We had a great Halloween. The kids had a blast carving pumpkins at Grandpa’s house and with Grandma at home. I decided this year to carve a polka dot pumpkin.
Thomas was a ninja
Noelle was a cupcake
Karly was a chili pepper
Thomas was with his Dad on Halloween so he didn’t get to trick or treat with us. The girls went around the court and to a few houses down the street. Then we went to visit Grandpa, Grandma and then to the hospital to visit Dave. Noelle loved getting all that candy.
Time really does fly! Karly turned 5 months old on October 28th. I can’t believe how big she is getting and how well she is doing.
Kelly and I often joke about how much her kids are like their Auntie. Over the past month Noelle has become even more like me and it constantly makes me wonder how that happens. She has a binder that I gave her that is filled with papers. The majority of it is our old junk mail but for at least a week she was carrying around my phone bill from 1999. Why I had the entire 1999 years phone bills packed away I have no idea but I found it and Kelly thought it was absolutely ridiculous and threw it in the garbage. Noelle went over later and got them out of the garbage and put them in her binder. She has to have her “important papers” just like me. I have years worth of bills all filed away neatly and I really don’t know why I have them but I always think that for some reason I’m going to needs them.
Now we all know how much I love pictures. Well so does Noelle. And what she really likes to do is line up her dolls and show them the pictures and talk about who is in the picture and what was happening. Along with her '”important papers” and pictures she has to have her electronics. She carries around my old cordless telephone AND a cell phone. She has all of these things with her all of the time and she is angry when she can’t find one of them.
The funniest thing is that for some reason since I was a small child I would always walk around the house with one sock on or one slipper on or one shoe on. It would drive my mother crazy. Still to this day I will look down and I will only have one sock on, one shoe on or one slipper on. Well the other day Noelle came to dinner like this.
One shoe on and only one ponytail in!! When Kelly asked her where her shoe was she looked down and had no idea that she only had one on. Don’t ask me. I still haven’t figured out how that happens to me. I just love this little girl.
Every year we take a family trip to Apple Hill in October. We pick out our pumpkins and take family pictures in the fall foliage. We all look forward to it. This year we had to switch things up a little because of Thomas’ soccer schedule. This year we needed to go in September. Unfortunately on the weekend we were going to go it was extremely hot. We didn’t think Apple Hill would be as much fun in the heat and it just didn’t seem like tradition to go when it was so hot. Part of the fun is dressing warm and having hot cider.
So Kelly and I looked on the internet to find something fun to do that weekend. There just so happened to be an Apple Festival going on in Sonora. So we loaded up the kids and headed to Sonora.
It was Karly’s first festival.
The kids couldn’t wait to get a caramel apple when we got there! So we drive up to the fair grounds and there were about 30 cars in the parking lot. We go into a hall that had about 10 vendors selling all kinds of handmade things and some tables where some elderly people were eating lunch. We head outside and there are about 20 people out there wandering around and participating in some apple themed carnival games. It definitely wasn’t what we thought it would be.
Thomas enjoyed playing the carnival games 
and jumping in the bounce house.
Noelle wasn’t impressed by either one of those things but she did enjoy making a bird feeder out of an apple, peanut butter and bird seed.
It took us about 35 minutes to go through the entire Apple Festival. Just in case any of you would like to go next year I have attached the link 8-)! But the kids were very very disappointed that there weren’t any caramel apples.
Since that wasn’t all that impressive we decided to have lunch in downtown Sonora and then head to one of our favorite places, Covers Apple Ranch. Kelly and I have been going here for many many years and it reminds of going to our Great Grandmother’s house.
The kids had a blast going through the petting zoo, the barn and riding the train.
And of course at the end of the day we got an apple treat!
Kelly and I were lucky enough to be able to babysit Tyler back in September while Troy and Julie went to the South Carolina to celebrate their anniversary. Thomas and Noelle were beside themselves several days before he arrived in anticipation for him to arrive.
Noelle couldn’t wait to get Tyler home and share a sucker with him. As many of you know this was huge because Noelle doesn’t share her food with anyone.
We enjoyed going to the park everyday that he was here. 
We went to Mickie’s Grove and had a picnic and went to the zoo.
Unfortunately Thomas was already in school so he didn’t get to spend as much time as he would’ve liked with Tyler but the time they did spend together was a lot of fun for both of them. Thomas wants to try and teach Tyler everything and watched over him to make sure he wouldn’t get hurt.
Noelle couldn’t keep her hands off of Tyler! I think Tyler got more hugs over the week than he has ever gotten.
It was a fantastic week!!
One evening while Tyler was visiting he came and asked me where the “little babies” were. I gave him two of Noelle’s little babies and he went back to the backyard to play with Noelle. A few minutes later Kelly and I went to the backyard to get the kids for dinner and this is what we saw…
Tyler had decided to give the babies as well as himself a bath in Pismo’s water bowl. It seriously was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I wish we had it on video. He was having so much fun.
