Happy Halloween!

The girls had a great Halloween! Uncle Ryan, Aunt Jaime, Uncle CJ, and Aunt Carrie were ALL down here for the weekend. I somehow managed to not take a single picture of all our visitors, but just know that it's been a wild and fun few days!

Here's our hunter-scarecrow in our front yard, and yes, that's a real hog skull!

The girls went trick or treating tonight with our cat-friend Daphne, and policeman friends Liam and Rowan. They all went to the houses together and had so much fun! Such a change from last year when they were too young/shy to go up to the doors by themselves. I think last year we only went to about 5 houses, and this year we did close to 15 and they were asking for more!

Camping

Our friends invited to go camping at a private ranch about 1.5 hrs from Austin. After about 4 hours of packing our things (!!!) we were ready to go! So funny to think that Joel and I used to be able to pack up our car in less than 15 minutes when it was just the two of us!

We headed to Wolf Creek Ranch in Blanco, Texas. It's a huge ranch that's been subdivided into smaller parcels, but also has community areas with equestrian and hiking trails, a creek, picnic pavilion, and awesome views of a lake.

We started setting up our tents and then of course some dark rainclouds started heading for us--but luckily the rain didn't last but 15 min or so and everything stayed dry!

For some reason Willa was really clingy and kept hugging Larkin--I think she was nervous about camping.


The girls went to bed very easily and slept really well all night!
Morning around the campfire--waiting for the breakfast tacos
There were lots of roaming cattle on the ranch. Here's a cow that came to visit us.

Willa fell asleep on the ride home with her purse in hand!
We had a great time and can't wait to do some more camping now that the weather has cooled off!

Nature notebooks

The girls keep nature journals (they call them nature notebooks) and write/draw pictures in them sometimes when we're doing things related to nature. Usually I'm the one who has to remind them to bring along their notebooks, but the other day when we were headed out to go fishing Larkin said, "I want to bring my nature notebook and draw some worms!!" That made the teacher in me smile!

There's a storm pond near out house that someone has been keeping stocked with fish. It's the perfect place for little kids to fish!

Larkin taking a break from fishing to go press/dry flowers in her notebook

Joel handles all the fishing related stuff--I just take the pics! I tried to take a hook out on this trip and got totally grossed out.

Larkin's page on worms--worm drawings and two W's--and then said
"I put two W's--W for Willa and W for worm!"

Another day we cut open a pie pumpkin and made guesses about what the inside would look like. Then we cut it open and the girls drew seeds, pumpkins, and even a few purses and deer footprints. Willa was especially into this --she sat there for over 20 minutes drawing tiny pumpkin circles.

Speaking of writing, Willa wrote her name for the first time this week! She was drawing and then said, "Mommy, will you help me write my name?" She wanted it on her favorite color paper--purple. I wrote her name letter by letter at the top, and then she wrote her name underneath. She's only made a few letters before this (H, T, L) so was very excited to write her name!

Future Hunter

Willa's reading material of choice in the bathroom is usually Joel's gun magazine. I try to get her to read Pottery Barn instead, but no luck!


While looking at the cover of this magazine, she wagged her finger at me and said,
"When I'm bigger I'm gonna get one of these (guns) and you won't ever see deer again!"

Boat Mama, perhaps it is time to break out the pink BB gun?!

Fall fun

Fall is here and we've been busy! We went to a pumpkin patch with some friends one weekday and the girls had a great time picking out tons of pumpkins, cutting fresh flowers, going on a hayride, petting goats, and driving a pumpkin boat! It was ridiculously sunny so I didn't get a ton of pictures (especially since Joel wasn't with us--I realized it's pretty hard to watch the girls, carry all our gear, AND take a lot of pics!).




When we got home Larkin decorated our front porch with all the pumpkins. She kept saying, "Watch me, Mom. I'm so good at this! I'm so good at decorating, aren't I?!" When I asked if she thought anyone would trip over the dried corn that's right in the middle of the walkway (or the cup of fresh flowers right on the doormat) she said, "Oh it's okay. The mommy can just reach waaaaaaay over these pumpkins and ring the bell, and I'll run to the door and tell them not to trip."


We've been reading lots of books about Halloween and fall, and the girls saw some caramel apples in one of our books--and have been begging to make them--so we did! Thank goodness they both have dentist appointments in a few days--she can scrub all the sticky caramel off!!! It was a lot of fun to make them though and I think we'll do it every year for a while!

What a difference a few years makes!

When the girls were younger (like in the pic above) I had countless moms that would stop me and tell me, "Your life may be hard now, but just wait until they're a little bit older and they start to play together. It will get so much easier, I promise!" I swear I heard this a million different times and never really believed it.

I remember one day when Larkin and Willa were both crying hysterically, the dog was following me around and begging for a walk, I hadn't showered in days, and the fish were swimming around the top of the tank wanting to be fed. I couldn't take being pulled in so many directions and started crying myself!

I'm happy to say though that now the hard days are definitely over and the moms in the supermarket were right--they really do play together, and my life is so much easier now. They play so well actually that they often leave me alone for well over an hour, and sometimes it's hard to get them to leave the house--they get so wrapped up in their play that they don't want to leave!

The girls putting on a ballet performance, complete with flying placemats and boas

Yesterday our day started out with the girls wanting to make a princess hat (??), so I got out the fabric, clothespins, yarn, and scissors so that they could try to make one. Larkin eagerly started snipping, pinning, and trying to create something, while Willa sat on the floor for close to an hour just cutting tiny cuts all over the fabric. While creating, they spent the whole time talking about who would be at the ball, what they would wear, etc.

After much trial and error, Larkin decided to ditch the hat idea and go with a fabric "dress" with clothespins clipped all over it. Then she said that the ball of yarn was really a leash for her cat (Willa), and Willa started meowing, crawling and following Larkin. They then went to Willa's room with all the clothespins and clipped them all over Willa's blanket, stuffed animals, etc. The ball of yarn later became a soccer ball that everyone pretended was a present for a neighbor who loves soccer, and pretend cupcakes were made to celebrate her birthday. All of this took well over an hour, and I was only involved in gathering the sewing materials and supervising the scissor use!

Willa snipping away