I hate my car seat

Mallory loves being held. NOT tied down. 

Real Tears. 😢

The Great Leaf Adventure!

One thing I love about living in the midwest is fall. The colors of the leaves are breathtaking. There's usually one particular day (or two) that is exceptionally spectacular. It's the day that just begs one to take a drive.
 

We decided to take a drive to Hangar Kafe, an airport/restaurant in the middle of farm country. My plan was to take pictures when we arrived and then have dinner.  Here are pictures from our drive.

We finally made it to the airport. Duh. It's an airport. (Okay, a field with a runway.) But… there's no trees around the airport! Ugh. (That wasn't going to be the only thing to not go according to my plan tonight!)

We took a quick drive down a dirt road, made a few turns and… we found some beautiful trees!  We started clicking pictures… 

Now… there just happened to be a school/church across the street on this little two-lane road. 

Allyson noticed the playground before we even parked. 

The gate was open and there were a couple of kids playing. So the deal was… if she took good pictures she could play for a few minutes at the playground when we were done. (To be continued…)

Okay… so pictures are over. Let's go play! The girls took off running and Britt, Mallory and I walked behind them. They went straight for the teeter totter.

Suddenly I hear crying. I didn't worry too much. Until I hear Nicole scream, "MOMMY!!" I sprinted over to find Allyson on the ground crying. Her lip bleeding pretty bad. Seems Nicole was going a little too fast on the teeter totter and Allyson flipped off, hitting her face. 

The strange thing … it seemed as if we were in the middle of nowhere. But suddenly people were pouring out of nowhere, coming to help. They took us to the church area where there were people (it wasn't a church night). In the small crowd there just "happened" to be a dental assistant! She checked Allyson's mouth and her now-loose front tooth. She'll be fine. Her tooth will probably come out sooner than later, though. But, wow, did she have a fat lip. Poor baby.

Turns out the church was having a youth convention that night. What are the odds? Amazing people.

Well, we let the girls play a bit more… on something a little lower to the ground.

Then we went back to Hangar Kafe. Just in time for the sunset and a small rainstorm. Look how beautiful!!

Poor Nicole was afraid we were going into a tornado. :(

And we made it to Hangar Kafe…

The runway! (Seriously.) 

Nicole had her first taste of frog legs!

And Allyson… well, she was fine. :)

Mallory's First Halloween: The pranks, pumpkins and parties.

I decided early on not to stress over trying to get the cutest costumes or carve the perfect pumpkins. In fact, I wasn't even planning to buy Mallory a costume. But, while shopping, this little peacock number just jumped out at me!

And, we found these quick and easy pumpkin ideas that (we think) turned out pretty perfect! 

The carving begins!

Mommy being gross… but making her girls laugh

Scooping out the goop

The final pumpkin products:

Alyson's Cinderella pumpkin

Nicole's "I'm going crazy!" pumpkin

We traced Mallory's hands and feet for her first pumpkin.

Baby hands and feet

Oh, hey… let's put Mallory in a pumpkin!

Hmmm… she's not quite fitting...

There. That's better. (She likes it!)

But, with no hat… hmmm … what about...

Trust me, she didn't care for the longest time. Then, suddenly, the pumpkin wasn't cool anymore.

But these ghost cookies are definitely cool!

Nicole made this one to look like Charlie Brown's ghost costume with all the holes. (If you ask me, she just wanted one with a lot of chips.)

A couple of days later I decided to try the pumpkin again with a cleaned up, bow-wearing Mallory. How cute is she???

Okay. So now we come to the night before Halloween. 

Mallory sported her night-before pi's… 

Evidently, October 30th was prank day. And Nicole thought it was really funny to pull pranks on Mommy. But, she fell asleep before the day was over… as indicated by the note I attached to her hair.

She woke up with a mustache.

And a visitor in her booster seat.

I also wrote on their mirror for the next morning.

This pumpkin says, "Trick or Treat! Gimme some candy!"

Mallory wore her little ghost tutu at Allyson's request on Halloween day.

And we had our usual "bloody worms" (hot dogs and ketchup) for dinner.

Finally, it's time to dress up! Nicole wanted to be a cat. Allyson was Belle and then there's our precious peacock.

With our sweet neighbor, Kim Suffelette. Our first trick or treat house!

 After trick or treating we went to our church festival and enjoyed games and candy.

Allyson fell in love with this play set in the "I Spy" room

We didn't spend a lot of time outdoors as it was pretty chilly.

But we did spend enough time to let Nicole climb a rock wall for the first time!

She climbed just like a cat!

A tuckered little baby.