Night Eyes and Pumpkin Carving...Finally!

Finally!  I can upload again!  Whew.  We spent a good portion of our evening in the Apple Store and I am pleased to say that we finally can get rid of our old dinosaur computer!  Bring on the new iMac!  I am already loving it.  Thanks for all your suggestions- we went with the new desktop model.  You get more memory for a better price and I am used to a desktop anyway.  Anything was better than what we had, and I am just in heaven!

So...time for the long awaited update!

To kick of Halloween (I know, seems like forever ago!) we went over to Craig's brother's to carve pumpkins.

It was so fun!  We spread out newspapers everywhere and let the kids dig in!

Andrew wasn't too sure about the pumpkin "guts" but after some encouragement he did dig some out!  But he did want to wash his hands right away!  Ha!  I had to laugh, he is obviously my kid!

Grandma Huegel had to help since Andrew was somewhat grossed out!  Ha!

This makes me laugh.  Could he have stood any farther away?  He was so ready to be done and head down to play with cousin Jayden's trains!

Ew!

This cracks me up even more...Craig concentrating so hard on carving Andrew's pumpkin, when Andrew could care less (he was not into it!) and his back is to the football on TV!  Ha!  I'm sure he would have much rather been relaxing on the couch and watching it!  Andrew did end up loving the pumpkin when he was done!

He loved the pirate design!

With cousins Jayden and Evelyn

The kids were really excited to see all the pumpkins lit up on the front step!

See Daddy?  All that time and effort paid off!  He was one happy boy with his pirate pumpkin!  (Too bad it didn't last til Halloween!)

The next excursion was attending Night Eyes at the zoo with our friends Greg and Emily and their two boys.

I was really impressed!  This was my first year at Night Eyes.  They had a path you followed so you didn't miss anything, and there were different sections with themes.  Here are the boys walking through the tornado from the Wizard of Oz!

Of course, not complete without the wicked witch being crushed by Dorothy's house!

And the characters... handing out treats!

Somewhere over the rainbow...there's gotta be more candy!  Ha!

Andrew was amused to see Curious George!

And look who's peeking from behind the castle!

Clifford!

This is Andrew and his buddy Landon.  Landon's daddy, Greg, and I taught together for years at my old school and became great friends.  It is so fun to now get together as couples and watch our kids play together!

They had a cool pirate ship, too!

And a fun train ride!  Silly daddy in the background!  Ha!

Everything was decorated so neat!  The kids just loved it!

Craig even found time to be goofy!  Ha!

They had the characters from "Where the Wild Things Are," one of my favorite kids books!

They were so cool!  Like I said, I was impressed!

Andrew and Landon chased each other through the hay maze

Which lead to a corn pool,

When he saw this, he went crazy!  I was afraid I wasn't going to get him off it the rest of the night!

He just had the time of his life!

He loves these pedal tractors everywhere we go, but he never pedals!  Ha!

We just had the best weekend with our family and friends.  It is always so fun to get together before holidays and do things that put you in the mood!  We were definitely ready for trick or treat after this!

As we left Andrew said, "Come back see pumpkins another day!!"  He loved it!

I have lots more to update about our Halloween...and I hope to get it done before Thanksgiving!  Ha!  It has been so hard being without a computer.  So now it's time to play catch up!  

More to come soon...

Computer DRAMA!

Ok.... so you might be thinking it's taken me so long to update about Halloween because I'm so busy, right?   In this case, that's not the reason.  I mean, I am busy and all... but I have been so excited to post about our Halloween.  I think I have about 3 updates swimming around in my head and it may be time for sugar plums to dance in my head before I get them done!

We are in the market for a new computer.  It's official.  Not only can I not upload photos to the blog because they changed the format...to, you know, a more updated one... but I also now can no longer upload photos from my camera to my computer.

Sad, I know.  (And even sadder, no photos in this post!  I think that's a first!)

This is not good for someone whose hobby is blogging and photo editing!  It's been a long time coming.  Craig and I got this computer before we were married when we first started our masters programs, since we thought we'd need a computer for that.  I can estimate it is about eight years old.  And that's generous.

It's been slow and driving me crazy for a long time.  The pumpkin patch update below- the one that so many of you commented were the best pictures I've taken to date (thank you, but I did have an easy subject!) was done on Craig's work laptop.

And here's the other part of that story... first off, Craig doesn't like letting me use his computer.  After all, it is supposed to be for his work only.  He's a rule follower like that.  It drives me nuts!  Ha!  (Suffice it to say, I am the total opposite!!)  Anyway, the few times I have managed to sweet talk him into using it, I have done the past few updates that way.

Well, the other evening I spent a good amount of time using his awesome new iphoto editing program and had a bunch of photos from Night Eyes at the zoo to upload for my update.  It was getting late, so I figured I'd finish the rest of the update the next night (yeah, this was a week ago!)  The next day Craig emails me to let me know he's had a rough day.  Um yeah, it consisted of one of his students accidentally tripping over the cord and his computer took a dive.   To its ultimate death.  I know, I almost cried.
 
