We made our annual trek to Bates Nut Farm on Monday. As usual, the kids loved looking at (and feeding) the animals.


And I loved all the photo ops.



This year we went with my friend Lindsey and her daughter, Baby Anna, as my kids call her. Hannah and Joey are both pretty obsessed with Baby Anna so they were very happy to get to hang out with her for a couple of hours.
And as a special treat, we even had some rare fall-like weather. It made for a very cozy day!

As a side note, while I was writing this post I had fun looking back at all of our trips there over the years. (2008, 2009, 2010) It was a fun little stroll down memory lane!

Joey turns 5 on Thursday, but in the interest of keeping his birthday separate from Halloween, we had his party on Saturday. It was a very small get-together with us and his grandparents, so basically he was surrounded by the seven people in his life that love him the most. It was quite a good day!

We went with a Star Wars Lego theme (well, interspersed with our fall decorations) this year since that perfectly captures both of his main interests.

The whole week before his birthday, I had Joey put together all of his Star Wars Lego sets. Then we used those to decorate the house. This is the cool flying scene above the food table that Andy's mom worked on the night before.

Joey requested that my mom make him Whoopie Pies for his cake, and I decorated them with Storm Troopers, Thai Sen, R2D2, and Rebel Troopers.

The theme even carried into present opening time.

This HUGE Star Wars Lego set (Boba Fett's Slave I) took Joey and Andy about 2 hours to complete. It's awesome!
My mom took Joey to Legoland a month or so ago and had this picture drawn of him as Lego Yoda.
And here's part of his Halloween costume for this year.

The whole week before his party, Joey kept telling Hannah that he would let her open one of his presents. To be honest, I really didn't think he would come through with that promise once he was in the heat of present opening time. It turns out, he was good to his word, and Hannah was thrilled!

After the party, we tried to take a family photo. Joey did surprisingly well, but Hannah was in quite the goof-ball mood and wouldn't even look at the camera. Looks like the tables have turned from photo shoots in the past!

Hannah Belle has a fun routine lately. Every morning after she wakes up, she puts on her blue dress-up dress, gets her Barbie microphone, and walks around the house singing made up songs.

There's also a lot of twirling.
Let's just say she enjoys being a girl!

So I promised my sister I would take this picture about a month ago. I finally had Andy take it today. Ta-da!

I'm 28 weeks now and feeling good. We are all so excited for this baby to come, but I'm also enjoying my last few months with just Joey and Hannah. I'm already realizing how easy some things are now that they are almost 5 and 2 1/2. It's always a little scary starting all over again, but also so fun!

Last weekend we headed over to Phoenix. We hadn't been there in a long time because Papa J had knee surgery and we figured we would give him a chance to recover before we brought all the crazy to their house. Joey and Hannah were SO excited about going to Phoenix. Hannah, my amazing sleeper, laid awake during her nap time the day we were going to leave and sang songs about going to Phoenix.

In addition to seeing Grandma and Papa J, the kids were also really looking forward to seeing Uncle Dave, Aunt Brooke, and Baby Connor. Joey asked Hannah, "Are you so excited to see our only cousin?!" Joey and Hannah loved playing with Connor and holding him.

Our primary purpose in going to Phoenix was because Connor was getting baptized and Dave and Brooke asked us to be his godparents. We were so honored! Connor was perfect during the baptism except for trying to steal the pastor's glasses. He even gave the congregation a couple cute smiles after it was all over. He definitely cemented himself as the little darling of their church.

Since we hadn't been out to Phoenix for a while, we decided to make it a four day weekend. The rest of the weekend was spent as usual: hanging out, reading, watching movies, and going swimming. I love vacations like that!

September has been all about getting back into the swing of our regular schedule after a super fun summer. But first we had to say two sad goodbyes.

First, our good friends, the Schempers, moved to Iowa. Joey and Mollie have been friends for so long, and it was so sad to see them leave. I've known about them moving for a while now, but I didn't tell Joey until about a week before they left. When I finally told him, he started crying a little and said, "Next time can you not tell me that they are moving away?" Thankfully he recovered quickly when I told him that he and Mollie could write letters to each other. He immediately made plans to find out what her favorite princess is so he can draw a picture of her to include in his letter.

This was our conversation yesterday that happened completely out of the blue:
Joey: Mom, do you miss your friend that moved to Iowa?
Me: Mrs. Schemper? Yeah, I miss her.
Joey: I had two friends move to Iowa-Mollie and Cody. I miss both of them.


The same day we said goodbye to the Schempers, I had to say goodbye to my oldest friend, Stacie (not that she's old, but we've been close friends since elementary school). She left again for Africa to be a full-time missionary. It will probably be about 2-3 years before she will be able to come back to the states for a visit. We had a beach bonfire farewell party for her. Here we are with our other long time friend, Monica.

It was so sad saying goodbye to these wonderful friends, but we are excited to see what God has in store for them both in Iowa and Africa!

Joey was invited to his first birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's last week. We decided that I would take Joey, leaving Andy and Hannah to have their own little "date" night. Our neighbor heard about Hannah's date night and let her borrow her daughter's frilly pink dress for the special occasion.


When given the choice of dinner and movie, Hannah picked McDonald's and Sleeping Beauty. It's the only classic Disney princess movie that she hadn't seen yet. Hannah was in heaven watching a princess movie, and Andy was in heaven because he got an hour and a half of sweet snuggling time with his princess while they watched the movie together.

Meanwhile at Chuck E. Cheese's, Joey was in his own version of heaven.

He even got to meet the Mouse himself!

Here are the three amigos. Mollie, Joey and Lizzy all turn 5 within two months of each other and they have been friends since they were about six months old. Lizzy (on the right) was the birthday girl.

And here's the whole birthday gang.

Then this week, Andy and I got our own date night. My two friends, Monica and Stacie, had offered to come over and watch the kids for us before Stacie goes back to east Africa to continue her missionary work. Thanks to the advice of my neighbor, we ended up getting Mexican food and eating it at the beach during the sunset. Due to a bunch of clouds, the sunset was less than stellar, but the surf right now is bigger than usual, so we had a fun time watching all the surfers. On the way home we stopped by Barnes and Noble and ended up hanging out in the kid's section remembering all of our favorite children's books. It was good ol' geeky fun!