Happy Birthday Kali!

So these are a little old, but better late than never. Kali turned two on the 15th and we had a little party at home for her. I had big plans of the cake I was going to make her and everything, but things got a little busy and crazy for us. She still had a great time opening presents and eating cake. She became pretty possesive over her presents because Bristol kept trying to take them away.

I think she got confused about the smoke from the candles.

Pumpkin Patch

Bristol's preschool went to the pumpkin patch on Wednesday. Nate worked all night the night before so he had the following day off, which allowed him to be able to come too. We had a great time. We went on a hay ride to the pumpkins through some serious mud and puddles. It was also freezing cold and I guess I haven't been living in cold weather long enough or recently to remember to bring hats and mittens and to better dress my children. My poor kids. To keep Kali warm I wrapped her in my jacket and held her. Hopefully I will get better with dressing myself and well as my kids for the weather.This is Kali's "cheese" smile. I love it.

Can you tell Bristol is a little excited.

In keeping with the Halloween spirit here are also some pictures of some paper mache bats we made a week or so ago. Both girls loved getting all messy. Bristol painted them black and she helped with the wings and eyes.

Yay for new furniture!

So the other day we got a check in the mail for $820 from the IRS. After the government sent me multiple letters right before we moved I finally filled the form out and to our surprise we qualified for the Earned Income Credit. I think it is hilarious that even though we didn't pay a dime in taxes we still qualify for money and that the government tried tracking us down to tell us this (they sent letters to our house and my parents). Well thank you IRS because you provided us with the extra money to get some furniture that we were waiting to purchase until we saved up the money.

So now our dining room isn't empty any more. We have now moved the table that was in the kitchen (and was too big for the kitchen) into the dining room.

This is our new kitchen table. We are going to get chairs too, but they were all sold out of them. But I love my new table, even if it just from Ikea.

Ahhh and my favorite of all is the bookshelf in the playroom. So now my kids no longer have their toys in moving boxes, we actually have storage. It is pretty empty still, I figure I need to fill the top shelves with some decorative stuff since the kids can't reach that high anyways. I am sure I will still rearrange things as we go, but it is a great improvement from where it was.

Now the next thing I have on my list is new couches. Ours are pretty sad and suffered a little damage in the move. Hopefully in the next few months we can save up for those too.

The Many Faces of Bristol

However, in Bristol's defense I was asking her to make sad and happy faces for a "responsibility chart" I was making. However, with in that photo shoot she produced some hilarious pictures.

The Last Few Weeks

So here are a few pictures from the last few weeks. We haven't done anything real eventful but we have kept busy with playgroups, preschool, going to the park, and much more.

This is the only picture I got of Bristol on her first day of preschool. She insisted on doing this funky pose. I thought one picture was better than none.

These pictures are from when Nate was giving the girls a bath. We had this foam soap from Christmas and it didn't really like to squirt out of the container very well. So the other night I guess it finally started working and then it wouldn't stop. Nate decided to just unload the whole container. There was foam soap everywhere. The girls loved it. However, we had to run another bath to get them clean from the soap. You can see the water is bright pink.

This is Kali's favorite past time. She loves to push the chairs up to the counter and get into all kinds of mess. So above the microwave is our fruit bowl. At the time we had little mandarin oranges. If I turn my back for a moment she will push the chair over and climb up. This particular day I was just eating my breakfast. Kali pushed the chair over climbed up peeled the orange herself and started chomping down. It drives me crazy. I am about to either make us eat standing up or screw my chairs to the floor.

Labor Day

Nate finally had a day off, completely. He didn't have to go into work for a few hours in the morning or anything. It was so nice! We didn't want to waist his freedom so we knew we had to do something. It had been raining the night before and earlier in the morning so we were somewhat limited to what we could do. We decided to go for a hike at a park close to our house that we had never been to. It said it had a boardwalk path so we figured we would be good with the mud factor. Well the boardwalk path was only the first 20 feet or so. However, we went on a mile and a half little hike anyways. The girls started out walking, but then it got way too muddy with hills up and down. It was so beautiful even though you had to watch every step to not slip and fall. Nate caught a toad for the girls to see and Bristol even held it. 3/4 of the way through Bristol was done with the bumpy wagon ride and the big hills and kept whining the rest of the way about how she wanted to get out of the forest. However, when all was said and done we had a great time. Now I still need to hose off the wagon because it is still caked with mud.

Cincinnati Reds

So Nate is working in Cincinnati this month and will be gone for most of the month. So we figured if we wanted to see him we would travel to him. The doctor he works with has Cincinnati Reds tickets and gave Nate four of them. Before we left Nate was thinking that we were still in San Francisco and was trying to insist that we needed blankets and jackets galore. I tried to remind him that we were in Ohio and it was not going to get freezing cold with wind whipping through. He still insisted on bringing a blanket. (I have to say the last SF Giants game we went to was in August a few years ago and it was freezing! We were on the top level and the wind was flying through.) When we left it was 70*, no need for the blanket. The girls had a great time. Kali just liked climbing around and Bristol liked learning about the game and cheering the team on.