Reindeer Farm!

We got to take Abby and her 2 cousins to a real reindeer farm that is only about 20 minutes from my parents house. We did not even know that the farm existed but it has been there about 15 years. Anyway, it was so cool. We got to pet and feed the reindeer. There were 8 or so of them that he had there at the time and they were so cute and well-behaved. Who knew that about reindeer. There names were not Dasher, Dancer, Prancer or Vixen. but the kids loved them anyway and had a great time. I think we are going to make this a yearly family tradition.

This is Holly. She was the nicest of them all and the one we got to pet and feed the most.


feeding Holly apples- Yummy!

Abby standing with 2 of the reindeer.


A whole herd of reindeer

Abby and cousin Belle with Rowdy the reindeer. Rowdy the reindeer has already lost his horns for the winter. Every winter reindeer lose their horns and males lose them before the females. Interesting information, who knew. We took a ton more pictures, but Maybe I will post those on a later blog entry!!

Putting up the Christmas decorations!

This weekend we spent Saturday putting up the Christmas tree and all most of our decorations. Abby had the best time and she loved putting the ornaments on the tree. She is enjoying the tree everyday.

Abby hanging ornaments.


More ornament hanging.


Our tree before the ornaments or lights were on.


Abby helping with the lights.


Abby loves our big reindeer. She was dancing all over the place with him.


The room before the tree, Abby still dancing with the reindeer.



This is Jake our Elf on a Shelf. Abby loves Jake and wakes up every morning looking for him!

Friends and Zoo Lights!! Nothing better!

This past week we went to the zoo lights with some of our good friends the Schaetzke's. We had a really good time. They have 2 little boys that are close in age to Abby.

Beautiful scene of Christmas lights!


Here is Daddy and Abby looking at the wolves.


New Polar Bear light animals. They were very cool.


The big blue tree.


Abby sitting in the wagon with the boys, Tyler and Carter.


The 3 of us in front of the huge Christmas tree.


The 3 little ones in front of the huge tree.



The 3 little ones watching the seals.

The things kids say.

Abby and Papa playing in the leaves

Abby enjoyed the leaves this year.

Throwing them in the year.

family time at the park.

kicking a soccer ball.

I usually don't write about all the things Abby says because, frankly, I forget by the time I go to write a blog entry, what those things were. So yesterday, I took note of several very cute and sweet things that my little angel said. Of course, you know that when kids start talking, you can hear the things you say the most, coming out of their little mouths.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to the park as a family after we picked Abby up from daycare. We played on the playground for a long time and every time Abby would fall down (and she did several times,) she would dust her pants off and say "I okay, I okay". and keep on playing. Apparently, we tell her that she is ok, when she falls, so that she does not cry. Our strategy is working she just picks herself right back up and keeps going.

After playing on the playground for a while we decided to take a walk through the wooded area and look for deer. As we were walking, Abby was holding my hand and kept saying, "be careful mama, don't fall and bump your head". I think I must say be careful 25 times a day or more. She hears me. After a while, Abby ended up getting on Eric's shoulder because we were walking up a steep hill. As we were walking, she kept looking back at me and saying "you're doing a good job mommy, keep going, good job mommy." I guess I tell her good job quite often.

And then last night, Eric was sitting at the computer looking at different things online and Abby walked in and started trying to crawl into his lap. He asked her what she was doing and she said that she wanted to sit in his lap. He asked her why and she said "because I love you, Dada". And of course he could not say not to that, so she crawled in his lap and sat there with him for almost and hour while they played kids games online. She is such a sweet little baby and we love her so much!!

The plethora of Halloween events!

Over the last couple of weeks in October, Abby got lots of use out of her Halloween costume.
She got to wear it 4 times. First we went to the Zoo for their Halloween event a week before Halloween. Abby loved that. The weather was gorgeous and she go to see animals and get candy. What is better than that. Then on Thursday, the sitter had a Halloween party for the kids and Abby wore her costume all day long. On Friday night. my church had their annual fall festival where she go to dress up, play games, get her face painted and get more candy. Then of course, we had the main event Halloween! It was quite cold that night so she did not last so long, but she still had a good time and said trick or treat at every house and of course thank you too. By the end she was all Halloweened out. However, she would wear her princess costume everyday if we would let her. (of course she has worn it several times since Halloween just for fun) We have enough candy for five kids here and we only let her have 1-2 pieces a day. Eric eats more than she does. I have not eaten hardly any. One of the symptoms of this pregnancy is that I want almost nothing to do with sweets at all and even less to do with chocolate. Strange, I ate an entire cantelope in 2 days, but I don't want a snickers. So, it looks like this candy is going to be around a LONG time. I hope everyone else had a good Halloween too!

