Pumpkin Patch and Pumpkin carving!

We had the opportunity to go to a pumpkin Patch this year, Last year, we kept putting it off then Charlie was really sick the whole week of Halloween so we never made it. We were excited to go with Lisa, August and Brayden,. At first I was thinking I could make the attempt with both boys and Max could stay and work on the property on his precious Saturday, but I decided I couldn't handle it with Charlie's current tantrums. I used a little bribery and got Max to agree to come with us. (He wanted to come the whole time but he also feels a lot of pressure to get things done on the property before a ton of rain comes) Anyway, we drove out to Heizer farms which happened to be quite the elaborate pumpkin patch. 

(Boo, I just accidentally deleted pretty much everything I wrote so here I go again...it's fine, I have all the time in the world...) 

Anyway..as soon as we got there, Charlie spotted these...and climbed right up. I assume they were placed there for children to climb on.

We then met up with Lisa and the boys and ate some snacks. Max had lunch while Charlie and I shared some kettle corn. Charlie was then eyeing August's sucker. (Oh yeah, I totally forgot Charlie's glasses. He had taken them off at some point before we left and in the hustle and bustle of loading up 2 kids in the car, they were forgotten...)

Next, we went into the barn to check out the animals. Charlie loved watching the baby duckies but he was bummed he couldn't reach them.

Charlie waved to the pigs instead of petting them.

In the barn there was also a seed pit (like a sand pit) with diggers and tractors and trucks to play with. Charlie loved it.

And then, upstairs in the barn was this amazing space. It made me want to have a barn. Think of the fun events you could have up here. They were playing Charlie Brown on the TV

We then met up with Lisa and the boys again and the kids did a couple rounds on the big hay slide. While Charlie was having fun with his cousins I took the opportunity to take tons of photos of Miles.

When Charlie needed a break from sliding I tried to get some photos of them together.

Charlie tried his best to hold his brother but Miles is so darn wiggly that it was hard for him. 

He eventually let Miles roll off his lap into the hay. Miles didn't seem to mind as he still had his fists full of hay.

We then watched as they shot pumpkins from these cannons. It was quite impressive but it also made me question what Americans do for entertainment.

Charlie played in here briefly but got frustrated because he couldn't get the tractors to move on the bumpy ground.

He loved grinding corn kernals to make chicken feed though.

We then decided to take the hayride out to the pumpkin patch. We had already purchased our pumpkins but we wanted to go for the experience (and photos of course) There was also the large corn maze out there. Lisa took the boys and Max and Charlie eventually went while I nursed Miles on a hay bale.

Charlie loved traipsing through the pumpkin patch.

I think this photo is so funny.

Miles wasn't too excited to actually touch the pumpkin.

Lisa was happy at the end of the day...the boys, not so much!

Miles was happy after he got a belly-full of milk.

We then rode the hayride back.

Charlie and August got a little cuddly. It was precious, .

Charlie ended up with blisters on his feet so he got a free piggy back ride to the car,.

Lisa came over with the boys for dinner and we had some pot roast (max's deer). I then put my kids in bed, we said our good byes to cousins and late that evening I fulfilled my end of the bargain by helping Max dig a trench at the house behind us, at midnight. If that is not speaking his love language, I don't know what is.

The following Monday we decided to carve pumpkins for family night. We quickly realized it was hard to get the family involved as we weren't ready to let Charlie work the knifes and he refused to get his hands dirty by pulling out the pumpkin guts. 

We did some research on pumpkin carving and patterns and it paid off. Max always out-carves me when it comes to Jack-o-lanterns.

After we put the boys in bed, we finished carving and admired out pumpkins on the deck. Is that not impressive?

Happy Halloween!

