Annie is 18 months!

Happy 18 months to my beautiful baby girl today!!!!!

Poor Mark

It's not easy to see just how massively swollen his face is. He came downstairs after his nap yesterday and told me his ear and cheek hurt. When I looked I saw the same thing that happened to Annie was happening to Mark!!! I hurried and gave him some Benadryl and called our pediatrician. He was screaming in pain though so I decided to take him into the clinic before hearing back from the dr. He has an ear infection and a very, very swollen gland! It hurts for him to eat ( he forgets or doesn't know that he shouldn't chew on that side). He will scream in pain and say help, help.......it literally breaks my heart. We are all hoping that it is better tomorrow.

Poor Elizabeth

Elizabeth got sick the same time as Annie but had a sinus/ear infection. She also had a high fever for a couple days, a little throwing up, and now a cold. She is quite pathetic when she is sick, we can't help but give her tons of cuddle time! Lets hope she will stay healthy for a while too!

I went to check on her at nap time one day and found her asleep with this cowboy hat 

( from Grandpa B, awesome bday present!!) covering her face!!

Poor Annie

This little girl has had one rough week!! She started out with croup, followed up by double ear infectiond and then her face started swelling up on her left side. Not to mention the annoying amount of snot that is continuasly flowing! I have spent many hours holding her and sleeping in her room so that i can listen to her breathing. I really hope she can stay healthy for a long time after this!!

I know this girls got some cheeks on her but its her left side thats swollen:

Marching Band!!

Ok,  so the kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE pretending to be in a marching band. They play it all the time, every day. They love music and instruments. So, I asked around about where and when we could see one of the local high school marching bands perform. We were a little late in asking as there season had just finished but we did catch the drum line at a concert one night. They LOVED it of course!! It was dark and very, very loud, but they didn't care. 

Here we are having a snack pre-show:

 Elizabeth in the middle of the show was annoyed by my bright light:)

And here is some short video clips of what we saw!

Play room, finally!!!

There are no finished pictures of this new room in our house, I just wanted to talk about it because I am so excited that Mark finally gave up his ping pong/game room for me and the kids to have a play room/school room!!! It was so much work to move all the toys and books, but we are loving it. 

Can you see Annie in that pile of toys?

I also got around to painting this cute toy box. Elizabeth had the best time playing in it!!

Swing time and pumpkins

Our kids are obsessed with swinging, they could do it ALL day long if we let them!!! So we finally put up a baby/toddler swing on our front porch where they can swing all winter long and still be protected from the rain! The hardest part is having to take turns (as you can see from Annie's red nose and face, she was crying until it was her turn)

 Annie loves the swing so much that sometimes I can't get her in the car or to the neighbors because she wants to swing! She will stand there and point!

 We also spent some time putting together our own pumpkins, the kids all had fun doing this activity! This is as close as we came to 'carving' pumpkins this year!

Museum of Flight

 The twins, especially Elizabeth have been obsessed with airplanes lately! Mark brought home a magazine with different airplanes and Elizabeth went through a two week phase where she LOVED the book and wanted to sleep with it! So, one Saturday morning Mark spontaneously decided to take them both down to the Museum of Flight. They had a great time!!!!

More October randoms

Here is some more of our indoor activities from October.

Elizabeth bit Mark on the CHEEK!! Can you believe that?!! 

The twins saw and recognized their first rainbow!!

 Elizabeth stuck spaghetti into play dough and then stacked Cheerios through the spaghetti...I think Annie mostly ate hers:)

 Annie likes to pretend to ride this dog:

 And 'wrestle' me by putting me in a head lock with her legs and pointing her finger in my mouth (and other facial parts)

Saturday mornings with Daddy while Mommy sleeps in sometimes look like this:

 And isn't this adorable!! After church naps:)

 Elizabeth has fallen asleep in some weird places too

 She fell asleep sitting up and then just hunched over...see her purple sock up by her eye?!

 Annie learned to fold her arms when we bless the food!! It's soooooo cute!!!

 And climb in the bottom drawer to make a mess:

  I let the twins practice their cutting skills with bananas!

These two girls sure do love each other. I left with Mark to get the mail and when I came back Daddy had let this happen:

 But they are so cute together!!

Here is proof!

Annie, Annie, Annie!!

Lots of short videos of our dear little Annie in October.

For some reason she thinks it's hilarious when Daddy makes animal sounds:

You may have to watch it a few times but our garbage can is motion sensored and so she will go over and bang on the lid until her arm goes by it and it opens!!!

Not really sneezing, but it's cute to see her try:)

This girl LOVES protein shakes and her she is telling you all about it:

Pumpkin Patch Time

 We hit up 2 different pumpkin patch places this year. The first one we went to started out really fun. They had some animals and kittens that the kids could hold, which Annie and Mark LOVED!!

Then we set off to go pick pumpkins and the wagon ride was really fun:

But the pumpkin patch, not so much. Well it was fun for the twins for about 2 minutes and then they got bored:

 And Annie couldn't walk in it without falling every few seconds because of all the vines and she HATES being held, so for her it was not fun:

 We redeemed ourselves with the play area, but it only had one swing which resulted in a lot of crying and fighting. But there was a really fast slide there that was fun!

The kids were tired and Elizabeth had not taken a nap so we just headed home.

We decided to go back a few weeks later but instead of driving out there we thought we would be a little spontaneous and try a new farm closer to our house. Well actually we saw this giant jumping thing from the highway and that's what made us turn around:) They had loads of fun on this jumping pillow!!!!!

 
There was so much to do at this pumpkin park (since we knew pumpkin patches were out of the question, as well as a corn maze since they are too young). We didn't even get to do all of the things there before it was time to go back for naps. We were hoping the rain would hold off so that we could come back after naps, but it didn't:(