October Recap

Just thinking about all of October lately has me a little tired, to be honest. I'll not expound here, but can I just get a great big sigh of relief, because that's how I feel right now.

In a nutshell...

October is such a double-edged sword for us. It is my absolute favorite month of the year and simultaneously my least favorite month of the year. I love everything that October is about...except harvest. And when we're able to get out in the field to see Mark, I actually don't hate the harvest part. But it does make things difficult at home when we miss Mark so dearly. BUT...harvest is finally over :) FINALLY! :)

We started the month with family pictures in Currie, followed the next weekend by a fun trip to Ocheda Orchard for apples and pumpkins with the boys as well as Pam and Jess. I had to get a little creative with the boys to find things to keep them busy and outside as much as possible. Thankfully, it was a GORGEOUS autumn, so we were outside a lot.

The leaves were fun and crunchy, and the boys enjoyed exploring around the neighborhood as well as out at Kilen Woods. We made a short trip to Humboldt for a weekend, then enjoyed some fun festivities surrounding Halloween (Zoo Boo in Sioux Falls and the always fun trick-or-treating) and my 33rd birthday. We had a nice month, though, but oh man was I looking forward to November!

Family Pictures in Currie (October 4)

We had a short family session at Painted Prairie Vineyard in Currie with our photographer friend Heather from Red Barn Photography.

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Ocheda Orchard (October 11)

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Weekend in Humboldt (October 18-19)

We had a nice weekend in Humboldt with some of the Ropte and Vinsand families. It was initially supposed to be the BIG Ropte GTG of the year, but with a fragile mama-to-be Sarah in Indiana (baby Andrew arrived a whole 8 weeks early just 2 weeks later!) and a laid-up Elicia in Des Moines, we kept it low key and laid our hopes on seeing everyone hopefully soon.

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Zoo Boo (October 25)

We decided on a whim to take the boys to Sioux Falls on a Sunday afternoon to go to Zoo Boo at the Great Plains Zoo. While we were there, we did some light shopping and took advantage of some early birthday specials at HuHot and Qdoba.

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My 33rd Birthday (October 28)

We celebrated my birthday this year as a family, and Mark and I both took the day off work. We started the day with The Grinch in bed together, had lunch and visited in Worthington for a bit, then home to celebrate with cake and ice cream.

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Carving Pumpkins (October 30)

We were missing Daddy this year, but still had a fun time with our pumpkins!

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Halloween (October 31)

We had a fun time with the boys (until I had to start carrying Kendrick, anyways) trick-or-treating around town.

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Looking Ahead...

Well, considering it's already November 20 and I haven't even gotten started really, I can say that November hasn't exactly been a cakewalk so far. I'll be covering that in my November update, but in a super condensed nutshell, we have a new nephew, a Mama/Grandma who needs some special love, good friends who had some devastating news about their niece, crazy little boys running circles around us and an eternally filthy home. We have been handling some very crazy and stressful times in our lives, but at the end of the day we're surrounded with love and grace, and we cling to that.

We'll be joining some of Mark's extended family for Thanksgiving, and are looking forward to that. Mark's brother and family arrive in a couple days and will be staying around for a week as well, and it will be good to see them again: Cashel can't WAIT to see Sofie, that's for sure!

I just told Mark this evening, however, that I'm physically and mentally just not at all capable of doing more than just taking a day at a time lately, so that's what I plan to do.

My Little Pumpkins (October 30)

My little pumpkins and I carved pumpkins the day before Halloween. This year, Halloween really crept up on us, and with Mark being so busy in the field, we just couldn't find a time to carve them together as a family. So while Daddy was in the field, the kiddos and I had some fun.

The boys were way more excited about being able to stand on the table than pretty much any other part of the carving process. I carved out the tops and then got some of the gooey guts loosened up, and then the boys had fun sticking their hands into the gooey pumpkins and pulling out the guts. This video pretty much sums up the entire process, so enjoy :)

BIRTHDAY! (October 28)

I turned 33 years old. Somehow 33 still doesn't sound very old at all to me, so I'm not one of those who lies about her age just yet.

Highlights of my 33rd birthday are as follows:

• Starting the day with The Grinch snuggled in our bed with our babies.
• Caramel Apple Belgian Waffles and coffee for breakfast.
• Pizza Ranch buffet for lunch, even if it was with two of the squirmiest, sleepiest, most unhappy little dudes I've ever known.
• Visiting with Pam and Grandma Vi (and later Jess and Kent) after lunch for a couple hours.
• Watching the boys jump around to "I Like to Move It Move It" and entertain the family.
• Birthday greetings!
  
  • Over ONE HUNDRED Facebook birthday wishes.
  • Four very special text birthday wishes.
  • Three happy birthday emails.
  • One birthday voicemail message.
  • Four birthday cards.

As I said, we started out the morning (up WAY too early for BIRTHDAY day) with the Grinch in bed with the boys, until they got super squirmy and wanted to go have a dance party to "I Like to Move It Move It" - a regular thing most mornings these days.

