Fall is a wonderful crazy time of year!

The past two weeks have been a whirl wind of fun fall activities, friends and work. Matt has worked several days of overtime, which makes Josh grumpy from not seeing his daddy. It makes mom grumpy too. Anyway, we have all survived, but boy are we tired!

Children's Museum

On Oct 16th, we went with the Jones to the Children's Museum. Josh, Delaney and Jonah (a little boy Susan watches from time to time) had a great time. The first thing we did was the Tomb of Doom haunted house. (No cameras allowed = No pictures, sorry) It was a lights on, kid friendly time. They loved it and got all kinds of goodies along the way.

After that we grabbed a bite to eat and visited the rest of the museum, or at least the favorite areas. First off was the Dinosphere.

Look at those little dinos tending to their eggs.

Josh took this model claw and then dragged to the dinosaurs me to show me where on the dinosaurs it went. To funny!

Under the sea! The kids dressed up as sea creatures and then danced around on a blue screen that made them look like they were underwater.


Of course we had to go on the carousel.
Josh, Susan, Matt, Jonah (hidden), Delaney and Will


Jenny, Josh, and Matt

Jonah, Susan, Delaney, and Will

Josh loves to get in the race car and pretend to drive.

The Mad Scientist

First, let me start off with Matt and I love science so we hope that Josh will too. Any time we can do a science experiment with Josh we enjoy it. I found a new kids science book at the library and Josh and I made soap monsters. The monsters sure made a monster mess of my microwave and kitchen floor with soap crumbs, but Josh loved watching the monsters grow in the microwave and then decorating them. We made three total to decorate our table for Halloween.

Here Josh is using some orange (his favorite color right now) map pin to decorate one of his monsters.

So scccarrry!!!

Pumpkin carving time!!!!!!!!

On Oct 24th after Matt and I bought new iPhones, I know now we are soooo trendy now, then we came home and carved our pumpkins.

The before shot

The process.

The final results. So spppooookkyy!

Josh was really into carving the pumpkins this year. He helped clean them out and then proceeded to play with the guts for a long time. He drew his face on his own pumpkin and then helped me draw the face on my pumpkin. It was a great time!

ZooBoo

Oct 25th was another crazy day. After church, where the discussion got Matt and I all fired up (Long Story), we went to see some family that came into town from Georgia unexpectedly. When we left there we picked up Josh Halloween costume and off to ZooBoo. The zoo was decorated with skeletons, bats, witches, etc. We met our friend the Jones, again. Josh was excited to see Delaney and had been asking to call her to make sure he was coming for two days. Anyway, it wasn't a very good time because it was soooo crowded and the candy stations were in the back of the zoo where it was narrow and dead ended. Of course, once we got to the dead end Josh had to pee. He and I fought our way through the crowd and made it to the bathroom just in time.

Delaney and Josh petting the goats. Miss Delaney is the cutest Dorthy I've ever see and Josh's Halloween costume will remain a secret until 10/31. I have to say that he was getting a lot of attention in his costume at the zoo. Unfortunately, it was too wide with all the people and Josh couldn't walk around very well.

Josh, Will and Delaney on the haunted Carousel. It went backwards for Halloween.

When we left the ZooBoo it was back to the phone store to get Matt's iPhone fixed. It was my fault, long story. Anyway, after 20 minutes he was up and running. It is going to take us a long time to figure out all the things about these phones. Now we are going to work on combining cell phones, cable , DSL and cancelling our home phone. The home phone goes to offset the new cell phone service. We don't need it anyway. The only people who call are our parents, Amvets, the FOP and IU Alumni Association.

Over the next few weeks I'll be work on Josh's birthday. He'll be three on November 21 - which happens to be National Adoption Day this year. It will be fun because he wants dinosaurs as his theme.

Who knows what the next week or so will bring, but I'm sure there will be some good stories and pictures to go with it,

M, J, and J

Quick notes in the Fall

We went to the pumpkin patch over the weekend and came home with 102 pounds worth of pumpkins! We had to take a hay ride out to the patch and back which was fun for everyone. There was also a bouncy tent, corn maze, and a T-rex that ate pumpkins!

Here's Josh on the top of a pile of hay bales

7,235,821 pumpkins and we just can't find "the one"

The past month Josh has found a new favorite pastime: sitting in the front yard and watching the cars and truck drive by.

Sunday night was experiment night. We made a VOLCANO!!!

This weekend will be busy. Friday we're going to the haunted house at the children's museum. They have a time when you can go through it with all the lights on. Friday night, Josh gets to stay with grandma and grandpa while Jen and I head down to IU for opening practice of their basketball team. Sunday and Monday we'll be winterizing everything - such a fun fall time ritual.

We're not disclosing Josh's Halloween costume yet. It is fun!!

Josh was re-enacting scenes from the movie "Cars" the other day with his cars. He had the dialog down and everything.

The show "Dinosaur Train" on PBS has taken over our household. We don't normally let josh watch TV very often but this show REALLY is good. Jen and I have learned more about dinosaurs in the past month than we have in our entire lives. To demonstrate how much Josh has learned, Jen was playing with him and said "Josh, is that a Stegasaurus?" His reply was "No mommy, it's a Tyranasaurus Rex from the Cretaceous period, like the conductor said."

Till next time,

M, J, and J