Seriously.

So, it is still not repaired and our home desktop has bit the dust.  So, hence you have the lack of updates and lack of photos.  But I can assure you they will return soon, because I have already realized over the course of the week, I can't live without a computer!  (How did I ever do it before, and how did people do it long ago???)  I have no clue.  Ahem.

So anyway, the debate is this:  Laptop or Desktop???  I have always had a desktop.  I guess I just like it because I know I have the printer right there and installed, I have a nice big screen to look at, etc.  It just feels "safer" to me somehow.  However, my hubby is pushing a laptop on me.  I had my mind made up!  He must be trying to lure me away from using his work laptop, you know, once it's repaired.  Ha!  There are pros and cons to both... what are your thoughts?  I'd love to hear opinions.  Oh, and don't try to sway me... I'm a Mac girl and that will never change!  Ha!

Secondly, I thought I'd mention that Andrew has a cardiology appointment coming up in a couple of weeks.  We'd appreciate your prayers for a healthy check up and avoiding surgery for another 3 months!  Because we know we are living appointment to appointment at this point.  Which is kinda scary.  Thanks for your prayers!

Hoping for an update with photos soon...

Pumpkin Patch!

 

Last weekend we went to our favorite pumpkin patch!  It couldn't have been a more beautiful day.  One of those perfect fall days.

 

Andrew couldn't wait to go pick out a pumpkin and feed the animals!

He spent a lot of time trying to pick out just the right one, but most of them were "too hea-by!" so he found a smaller one, just his size!

Even with all these choices, we had to take the hay ride to the real pumpkin patch and pick a pumpkin ourselves!  But not until we did a few things first...

There is so much to do!  We got there at 10:00 and didn't get home until after 2:00!

I think this was his favorite thing to do there.  He wanted to ride the second he saw this tractor, and he never wanted to get off!  After everything else we did, this was what he wanted to do again before we went home.  I find it funny, since he still refuses to pedal!!

This was such a neat addition this year!  They added little planks for the billy goats to walk up on, so they would walk up on the roof!  It was so cute!  I didn't get a picture of one up on top, but we had fun watching them.

They have the houses of the Three Little Pigs- made out of straw, sticks and bricks.  I had to laugh when I uploaded these pictures and saw this sign hanging on the wall in one of the pig's houses!  I just cracked up!!  How many times we've been to this orchard and Andrew has been in these little houses and I never noticed it before!!

Andrew wasn't too sure about this ram.  It had funny horns.

Daddy showed him how to feed the goat but he still wasn't too impressed!  Ha!

He loved playing in this little "outhouse."  He would shut the door and hide and peek through the little window and then open it and just laugh!

The corn pool was the other big hit of the day.  He just had a blast "swimming" in the corn!  Mommy got a taste of the corn pool too, since I followed him around with the camera!  I think we were shaking corn out of our clothes and shoes the rest of the day!

Jump in!

 

He would just lay down and wiggle himself down, head and all!

 

Finally it was time to take the hay ride to the pumpkin patch!  Andrew loved the tractor that pulled the hayrack.

So this is how you pick out a pumpkin!

Daddy helped him pick a couple of them off the vines.

I just love this picture of his little hands holding his pumpkin he picked all by himself.

On our way back to the farm!

Ga Ga met us to take part in the fun!

We couldn't leave without jumping on the big jumping pillow!  Andrew loved this!  Last year daddy had to go up and jump with him but this year he did it all by himself!

Then there is this super fun slide!  You sit on a potato sack and it goes really fast!  Andrew loved it!

He wanted to ride with mommy and daddy! 

Here we were waiting in line for delicious food!  They have a huge food barn that serves all kinds of yummy fall favorites, like pulled pork sandwiches, homemade apple sauce, sweet corn and cider.  Mmmm.  It just puts you in the mood for fall!

This is Andrew's big cheesy smile!  I made him say cheese before he could ride the pedal tractors again so this is his impatient "cheese!"  Ha!

On another note, the start of school has brought our share of the sickie bugs!  Andrew has started getting his regular cold, which leads to a nasty cough, which last year led to breathing treatments for most of the winter months.  We were hoping to avoid it this year, but it looks like it is back in full swing.  It was especially bad the day we went to the pumpkin patch, which brought us and the doctor  to the conclusion that Andrew does have allergies and getting colds does trigger him to have some wheezing and coughing issues.  So since he is bigger now, he now has 2 inhalers which is much more time efficient than using the nebulizer for up to an hour every day!  Since we started, his cough has improved some but it looks like he'll be needing them through the winter again.

But it certainly isn't going to stop us from having our share of fun!!!

 

 Happy Fall!