A few good stories....

As everyone knows the Holidays have approached us. Today is Halloween, at our house we call it the Fall Festival. Hailey's all time favorite thing to do is to go to the pumpkin patch.She talks about it ALL year long. The thing you have to understand is that the pumpkin patch is only open from October 1st through October 31st. That one month a year is a long wait for her. However, we made it to the beloved pumpkin patch 5 times this year. She loves it so much b/c they have hay mazes, bounce houses, hay rides, train rides, a pumpkin house, face painting, sno-cones, and a park, so as you can see, it is A LOT of fun for her! And mommy likes it too b/c it is FREE, can't beat that!! B/c we've gone so many times, I've had a lot of opportunities to take photos. So I thought I'd post some of them for you all to enjoy. It's funny to me, coming from growing up in Colorado, to be able to go to a pumpkin patch in October and still be wearing short sleeves, and have to leave b/c it's simply too hot! Ha...only in good ol Texas! One of the down falls we run into is that We can get pics of the kids, and either Chris or I can get pics of us with the kids, but we rarely get pics of us. So this year we decided to let our kids have a shot at taking pics of us..... they did a pretty good job. Chris and I were very happy with them. I had to do a little bit of cropping, but I'm just impressed that we are both in the picture and our heads aren't cut off or anything. So yeah for kiddos!! The one on the left Kate took and the one on the right Hailey took. Well, I only have a few quick stories to share this time, but here they are. The first one is of Hailey. The other day we were watching Diego, and Hailey decided to tell me that she thought Diego was handsome and she likes him. So cute! Hailey is a funny one with her words lately. She has been making me laugh with the way she interprets things, and they way things come out of her mouth. The next story I have is about Kate. For those of you don't know last month was the end of Kate's 1st 6 weeks at school. She got her first 'report' card, in kindergarten they don't have grades (A,B,C,D,F), they have numbers, (1=not ready for school, 2=Average, 3=expected level for kindergarten, 4=above expected level for kindergarten, 5= above advanced), well Kate got all one 3, nineteen 4's, and three 5's. I am VERY proud of her to say the least!!! We had our first parent teacher conference, and the teacher said to us, "these are the easy ones, I'm sitting here trying to think of something to tell you to work on, and all I can say, is keep doing what you are doing! She's an amazing kid, if I could clone her, I would!" As her mother, I was SO PROUD!!!! It was one of those moments where as a young parent you feel like you must be doing something right. Her teacher, Mrs. Wilson, ended the meeting telling us that every 6 weeks, they hand out awards to the 'Star Student', and that Kate was her 1st Star Student. So the next day we got to go to an awards ceremony and watch our Kate receive her 1st award for being a 'Star Student'! We are very proud of Kate, she's doing AMAZING!! She's learning SO much every day, and every day she comes home excited to do her homework and learn more. The last thing I wanted to say about Kate, was that yesterday, Kate started to learn to read! We went to the library, and she sounded out and read an entire book all by herself. SHE DID IT!!!! She's a great kid!! Last story is about Brooke, whose now 10 and 1/2 months old. She has 6 teeth now, 4 on top, and 2 on bottom. She is mastered crawling, and does it VERY fast!! She's learning very quickly to climb up onto things, she's climbed up onto the girls picnic table outside, she's climbed up onto the first step of the step stool to the trampoline, she LOVES the trampoline!! Now she is trying harder and harder to walk. She is transfering from the couch to the recliner, or wherever she can reach, and she's loving being able to walk with the play grocery cart we have for the girls. She walks all over the house with it, and it's GREAT!!! Last week, we went out to dinner with Robyn, Cory, and our family, to celebrate Cory's birthday, and to say goodbye, b/c he left us to go to Wisconsin to play hockey. Well, we went out to eat at Olive Garden, and we decided to give Brooke a lemon, so I thought I'd end with the movie we took (I can't figure out how to download it, so maybe next time). Enjoy the pics, and I'll post more soon. I enjoy writing, so this is GREAT for me!