Charlie's Eyes

So, When Charlie inherited my brown eyes, he also inherited my not-so-perfect vision. I got my first pair of glasses when I was 15 months old...before I had hair :) Because of this, I was asking Charlie's pediatrician how soon we could check Charlie's eyes when he was only a couple days old.  I don't even really remember the answer he gave but basically we could wait a couple years if we didn't see anything concerning. As Charlie grew we he seemed to be focusing on things fine, even watching tiny ants crawl across the ground. We hoped this meant that he got his daddy's eagle vision. I was still very interested in him getting checked as soon as he could and definitely before he started school. I had an optometry appointment shortly after Charlie turned two and I asked that optometrist about his eyes as well. She recommended that kids get checked around 3 years old. He still had a year before he could be checked unless I saw anything concerning. He seemed completely fine, I just wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything. In August this year, Max started to notice that Charlie's left eye was wandering a bit. This was usually at dinner time so I just assumed it was because he was tired and just didn't feel like making his eyes focus. We finally decided to make an appointment with the pediatrician, we would have to have the pediatrician looks at it and then refer us to an ophthalmologist if something seemed wrong. I was able to see the pediatrician soon and of course, Charlie's eye didn't wander at all at the appointment but he is also two years old and it's hard for him to focus on anything. Two pediatricians looked at it and didn't see anything concerning, one of the doctors even said he probably just had an extra fold of skin that was basically making it appear like his eye was wandering (optical illusion...we were pretty sure that wasn't it) After all that, they still referred us to the ophthalmologist since I was still concerned.  

 It's kind of hard to tell but his eye is wandering in both of these photos.

This is me with my wandering eye. 

The bad news is that it is a 2-3 month wait to see the ophthalmologist and it was quite the long wait seeing that his eye was getting worse and wandering more frequently.

We finally were able to see the ophthalmologist which was an awesome experience, just as I remember it as a kid. You get to play with toys and watch cartoons...
We found out that Charlie is far sighted just like me but not nearly as bad. His Perscription is +2.75 in each eye and mine is +7.5 (the farther from 0 is worse, negative is near sighted and positive is far sighted.)They said he would need glasses and after wearing glasses for 2 months they want to check him and see if he needs a patch on his strong eye to strengthen his weak eye. (I wore a patch as a kid too.)

When Max got off work we went to the Eye clinic to pick out Charlie's glasses. At first he was excited to try on glasses but he quickly had the biggest meltdown of his life. He had a long day and after a long nap he hadn't eaten in quite awhile.

I liked these glasses a lot but I felt like they distracted from his cute baby face too much.

Miles got in on the action too.

And here was the meltdown.

It took almost a week but we were finally able to pick up his glasses. He has moments where he's excited to wear them and moments when he hates them, so we are still working on it. My strategy is to put them on him while he's watching a movie so he forgets they are on. Eventually, he will realize he can see so much better with them,  If anyone has tips on children keeping their glasses on...let me know. 

We don't know how this will affect him in his future with sports or other activities but we will find out. In the meantime, we think little kids in glasses are absolutely adorable so there's that.

And that's me with glasses many years ago, 

The point is...if you are concerned about your child's eyes...check them out, even if the pediatrician says it's just an optical illusion. :) 

Flying Max!

For the last couple years  Max has talked about wanting to skydive. A couple weeks before Max's birthday, his brother, Brent, asked him if he wanted to go skydiving. We had just set a strict budget to start saving more for our future home so Max said it probably wasn't a good time, then Brent offered to pay for Max as a birthday gift. What an awesome brother! They got a group discount because 2 of Brent's coworkers and Max's brother Justin and a friend decided to go too. 

On the day of skydiving they had to do a bit of training, I met up with them when the training was done and they were sitting outside, waiting for the wind to die down, it turned out that they weren't able to go because of too much wind. So they had to reschedule. The rescheduled date was super rainy so they didn't even bother going in. Then, one day, Brent happened to be in town. and the weather was perfect. The whole group wasn't able to go but Brent, Max, and Brent's coworker, Sam were able to go. We were excited to meet up with them.

They were able to get ready to go in the plane shorty after we got there. I was happy that Miles was happy sitting on a blanket in the grass...then I was able to chase Charlie and take lots of pictures.

From the moment Charlie saw the airplane up close, he was completely enthralled and sat still through the whole ordeal.

