Grandpa's Birthday, Still Pregnant, Baby Shower, I &O, Plus Some

Just because.

 Grandpa's birthday.  Can't believe everyone was looking!

 Isaac and Olivia made Grandpa a birthday cake door hanger that ended up being a birthday cake necklace.  They also made a "Grandpa".  You might have to click on the pic to make it bigger so you can see their creations.

 Playing in the neighbor's leaves.  Isaac got me.

 Isaac trying to help me get my 36weeks prego picture. Tuesday I'll be 38 weeks. 2 more weeks to go!

This is Olivia's first "letter" to someone that she has written entirely by herself.  I was totally impressed.  In case you can't read it, it says: "Thank you for mine and Isaac's letter. I had (a) fun with you Mary Anne! Come over another day. Olivia"

 This is a picture that Justin arranged.  It took a long time!  It's a lot of their favorite toys, plus some not-so-favorites just to be fillers.  The plan is to turn it into a big puzzle and be able to see the kids and their toys at age 2 and 4.  Family fun reminiscing in future years. Also like an "I Spy" puzzle. Good idea Justin!

 A couple of my friends threw me a baby shower the other weekend.  It was lots of fun, but unfortunately, I forgot my camera.  So I took a picture of the cool diaper cake when I got home. I can't wait for Diaper Changing Season again!

The Rest of October

We went to the circus with a couple from our small group.  Isaac and Olivia both liked the trapeze-ists the best.

 I thought this was a good shot of Isaac...and family.

 Ft. Dickerson Park.  The kids had fun with all the running, leaves, and cannons.

 Sweetness.

 Other sleepover pictures with Elaina.  They fed their babies and changed diapers before going to bed.  Elaina fell asleep pretty quick.  Olivia came downstairs about 45min later and said she couldn't sleep on the floor, so back to her bed she went. (Funny, she sleeps on the floor all the time at G&G's house.)

O was helping Elaina brush her hair while she brushed her teeth. 

 To get candy, we went to a church's trunk or treating event with some friends.  We rode a school bus from the parking lot of a grocery store to the church, Olivia was so excited because we think it was her first time riding a school bus.  She wanted a picture.  She was a ballerina, Isaac a firefighter. 

 They had games for the kids.  They are hunting for candy.

 We rode a hayride.  Isaac has really taken a liking to our friend Erik.  Isaac even likes to send him letters in the mail.

 They got to sit in a fire truck and climb around in the back.  Would have been cute if Isaac would have worn his fire hat and held his fire extinguisher.  Oh well.

 They sorted through all the loot first thing the next morning.  On Halloween, we went to another church's festival and got more candy.  This time Olivia was a princess, Isaac still a firefighter.

Here's an apple update: just in case you forgot this pic that Justin took...very pretty, but after 1 day, hard as a rock.

Here are the same apples and same carmel.  In case you ever need to know, it does work to chip off all the hard carmel with a knife, remelt the carmel, ADD WATER THIS TIME, and redip the apples.  They were MUCH better to eat.  Not such a cool picture though.

Caramel, Pumpkins, and Apples OH MY!!!

Olivia had her first sleepover this weekend (more pics of that to come).  What a great day because we carved a pumpkin and made caramel apples!

 Drawing the face.

 What's in there?

 Pumpkin guts! Eeeewwww!

 Neat picture.

 Ta-Da!

Now for the caramel apples.  Yummmm!

 What good helpers!

 What a pro!

 Neat picture.

Side note....Did anyone know that you have to add water to the melted caramel? Sheesh....that stuff turned hard as a rock.  Maybe that's why it's so stringy.  Hehehe!  Neat lookin' though!  :)



Our Blessings.

Isaac - 2yr 9mo.

Olivia - 4yr 5mo.

Clinch River Float

Ron (Tami's dad) and I (Justin) went floating down the Clinch River about 20 minutes north of our house this past weekend to see the leaves....most of which seemed to have fallen off the trees since I had seen them a couple weeks ago.  Darn!  After a quick decision to change our get out point (note to self...don't do that again) we ended up doubling the time we were on the water....wups.... At least it was pretty and relaxing.

Pumpkin Patch

This past weekend we went to a pumpkin patch with some friends and their small group.  A few photos from the fun... 

This is Elaina.  Both of the kids absolutely love her.  And they all get along so well.  Plus Elaina is a trooper for taking all the tackles Isaac has given her...we're still working on that.

A tip on how to feed animals for free: Look in the grass and pick up all the dropped food from everybody else.  You can get quite enough to satisfy the "I want to feed them" desire.

 Isaac kept yelling "I FOUND ANOTHER ONE!"  He was excited.

 Apparently most of the good orange ones had already been taken...so we ended up with 3 green ones and 1 smallerish orange one.  Nice change on the back deck. 

 These were all the kids in the group.  They had made the t shirts the week before.  My friend Erin was super kind to make I & O one since she knew we were coming to the patch.

 Family Photo.  7 weeks till tiny tot comes out by the way.

 There was a really cool slide down a big hill.  The kids went down over and over again.

 And we went down a time or two ourselves!

 Kids got to play in a corn box...MUCH better than sand.

 Just a big tractor tire.

Finally, a random tooth brushing photo.  Too bad they didn't get in their pjs first.  Isaac likes to watch Olivia and brush how she brushes.  She's a great teacher!

Mem-reez.....At The Corner Of My Mind......

This is the first time Isaac has played in the dirt with cars.  The garden is a great spot.  And since I (Justin) moved the trampoline over the garden to discourage the dog from walking in it, the shade is an added bonus.  The sentimental value of this moment is that he's playing with the same cars I used when I was 7-8yrs old.  I used to play under the deck of our house in Oregon, MO.  Cool....

We went to a local Civil War Reinactment last weekend and arrived just in time to see the two battles.  The first was a fight that occurred just west of town on Kingston Pike (a road I drive often).  The second was a battle for Fort Sanders (a hospital here in Knoxville).

Union troops marching to the fort on what was Kingston Pike.

The Confederates caught up to them.  It was interesting trying to explain this to Isaac and Olivia. 

This man is the son of an actual Confederate soldier!!! They announced his name, etc.  There aren't many sons and daughters of Civil War soldiers still around!!! Cool stuff!!!

This was cool just b/c I happened to get the fire coming out of one of the cannons.  There were a few people around me with several thousand dollar cameras trying to get this shot (shooting in rapid-fire mode) and none of them got it.  Haha!  Oh, forgot to mention that all I had was my point and shoot. 

This was the beginning of the second battle we watched that occurred at the actual Fort.  Apparently, before the Confederates attacked the Fort, they shot cannons for several minutes.  Didn't help much in the end; they still lost....bad.

Here are the Confederates trying to get into the fort.  According to history, there was a BIG ditch in front of the fort that really slowed the attacking soldiers and you can see what happened to them in the below picture.  Yikes!  To signal the end of the fight, one of the soldiers played taps.  It was pretty cool.  A local farmer agreed for some historical preservation group to build a replica of the actual fort on his land a bit east of Knoxville and then for the past 4 years has agreed to have the reinactment there too.  Pretty neat.  Most reinactments don't have neat forts/structures like this.

If I remember right, there were something like 2,000 Confederates VS. a few hundred Union soldiers during the 'real' battle.  The Union side won.  There were only around 500 total reinactors at this event.

The reinactors were all very thankful for the spectators coming to watch.  I had several thank me for coming.  If you've never been, they're pretty cool.  The only downside for us this time was that we didn't get a lot of time to walk the event site to talk to the reinactors, see demonstrations, do the wagon ride, and explore the Union/Confederate campsites.  Maybe next time.