She's not as content as Caroline was (few are, I realize now), but as she falls into a more predictible pattern she's also starting to smile often and coo occassionally.  I find myself snuggling her whenever I have some quiet one-on-one moments and just propping her up on my lap to "visit."  Caroline has always been such a "people person" that she never minded being passed around, but Ellie is already starting to prefer Mama and that's just fine with me.  Sometimes I don't really feel like sharing anyway ;-) 

Just had a few minutes and thought I'd share.  I have lots of fun pictures from Caroline's big birthday bash and our visit from my Dad & Grandparents (which was so wonderful!), but that will have to wait for the moment.  Miss Ellie seems to be hungry...