Playgroup Friends and Hanging with Ben

Today Janet was nice enough to invite us over to play along with our playgroup friends because one of our good friends from playgroup, Chrissy, moved out of the area and was back for a visit. It was great seeing her and her daughters. Elizabeth is good friends with her little girl, Elliott, and I know they had fun playing together again. Here's all the moms hanging out.And here are most of the kids playing (the best group shot I could get).

One of Janet's boys wore this for Halloween when they were 2 or something like that and Elizabeth really wanted to be a dog. We could just barely squeeze her in!

With no TV or internet I started crocheting again (finally!). I made Elizabeth a winter hat and am going to start one for Ben tonight.

One of my friends, Kristy, (who has a great blog by the way, Next to Heaven) did these muffin tin lunches for her son so I decided to try one for Ben when Elizabeth was in preschool on Thursday. Ben is such a picky eater so I thought I could get him to eat a little more if I presented the food in a more interesting way. He actually did try one bite of the cucumber - so better than nothing I guess! That was the only food in the cups that he normally wouldn't eat - I thought I'd try slowly to introduce new foods. We're trying broccoli next :)!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Tom is out of town this weekend so I'm sure I'll have a busy one!

Caramel Apples

The kids and I didn't do much today - we mostly ran errands and hung around the apartment. But, yesterday, in the evening I went over to a friend's house to make caramel apples. One of the girls in my playgroup makes these awesome apples and was nice enough to teach us how to do it! You caramel the apples first, and then add some special toppings. We covered the one on the right with green candy melts (the kind you buy at Hobby Lobby or Michaels) and then sprinkled with Halloween M&M's and candy eyes. The one on the left is dipped in chocolate and sprinkles. We are going to give these to Elizabeth's teachers in preschool. I thought this was such a great idea!

The Last Few Days

These are my latest pictures I have taken so it will be kind of a random group I think! Today we had fun decorating our cookie haunted house.

We did this last year and it was fun seeing how much more Elizabeth was able to help me.

Ben was the exact same as last year, just eating as much as possible.

The kids - the only one of them both looking!

Basically the only thing I have up on the wall.

I know this is a goofy picture of my girl but she is now wearing a patch on her good eye for 2 hours a day, it should help strengthen her bad eye. She actually doesn't mind it at all - thank goodness. I guess it's good that she is just 4 years old so she doesn't get too upset about the glasses or anything.

These are on our last day at our house - before we signed the closing papers. I brought the kids by to see it empty and to say goodbye.

Elizabeth in her room.

Ben in his room.

Goodbye house - we will miss you!

Whoo Hoo!

The cable/internet guy just walked out of the apartment. I'm so excited to be reconnected with the world again :)! I will work on getting a post up hopefully by tonight!

Chicago Day 2

So, I have only about 5 minutes to post so I am going to be really bad and not reorganize my pictures - sorry! At the end of our day we took a walk to Buckingham Fountain and the kids were running all over. If you can believe it, Ben didn't fall! It's a miracle! :)
The kids in front of the fountain.

This is how we walked part of the way to the fountain. The one bad thing about Chicago with kids is there is so much walking! We had a stroller for Ben (thanks to Jessica) and E is usually good about walking but there was so much of it! She got pretty tired by the end of the day.

This is the view out of my parent's suite. That's Lake Michigan they are looking at.

Outside of the Bitty Baby store there was this really old church - it was one of 2 buildings that survived the great Chicago fire. Had to get the kids in front of it. They look excited about this stop, don't they?

E wasn't wanting to cooperate for pictures, she eventually scooted over to join the boys.

E at her bitty baby luncheon. Bitty even had her own cup and saucer!

Our group at lunch. My grandma B was there, my Aunt Amy, Jessica, and my mom along with the kids.


I just thought these lights were really fun - I might try to do that in E's room someday!

Jessica and Cooper arrived in Chicago the day after us and this is what Ben did when he saw his beloved Cooper.

Ben had to borrow one of Elizabeth's babies because he wanted to bring a baby to the store, too. I guess I need to get him his own!

The kids were checking out their maps to tell me how to walk to the fountain.

Inside the hotel - it was very beautiful!

We had a special dinner that night for my dad and his engineering organization, but I didn't get any pictures. We had a fun and busy day 2!

We start to move into our apartment tonight - wish us luck!

Chicago, Day 1

We spent Saturday - Wednesday in Chicago on a family vacation. My father was honored in a special dinner while we were in Chicago, so he was able to invite the whole family to be there with him. We decided to bring the children and make it a fun trip! I had never been so we tried to go see as many things as we could in the downtown area. Here is Elizabeth so excited to get on the airplane.

The organization that honored my father sent a limo to pick us up in the airport - I hope the kids don't get too used to this :)!

Can you tell Ben is about ready for a nap? He's pretty crabby in this picture, Elizabeth is just ready to get to the hotel to see her Grandma and Grandpa B.

We went out to lunch at a fun cafe in the city. Really yummy food.
After lunch my parents had to get ready for a dinner so we took a walk to the lake. The Field Museum is in the background of this picture. The kids had a great time running up and down the hill. (That's right, kids, keep running. Get nice and tired for bed tonight!)

Here is our hotel, the Hilton Chicago.

There was this big exhibit of legs?? that the kids ran around.

Interesting, huh?
We ended the walk by Lake Michigan, enjoying the gorgeous views. We had the perfect weather on our trip, we were very lucky! We ended the day by going back to the hotel getting the kids to bed fairly early (all that running worked!)

In other news we move into our apartment tomorrow and close on this house on Monday (hopefully). We will be so busy moving but I will try to do day 2 tomorrow.

Packing, Packing, Packing (and Rain)

This last week I feel like I have done basically nothing but packing and doing stuff for the move. We found an apartment that we will stay in while the house is being built. We are waiting for our roof to be replaced, and then we are pretty much done with everything! Just a lot of phone calls to be made to change the address and all that fun stuff.
We have had a ton of rain the past couple days so the kids have had a great time getting soaked out in the puddles.

Ben found the perfect muddy puddle in the neighbor's yard that he visited over and over again. We have had a lot of baths these past few days!

The kids had a great time playing in empty boxes while I was packing.

Tipping over,

hanging out and being pushed all over in the box.

Tipping over turned out to be a ton of fun, too.

This moving stuff is fun!

Crazy Weekend

I haven't been very good at taking pictures lately, and we've had a crazy few days! Saturday morning we were on our way to the park when Elizabeth told me she could feel her heart beating in her chest. For those of you who don't know E has SVT - it's a condition that you are born with and can show up at various times in your life that makes your heart beat really fast. I ended up taking her to the hospital on Saturday morning and sure enough, she was in SVT. Her heart was beating in about the 220 - 250 range. Normal on a child is 100-130 or so. Luckily with some IV medicine they were able to take her out of SVT and for now she is on a daily medicine. We go to the specialist in a couple of weeks to get a more permanent plan in place.

We have also been working on fixing some things on our house - and we found out on Saturday that we need a new roof so that will be the only big thing needing to be done before the house can be sold. (pretty big I guess!) Next thing - packing!

On Friday we finally were able to go visit baby Jackson and Cooper (we have had colds in our family so we couldn't be around the baby) and we had tons of fun playing on the swingset in Cooper's backyard.

Ben loves swinging on his tummy, and about 2 seconds after this picture Ben flipped completely over and landed flat on his back - not once - but twice!

Janet and Josh came over too, so E and Josh were on the favorite swing.

Cooper is showing me his messy hand, he was having fun digging in the dirt.

We had a great time and a busy weekend. Hope you guys are all having a good one, too!