Katie - 18 month stats

We enjoyed a fun week in Chicago for Thanksgiving. The kids enjoyed lots of time with Grandmom & PopPop and visiting friends.

I took Katie for her 18 month checkup today. 18 months, 25 days:

26.4 pounds (75th percentile)

33.5 inches (89th percentile)

Here she is just being silly :)


The Spradling's came for dinner Sunday night. Katie brought lots of books to Uncle Joe:
Isabel loves to read books:

Baby Tyler is now 6 weeks old.

The weekend before the IT came

IT, that is SNOW! The dreaded four letter word hit Iowa earlier this week.

Prior to that, we had a great weekend outside - check out the kids -

(Katie has now decided that it's okay to wear hats & headbands. She would not let us take this one off. I think this headband looks like a bandage).

Kevin took this one from the top of the playset :)

5K Halloween race

I have not ran a race since Katie was born, so I decided to run our local YMCA Halloween 5K. I helped my friend Jill finish her first race. It was a good thing to do in order to offset all the candy. Any Chicago friends want to run this local race with me & Nate on Thanksgiving morning?

Halloween - part two

My two cutie pies:

Katie, Kevin & Isabel

Of course we had to "inspect" their candy when we got home, yum!

Kevin decided it would be okay if the "Pumpkin Fairy" came the next night. The fairy came and ate all his candy and left him with a new Batman toy. Genius! I hope all the guys at Nate's office enjoy the gallons of candy that all the moms have sent there.

Just playing

Here are some photos of the kids from the past week. Just playing, as kids should :)

Looking for bugs:

Our playgroup toured a local fire station. Can you find the kids (+tiger)?

Halloween - part one

Wow - I could really get used to this awesome fall weather (70 degrees and we are loving every minute we can spend outside). Friday night we took the kids to Living History Farms. They host a family Halloween which includes trick or treating, tractor ride, pumpkins, roasting marshmallows and a storyteller. We had a terrific night! Great weather, no crowds, and no crying (by anyone in my family).

As you can see, Kevin is a pirate. We dressed Katie in Kevin's old chickie costume. She refused to wear the hat. When we went to another party on Sunday afternoon she was dressed as a Hawkeye cheerleader (no hat required)!

I just couldn't resist re-posting a photo of Kevin wearing the same chickie costume 3 years ago!

More Halloween pictures this week (preschool party & trick-or-treating still to come...)

Photo shoot out-takes

After church this morning we noticed that both the kids were dressed to kind of match each other. This wasn't planned. We thought we would try to pose them for a Christmas card picture, here are the out-takes...

"Put your paws up" - we say that all the time!

As you know, it's super hard to get a 1 year old and 4 year old to stand next to one another, hold hands, gaze adoringly at the camera, and smile all at the same time! I don't have one of those super-fancy fast cameras so we did the best we could. While not professional, still cute :)