A few weeks ago Alexandria and I enjoyed a girly day together.  She accompanied me at my doctor appointment, and while, prior to the appointment, she was very excited about hearing the baby's heartbeat, once the heartbeat was audible she was pretty busy with her Super Why game on the iPad to pay much attention.  After the doctor appointment was over, we made a quick stop at Target and then headed to lunch at a tea room, Josephine's.  It was Alexandria's first time there, and I'm sure this will probably become a monthly ritual after my future doctor appointment.

While we waited for our table we did some browsing through the store that accompanies the tea room.

Alexandria tried on nearly every piece of jewelry there.

And she made a new friend.

We enjoyed a delicious lunch and of course, dessert!

Blake is in love with this pose right now.

The week before Halloween Alexandria's preschool class went trick or treating at a local nursing home, and then they went back to preschool for their party.  Fun times for the kiddos.

All the preschoolers and their younger siblings posing at the nursing home with Mrs. Garrison.  Cute bunch!  FYI Alexandria is dressed as Wendy from Peter Pan.  She's obsessed with this dress.

Planting their "magic" pumpkin seeds.

Sprinkling the seed with glitter to make it grow.  More from this later in the post.

After playing lots of games, eating a snack, and singing some songs, we went back outside to check on the progress of the pumpkin seeds.

Voila, pumpkins!

Thanks to all of the Griffins, we had a super fun weekend at their annual Hog Roast.  Blake has asked several times since then if we could go back next year.

Blake started out the morning "playing with the cat," which consisted of Blake getting about this close to the cat and then running away from it.  City boy.

Renae scored major points with the kids when she broke out the toys in the loft!

Going to visit some of the animals.

Beautiful view.

Hanging out by the tree swing.

Taylor showing us how it's done.

The tree swing quickly became Blake's favorite spot.   Alexandria was happy to pal around with Shea.

Our tour guides took us on a walking tour of the property.

Ginger sporting the leaf hair bow that Alexandria gave her.

Woods and a creek--this place has it all!

Have I mentioned how cute these two were together ALL WEEKEND LONG?  Getting very excited for Thanksgiving time with the Hermons and the Harveys.

Matt thought he ought to sample some of the turnips.  He really did like them, even though you can't tell from this picture.

Love this picture of Gabriel!

Sampling some turnip.

Back at the hog roasting area...

You can't tell, but there is a 250 pound hog in there.

Over at the bounce house, there was a whole lot of fun going on...

Gabriel was in love with all the dogs on the Griffin compound.

But even the bounce house couldn't keep Blake away from the tree swing for long.

The younger kids enjoyed the swingset at Chad and Renae's house.

This little man is definitely photogenic.  Pretty sure he gets that from his mom.

Lunch time!

Enjoying our caffeine free sodas (about the first time our kids have had soda and they LOVED these orange-cream sodas).

Fire watching crew.

And now for the grand finale....the pig comes out!

It got extra exciting for a bit when the big had some flames roaring out of him, but there was a fireman on duty (Mark Little), so all was well after a bit.

Retrieval party.

Yep, still playing together.

Not to be outdone by a six year-old, Uncle Dace had to give it a shot too.

Meaghan's turn!

Matt didn't really trust the tree to hold him up, so he was nervous about swinging.

And that is a wrap for that weekend!  Whew!

Obviously my kids aren't quite old enough for this monumental day yet, but my oldest nephew is!  The Hermons, half of the Harvs, and 2/3 of the Coopers spent an afternoon in Forest Park while Jackie took Niki's senior pictures.  I didn't photograph the star of the show, but I did get several shots of members of the senior picture posse.

These two buddies didn't stray far from each other the whole weekend!

Playing peek-a-boo with Isaiah just outside the zoo.

Isaiah only fell a few hundred times going down the giant hill.  He took it really well, and just kept on getting up and moving himself on down.

This is what we were rewarded with at the bottom of the hill.

A couple of guys had these cool remote control boats in the water.

Good times.  Lots more to come from this full weekend of fun.

Right before we headed out to Indiana for the Griffin's big hog roast we decorated some pumpkin cookies to take along for the ride.  And the kids had a great time dumping more sugar onto their sugar cookies.

One of the October traditions for our neighborhood is "spooking" or "boo-ing" the neighbors.  So the kids were very excited to find Boo Bags outside our front door a few weeks ago, and they were equally excited to return the favor to other neighbors.

They always like to try to guess who spooked us, and Blake guessed correctly this year.

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Getting ready to go spook Andrew and Lydia (I think they got caught).  You are supposed to ring the doorbell, lay down the Boo Bags and then go hide, but I'm not sure they moved fast enough.

Also that night, Blake thought we should get a belly picture.  This was at about 13 or 14 weeks, I think.  I am 17 weeks now, and I definitely have more belly to show.

After much anticipation the night of the Tutterow campout arrived...

Girl table.

Roasting the hot dogs.

If there was ever a question about Blake's whereabouts, I knew just where to track him down...at the tree swing.

The tree swing was a recent addition, and a huge success with all the kids.  Good work, Roy and Brandon!

Getting ready for the bonfire.

It was a pretty great bonfire!

And later in the evening we watched a movie on Brad and Joy's big screen.

The feature presentation was UP, which definitely made this pregnant mama cry a few times.

Roasted marshmallows for dessert after the movie.

About 10:30 Alexandria and I headed back to Dad and Mom's for the rest of the night, but Matt and Blake toughed it out in the cool overnight temps in the tent.

While packing the car I forgot a major part of the tent--the poles--so Matt used some extra poles that Roy and Kathy had in their basement to keep the tent upright for the night.

We enjoyed a yummy breakfast the following morning.

Phoebe grew a tail.

This is called a Super Swing.

Thanks to the Tutterows for another great campout weekend!

We piled a whole bunch of field trips into October!  Blake's second field trip of the year was a walking field trip to the nearby library and Yanda Family Log Cabin.

The first activity at the library was learning how to square dance.  Some members of the high school drama club instructed the Kindergartners, and most of them did a pretty good job.

Blake was a pretty good square dancing student.

The bridge part of square dancing was everyone's favorite.

After they mastered square dancing, they went into another room to make Native American headdresses.

There was a bit of a rain delay, so Mrs. Self read the students a book.

The Ms. Maggie from the library read them a book while they waited out the rain in the gazebo.

Going on a bear hunt outside the cabin.

A family of ten used to live in this space.

These are the original floors.

The week after Blake's fire station field trip, Alexandria got to go on her very own fire station field trip to the Edwardsville fire station.

Checking out the fire pole.

None of the preschools tried this trick.

The girls didn't quite know what to think of the firefighter clothes.

And then it was everyone's favorite part of the day...spraying the fire hose!

More field trip photos on the next post too.  Blake had another field trip the day after Alexandria's.