Sunday, October 27, 2013

Week 43- Fall Fun

Fall is in full swing now, and I love it. I love the colors and the cooler air. I love the sweaters and jeans and hot chocolate and crock pot stews and chili. I just want to soak it all in before winter arrives and I'm complaining about the cold.

On Friday, The Little Gym hosted a Halloween party. I had to work at a school football game, but Brad and Nora met up with Allison and Amelia. I had a back up make-shift Elmo costume that Nora wore. As with her tiger costume, she wasn't thrilled with the head piece, but for the few seconds she did wear it, she was a cute little Elmo.

I'm unimpressed.


In other festive Fall fun, Nora made 2 trips to the Pumpkin Patch this week. Her first trip was with Ms. Tracy and her day care friends. She brought home her own little Nora-sized pumpkin to decorate for Halloween.

Blurry cell phone picture sent from Tracy

On Saturday, Brad and I made our second visit to Elisabeth and Patrick's house to see Naomi. She is 2 months old now, but her "preemie age" is just 2 weeks. She's growing like a weed at 8 lbs 9 oz. That's more than Nora weighed when we took her home! While were were there, Nora hung out with Amelia, and we got in some baby snuggle time.

He's an old pro by now!

This evening, we ate dinner at Dede and Grandpa's house after the men got the pool put up for the winter. We were excited to see Elisabeth there, and Nora got to Facetime with Uncle Patrick and cousin Naomi. She had fun playing with Uncles Bill and Bo, as well as one of Elisabeth's old baby dolls, which she kept putting in Naomi's pack and play.

Mid-jump!

After we left, we made our annual family trip to pick out our pumpkin. Nora kept picking up pumpkins and throwing or dropping them. I was worried she was going to smash one and we would be stuck with pumpkin mush, but thankfully, that didn't happen.

 
Catch, Mommy!
On that note, we finally picked our pumpkin, grabbed a loaf of the homemade pumpkin bread that this place is famous for, and headed for home.

Cheese!
Let's go inside and eat!

Monday, October 21, 2013

Week 42- Boo at the Zoo

Nora experienced the joy and wonder of "trick or treating" for the first time this week. On Friday, we took her to an early Halloween event at the Knoxville Zoo called "Boo at the Zoo".


We got there at 5:30, and there were kids of all ages dressed in costume ready to start collecting an early stash of candy. Of course, Nora had no idea that she was about to fill her little purple bucket (the same one she used to collect Easter eggs because I hadn't thought this whole trick-or-treating thing through...) with sweet treats.

She came upon the first booth, got her first piece of candy, and she was hooked.


She practically ran from one booth to the next once she realized what was waiting for her. Here she is, on a Halloween mission.

On her own...


And hand-in-hand with her butterfly pinata bestie, Amelia...


They attracted their fair share of attention. I know I'm biased, but I don't think it's hard to imagine why. She was a cute little tiger, wasn't she? Even without the head piece that she flat our refused to wear UNTIL she took a candy break on a bench and I sneaked it onto her head for a few pictures.

I'm on to you, but I'm too busy eating this candy bar to care.
She even humored me with a couple of family pictures while in full head gear before she got back to business.


Since we were at the zoo, we even had a chance to spy a few animals. We were most impressed with the elephants and the zebras.


We ended the Halloween adventure with good music (from these lovely recorders- thanks zoo people) and a little dance party before we headed on for dinner.

Hot Cross Buns in perfect harmony. Or not.
We landed at Puleos where Nora ate pizza (shocker, I know), Amelia ate noodles, and they had a fascinating conversation about cookie monster swimming and what would happen when his fur got wet. Oh how much fun it must be to be inside those little 2.5 year old heads.

The rest of the weekend brought some typical family fun:

Watching Tennessee football on TV. Go Big Orange!


And our standard Sunday festivities- church and then lunch with Dede and Grandpa.


Lovely weekend- I wish it could have lasted a little longer.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Week 41- We All Fall Down

Nora had her first playground "incident" this week. Blood was drawn, tears were shed. It was a sad moment. We were at a birthday party for one of her church friends, Jon Loran. There was a playground jungle gym that was really meant for older kids, but of course, it was impossible to keep the little kids away.


Nora LOVES climbing right now, and while doing so, she lost her footing. She was up pretty high, but thankfully Brad and I were standing right next to her. Unfortunately, we couldn't quite reach her torso, so we grabbed her legs. That slowed her fall, but she still fell. Face first. Into the gravel below.


The cuts aren't deep at all, but those first moments when blood was streaming down her face were stressful. We are thankful that it wasn't worse, and she is on the mend.


This weekend was a birthday party extravaganza! We had Jon Loran's 3rd birthday party on Friday and then Kaitlyn's 6th on Sunday. It was held at a petting zoo, and Nora had so much fun seeing and feeding all of the different animals.

Emu!
Baaaaa
Checking out the tigers... rawr!
More interested in this turtle ornament than the real ones
The sign says, "Spitting zone".


There was also some typical birthday party fun to be had, including some spectacular chocolate icing cupcakes.

Waiting not so patiently to dig in to the cupcakes
2 licks of icing, one bite of cake, and then she was ready to go see the animals
All of the kiddos
Nora loved petting and pretending to feed this tiger
All of the running she did around the zoo must have worn her out because she slept for 1.5 hours in the car (We drove around and sat in the driveway until she woke up), and then she slept another 1.5 hours curled up on me in the recliner chair!

Besides all of the fun of birthday partying, our other big happening this weekend was this:


Yep, we turned Nora's car seat in my car to forward facing. She has outgrown the rear-facing limit for height. Her seat in Brad's car is still rear-facing because she still has plenty of room to grow into it.  She did enjoy riding like this, though, and she had fun narrating for us, "I see the moon. I see a car. I see the W." The "W" is the Weigels sign. She's obsessed with the letter W, and she needs to point it out whenever possible.

And as a complete off-topic side-note, here is one of our super-cute dogs. Bailey, our first baby who is still, 2 more dogs and a baby later, unhappy that she is no longer an only child.