Hunting Our First Christmas Tree!

The Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, we went off in search of the perfect Christmas tree!  I have been wanting to do this for a long time, but have been waiting to get a real tree until I thought Ike wouldn't attack it  :)  We found this monstrosity at Jalapa Pines, which is only about 10 minutes from our house.  Josh chopped it down and we stuck it in our van (it was raining...great weather for tree hunting!).  Once we got home, he had to cut off quite a bit of it to fit it in the house, but it ended up being the perfect size!








Josh and Dave before the cutting.


















I had lots of help decorating!  The boys' friend Kyson even joined in on the fun :)

















Love their crazy expressions all the time.














So that's our tree!  Still smells awesome and hasn't lost any needles (except for those the kids have pulled off of course).  Excited to continue this tradition in the years to come!

Dave's 6th Birthday!

Our little boy is growing up so fast!  He is such a cool kid and is so much fun to hang out with (most of the time at least!).  This year for his birthday, he asked for a Mario themed cake since he is obsessed with everything related to Nintendo.







Dave with his cake-a pixelated Mario made from M&Ms.













His other interests lately include:  reading books (he has gotten really good at this lately!), playing video games of course, playing outside with his buddies on campus, watching videos on Youtube, and playing with his Legos.   He already acts like a preteen half of the time-just with his attitude and occasional glares at us.  Hoping he gets all that out of his system before he is an actual teenager!!  So far, he has really loved school and has done extremely well this year.  He does wish for "fog delays" pretty much every day and is very much looking forward to those coveted snow days!

His school picture from this year.  Such a natural smile, haha!


















Dave and his buds at his party (plus Ike).  I re-purposed the backdrop I made for trunk-or-treat this year :)

Instead of playing video games, they all wanted to play with this art set!

Opening up presents.

I think they were doing the Mario arm pose?










Since his birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year, we celebrated early.  On Thanksgiving, we hung out in Logansport with the Bowyers and the kids had a blast with their cousins and it was really nice to chat with all the aunts and uncles.

Such cuties!

Did I mention they can also be little stinkers?

Museum, First Snow, and Weekend Getaway

Finally catching up on the blog...just in time for Dave's birthday and the holidays!  Can't believe he is going to be 6, ugh.  Anyway, our last two weekends were jam-packed but super fun.  Starting with this weekend, when we went to our local museum for a fun day and experienced our first snow of the year!

Ike dressed up like a cowboy.


















The big boys hanging out in the tree.










After the museum, we went to Pizza Hut to redeem Dave's book-it pizza.  Love that this program is still going on!





Before we left in the morning-first flakes beginning to fall.  All the kids were trying to catch them.















About 3 hours later.  And it's still coming down!

Ike helping shovel the driveway  :)













So last weekend, Josh and I went away with our friends Katie and Conrad to stay at Josh's uncle's cabin in Wisconsin.  We had super great weather and ate our way through Lake Geneva!  While we were away, my mom came to stay with the kids and they did lots of stuff, but the most fun they had was seeing my stepbrothers perform at their band competition in Indy.





Justin, Dave, Ike, and Tim.












With my mom outside of Lucas Oil.


















They even got to put on the cool hats!

From a hike we took in Wisconsin.  Beautiful scenery and I love aspens.

Proof of our hike.  It was super confusing trying to find this!

Just Ike being cute while I was putting up the Christmas lights last week.

Halloween 2015...Who is Nabbit?

We had so much fun with Halloween this year!  If you can't tell, we went as Mario characters.  Dave, of course, picked one of the more obscure characters (nabbit) and pretty much no one knew who he was!

Dave loooooved his costume!

Wario hanging with nabbit and Luigi.

















I received lots of compliments from little girls about my costume...I won't lie, it was super fun to dress like a princess :)

Good news, the shark didn't eat Luigi.

Ike cheesing out before our campus trunk-or-treat.  Here's a video of him talking about Halloween.

Ike with Elli-loved her mermaid costume.

The white's staff kids crew.  We have quite a big group nowadays.

Evansville for Fall Break and Other Happenings

We had a lot of fun down in Evansville for Dave's fall break.  Got to help my mom with some stuff, then went pumpkin patch-ing with Dad and Kyra on Saturday and spent all day Sunday at Ben and Tony's eating and watching football!

Gotta love a good hay ride.

Ike doing some pumpkin picking.














Last weekend, Josh and I took the kids to Brickworld in Fort Wayne.  It was a super awesome Lego exhibit that had vendors and you could play with cool stuff people had built.

Dave was only a tiny bit excited.















Ike showing off his creation with some Duplos.  He may have gotten into a fight with another kid over some figures...

Playing with some cool remote-controlled cars.












On Friday, Dave got to get out of school early to go laser-tagging with some cottage boys.  Lucky kid!

Playing arcade games at the laser tag place.

And here's Ike being his adorable self.













I will say, the time change is really wrecking the moods in our household!  Ready for the kids to get used to it so we all can get some better sleep (and have less grouches around!).   I can't believe it is November already, this year has really flown past.  We are definitely taking advantage of this awesome weather and playing outside all week...gonna be a hard transition to winter for the kiddos this year!

Visit from the Smiths

The week before last we got to see all the Smiths for a whole week!  It was so fun to see the boys enjoying lots of quality time with their cousins-they sure do miss them.  I didn't do a great job documenting the whole trip, but I got some good pictures of the kids together at least :)





Managed to sneak in a group picture...the bench is getting a little small!














Dual mowers.

We borrowed our neighbor's golf cart a lot (thanks Mike!).

Sisters looking adorable.

Sophie learned to ride a bike!









On Sunday we hosted a get-together in our backyard as a kind of pre-Thanksgiving.

Grandma Bertie with Ike and Brooklyn.

Zac got Chad with a water balloon.

Pretty sure they were laughing at Chad.  :)

Notice how sweet Sophie is smiling vs. Ike's grimace?

So much fun to see all of them!  Can't wait to visit them in Florida (hopefully soon!).

Ike Turns 3!

Well my baby turned three.  Ike is such a joy to be around and absolutely hilarious to parent.  It is so difficult to keep a straight face around him, especially if he's in any kind of trouble (which is often!).  He loves tractors (check out this video of him riding in a combine!), playing outside, hanging with the guys in the maintenance shop (some of his best friends are pushing retirement!), and going to the library (to get books about tractors and trucks of course).





I just love this squinty smile!  Here's a video of him talking about his birthday.















Brothers in their jammies.

Someone was excited about his birthday celebration at grandma and grandpa's.

Posing with his Paw Patrol cake and some of the cousins.

The boys with Grandma D.

Ike has really gotten into puzzles lately.











While I am sad that he's growing up so fast, he is just so much fun to be around right now.  He can hold a great conversation and loves to joke around.  Ike also can throw a mean fit when he sets his mind to it.  He is also not super into sharing lately, but we are working on it  :)  Can't wait to see how much he grows in the next year!