My Great Escape!

My friend Anne since the 7th grade was able to escape and fly down to spend the weekend with us! The girls LOVE her and wanted to keep her! After a night at the homestead we headed into San Fran the next morning and enjoyed a busy day of sight seeing and shopping. You'd think I could have gotten a decent picture of the 2 of us but maybe I can find a good old pic to scan :) We rounded the day w/ dinner at The Stinking Rose which turned out to be garlic overload but washed it down with some gellato on the walk back to the car :) Thank you friend for the memories and a much needed break before my life becomes crazy wild with 3 kids!

Duck Park Adventures

We have been enjoying some mild November weather so every chance it's not windy we try to head outside and get some sunshine! On base there is a great duck park/playground. Here are some pictures from a day Lauren was at school and Shannon did not have preschool.

Here ducky ducky....

...oh you are getting too close I think.

And she's off.....

Fall Projects and Prizes

Lauren's school had a coloring contest for Red Ribbon Week and she got 2nd place out of over 100 kindergardeners! Can you feel her excitement?

The hospital offers a free Sibling Class so the girls got baby care 101 and enjoyed diapering their stuffed animals and learning how to be big sister!

For fun we made Monster Cookie Jar Mixes for friends and Lauren's teacher...

...and made some messy (I mean fun) pinecone birdfood treats

Happy Halloween!

Caleb, Tyler, Lauren, Shannon, Evan, and Justin

The girls trick or treating with Laney, Phoebe, Claire, and Brandon

A quick hello to our friend's the Lokowich Family.

Halloween Day we headed to Lincoln to visit with friends before trick or treating only to be suprised with a suprise baby shower at the Matthiessens!



...more pictures to come!

Pumpkin Patches and The BIG Corn Maze!

We invited friends down to experience the "world's largest corn maze" at Cool Pumpkin Patch in Dixon, Ca....I assumed we would take the shortest route and tool around considering it was 6 kids, 3 moms-including my pregnant belly, and one navigating Daddy! Silly me....Daniel had us trucking through the corn maze for what seemed like FOREVER only to find out were were 1/3 of the way through and the little kids (Phoebe and Shannon, including myself) were melting and running out of steam) so we had to make a grand escape and walk around the outside of the maze near the main road to get back to the car :) The older kids had a GREAT time and wish we could have taken them back but the corn maze blew down in a crazy wind storm a week after we went so that was our exciting corn maze experience for the year :)

...unfortunately you could not take the wagon's into the maze but the kids enjoyed the ride to the pumpkins!

The day of that crazy sideways blowing rain storm (which I guess is "normal weather" down here) the girls got to try out their new raincoats from Grandma Lee and boy were they much needed! Just getting out of the car to meet Lauren off the bus had my jeans soaked that day with a raincoat on!) Living near Troutdale Oregon I knew rain could blow sideways but this is monsoon weather...like a wild tropical storm....should be good times when baby boy joins us!

Shannon's preschool visited a cute rustic pumpkin patch called SilverBend in West Sacramento. Since Daniel was at work Lauren had a "sick day" and joined us (so worth it!) The highlight of the trip was trying to carry 3 free pumpkins from the patch to the car pregnant w/o a wagon. One of Shannon's classmates dad was kind enough to carry his families pumpkins plus one of ours. His wife was even more pregnant than myself and they had a baby in stroller in tow...made for an exhausting hike to the car....if labor was going to come early that would have been the day!

The girls LOVEd this hay maze you could walk on or inside.

Shannon and one of her new friends Nicholas (whom she makes paper hearts for weekly) :)

Getting ready to ride the train!

Awanas!

Since our new church in town has Awana's I thought it would be a great way for the girls to make some new friends and learn some more bible verses! Each Tuesday night they go to their classes and play games, do crafts and recite their verse for the week which helps them earn badges for their vests. Lauren is in Sparky's and Shannon is a Cubbie (Bear). Lauren decided Baby Bear needed a vest too so here she is posing the morning after getting her vest with the vest she made for her favorite toy (still) Baby Bear!

The girls modeling their new vests.

www.vvcrossroads.org

Lauren Rides the School Bus!

Where is that bus?

Shannon enjoys running around the grassy area waiting for the bus and collecting leaves :)
There she is!

Lauren is the only kindergardener on her bus so she gets to sit up front and be the first off w/ her bus driver :) She was SO excited to ride the bus home! Wednesday is early release for 1-6 grade so I found out the hard way that if she rides Wedesdays it's a different bus and a different route that would put her sitting on the bus an hour! We only live 15 min. from her school so Wednesdays I pick her up :)