Abby layered up right before we started walking around on Halloween night.



The little princess- all in pink!

looking at some of her candy stash before going back out for more.


by the end of the night she was exhausted and wanted to ride instead of walk.


Abby and papa all dressed up.



This is at the zoo. THey had this fun helicopter the kids could ride. she loved it!


We got a picture of her in front of this same Frankenstein last year, we are going to make it a tradition.


posing at the zoo.


at home just playing dress up in the costume!! Oh how she loves it!

Pumpkin Painting!

Ok so I am WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY behind in blogging. I will post a few different sets of pictures over the next couple of days, but I will keep the writing to a minimum. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to let Abby paint her pumpkin because she is still too young to do much carving. Her are some pictures of her painting her pumpkin. It was nice enough that we did it outside.

My pumpkin is the one with the face! I am soooo not the artist. I just wanted to be part of the fun.

My pumpkin.

Abby working hard to get her pumpkin painted.

She loves this kind of thing.

She asked every day for the next 3 or 4 days if we could paint pumpkins.

Our first camping trip as a family of 3!

This was a weekend of first for this little family. Ever since Eric and I started dating 6 years ago, we have gone camping together and we love it. However, when Abby was born 2 1/2 years ago, wee took a short camping hiatus, knowing that it would be a couple of years before she was a ready and willing camper. We decided that this summer, would be her summer to camp. However, we did not seem to find the right time to do it this summer, and I was determined that she was going to experience it this summer, since next summer might be out of the question!
So Friday night we packed the Xterra and headed to Pokagon State Park in Indiana for Abby's VERY FIRST camping trip!

This is Abby all packed in the car on our way there. She was loving it!

This is our campsite with the tent and everything all set up.

This is Abby's cot, that was right next to Eric and I's bed.

Another first that happened this weekend was that Abby got to ride a horse for the first time. Abby loves animals and always wants to touch and pet them. SO there is a place at Pokagon that she can go on a short pony ride for only $3. It was totally worth that money to see her get so excited to ride the horse.


This is Abby and her horse Wheezer. I am assuming from the name, that he is the horse saved for small children to ride.


Look how happy she is!!

Her nervous excitement!!


And Abby got to pet other horses and mules that were at the barn too.


Here, Abby reads her princess book by the campfire.


There is a cool spring there, that we went and visited. Abby really liked the spring, but the water was COLD!


This is Eric. He will even grill while camping, what a man!

The last story I am going to tell you is another first that happened, but we don't have any pictures of this one. On Friday night when I put Abby to bed, I laid down in the tent with her for a while because she was kind of scared (this was her first time). While I was laying down with Abby, Eric was sitting by the fire. He heard some rustling behind him and turned and saw a raccoon with his hand in a bag of our food trying to get some out. Eric shooed one away and another one came from behind him and kept trying to get our food. So Eric put all of our food bins in the car except for the cooler, which had mostly pop in it. Once he did that, the raccoons left and we did not hear from them again. Well, a little while later, Eric came to the tent and laid down. About 10 minutes after he laid down , we heard a thunking, popping kind of noise. Well, we were camping right under and acorn tree and there had been acorns hitting everything all evening so we assumed an acorn had hit the cooler and we tried to go back to sleep. Not 30 seconds later, we hear the ice in our cooler moving around. Eric jumps up runs out of the tent and finds the raccoons have unlatched the cooler and opened it up ( it was a big cooler) and were inside eating the grapes!! Well, again, Eric shooed them away, and actually, at that point, threw them all of the grapes because they were ruined by then. He then had to put the cooler in the car. And that could not quite end the raccoon drama, when Eric finally comes back to bed. We lay there about 1 minute more and we hear 2 raccoons right outside the tent fighting and growling like dogs over something and that goes on for a minute or 2 before it finally quiets down and we can get some sleep. It was a very weird night overall. But a success because ABby loved it and cried when we put the tent away because she wanted to stay.