The plane went high enough that we lost them for a little bit but then we found it and eventually saw some colorful parachutes appear. Max's parachute was purple. (He was able to tell me this before he went so I knew what to look for)

Brent had the yellow parachute and Sam had the green one.

Max was spinning in circles .

 Max loved the experience. As he was free falling he was able to control where he turned by moving his hands. He said the free falling wasn't too scary as it didn't really look like the ground was coming up at him. I still don't have much desire to try this. I don't think I could jump out of the plane. Hooray for Max!

6 months.

Miles is really excited to grow up faster than I am ready for him to grow up. 

At 6 months he is sitting strong enough that I can walk away and not worry too much about him falling and hitting his head. 

He loves attention still and will give the cheesiest grin to anyone that gives him that attention. 

He decided to wake up more during the night. At least it's just once, and sometimes twice now right? 

He loves to push up onto his knees and act like he is about to crawl. He recently discovered how to get to his knees from sitting. 

I've never seen him actually crawl, but he gets around. He is usually pushing himself backwards or rotating in a circle on his belly.

I'm pretty sure he will be crawling in the next month and I am definitely not ready for this, I really wanted to savor the sitting up stage a lot longer. It's like he has happy sitting up for a minute but now he's only happy moving around the room and grabbing things, but then getting frustrated because he's still limited. 

He likes to dive to grab anything that catches his eye.

His naps are improving but still not excellent

He has his two bottom teeth. 

He has started eating some solids. He LOVED rice cereal from his first bite but the green beans and squash that he has tried will need some more practice. He loves sucking on frozen mangoes through those mesh pacifier things. This is usually how I get dinner ready. 

He just had his 6 month appointment and he is 15.6 pounds and 26 inches tall, both about the 15th percentile. 

I took these photos a couple days before he turned six months but I liked them better than the actual ones I took when he was officially 6 months. 

These two pictures are of Charlie at 6 months. I think they look quite a bit different, mostly because of Charlie's massive cheeks. Charlie also had more hair (fuzz) at 6 months.



These photos were from his actual 6-month day!

We love out little Miles even though he isn't wanting to be a baby much longer. He really is a joy to have around, it's so easy to get him to giggle and smile!

The beginning of the end of my 20s

Look at me getting behind in my blogging again. We've been busy and adventurous over here. 

Some blog posts to look forward to are Charlie's glasses, Max skydiving, and Miles' 6th month stats. But I need to share about my birthday first!

I turned 29 this year. That's the last year in my 20s! I'm almost 30! When did that happen and why do I not feel mature enough to be almost 30? I vividly remember my mom's 30th birthday. We came home from going out as a family and our neighbor had decorated our front door with the number 30! I also remember my mom mentioning that 28 was her favorite age. Well, 28 is done for me and there is no going back, I really don't feel like getting older is such a bad thing, in most cases my life just keeps getting better, and I'm gaining more knowledge and developing more talents. Max and I both have a goal that we want to be the most healthy we've ever been by the time we turn thirty. We are well on our way, anyway, I eased into 29 pretty naturally. My day was spent like most days, playing with my little boys, we ate lunch out on the deck so that was pretty exciting. But then Max came home during his lunch break and it ended up being perfect because both boys took a nap when Max came home and I had him all to myself. 

After lunch,Max went back to work and I got the boys ready to go play with Grandma, I decided that a date with Max would be the ideal birthday. We were planning to go swimming together (I've really been wanting to swim more since the triathlon and I don't get the chance very often) then out to dinner. It turned out that my mom had to work late, so we decided to skip the swimming and just go out to eat. 

We dropped the boys off, and then went to Red Lobster to enjoy some seafood. It was delicious and we got a lesson on eating crab legs which we don't do very often or ever. 

They also brought me this and boy was it decadent. Max and I shared it and enjoyed every bite.

After dinner we went across the street to the mall and went to Bath and Body works until the Mall closed. 

We then picked up our boys and took them home to sleep. It was a great and simple birthday, spending time with those I love most who are the greatest gifts I have been given in my life. I'm lucky to have my 3 boys.

Here's to the end of my 20s!