After our dance party, I opened my presents from Mark and the boys (see below), and would you believe that Mark picked out that gorgeous necklace on his own? Kudos, babe - I LOVE it! I was super excited about all my gifts, but it seemed a tinge uneventful, as Cashel wanted to open all the gifts himself and had stolen the box with my necklace in it, hid under the piano bench, ripped off the wrapping paper, and then started crying when he couldn't get the box open. It seems these days that anyone's birthday is, by default, Cashel's birthday. Unfortunately, he wasn't overly excited about any of the gifts, but Mama sure was!

Here's where the day started getting super exciting (for me) and boring for pretty much everyone else. See, I get a little freakishly giddy when I just get free time to do the organizational and cleaning projects I've been needing to get caught up on. So I got caught up on laundry (for the day), cleaned and changed the filter on Kendrick's humidifier, and put away his clean clothes into his dresser. Talk about thrilling! We got ready and headed to Pizza Ranch in Worthington for birthday lunch, and I kid you not: 5 minutes before we got to town, Cashel fell asleep, joining Kendrick, who had been sleeping since before we left Windom. Horrible timing! And, of course, as soon as we tried to transition them to their strollers, they woke up and were just cranky as all get out. I think it's best we don't discuss our lunch there, although strangely enough, we were rather calm.

This is our "OMG we just survived the most insane lunch imaginable with two ridiculously tired little boys - what the heck were we thinking?" faces. It's really a good thing that we laugh at the ridiculousness of our lives sometimes, because if we didn't laugh, we'd probably cry lol

Because we weren't quite crazy enough to take two terribly sleepy, cranky boys into Pizza Ranch during nap time, we also thought it'd be fun to take them to Walmart. Surprisingly, that actually went pretty well.

We called Mark's Step-Mom on a whim wondering if she would be up for some visitors, and she was overjoyed to have us, so we stopped over there for a couple hours, and Great Grandma Vi also joined us. It was fun to just unwind a bit and let the boys run around :)

The boys were so super exhausted that we made it a point to leave before they got too unruly, and Cashel passed out almost immediately in the car, so when we got home, we let him sleep another couple hours. Kendrick slept in the car on the way home, but woke up when we got there. Mark and I enjoyed a cup of country chicken chowder (Kendrick wasn't super hungry, as he'd had some snacks before we left Worthington).

We woke Cashel up around 6:30pm for cake and ice cream, and Cashel insisted that we were celebrating Mama and Cashel's birthdays.

However, he was Cashel when we told him that the next birthday in our family will be his!

Kendrick had no clue what was going on, but he was thrilled to be gorging himself with cake lol

My sweet family :) I'm so thankful that I was able to celebrate with so much of my family this year, even if not on the exact date. I wish we all lived so much closer.

Zoo Boo (October 25)

We decided on a whim to take the boys to Sioux Falls for the day, enjoy a few pre-birthday freebies and take the boys trick-or-treating at the Great Plains Zoo and Delbridge Museum. It was a pretty crazy day, but the boys really did a great job overall. We definitely had a few of those "parents of two rambunctious toddler boys" moments (HuHot may never be quite the same), but overall, it wasn't one of those days where we sob into our pillows as we fall asleep at nights, so I think that makes it a success?

What I do know is that I think we had by far the cutest little kiddos there :)

Home on the Family Farm (October 18-19)

This weekend was originally intended to be the big annual Ropte GTG of the year, but a few circumstances caused it to be more like a relaxing weekend down at the farm for us. And we really did have a great time, but we sure missed our family who couldn't make it :(

I'm not entirely sure if I've ever mentioned on here exactly how big my family is on here specifically, but I am from a pretty big family! I have FOUR brothers and a sister (in order of appearance: Dave, Dan, {ME!}, Josh, Amanda and Jason). We're all about 2 years apart (give or take a few months). Dan lives the furthest away, a couple hours south of our hometown in Indiana, and about a 10 hour drive from the farm. Dave, Jason and I all live about 2 hours from the farm. Josh, Amanda and our Mom all live right in Humboldt.

Dan and his wife Sarah are expecting baby number five, due Christmas Day, but unfortunately this time around, she has placenta previa, so they felt it best (and we all insisted) for her and the baby that they stay home this year. And while we missed them dearly, we also know it's more important that Mama and baby stay healthy. And we cannot WAIT to meet this new little nephew/cousin of ours in another month or so.

Dave's wife had an unfortunate accident a few weeks back and has an ankle the size of a softball, so they also opted to stay home this year, and really - I can't blame her! It's hard enough for her to just get around her house, much less try to pack and load the kiddos up for a day or two. So we missed their sweet family as well :(

Even with the unfortunate cancellations, we decided to go along with our plans for a trip down to the farm after all to see my younger siblings and their families and my mama. We had a great time visiting, and the boys LOVED seeing their cousins! Like...LOVED!

Overall, we just did a lot of playing, going up and down and up and down and up and down the stairs (courtesy of Kendrick and no gates haha), and eating and just plain visiting. It was a nice, relaxing visit for the most part. I won't go into big detail, but here are some fun picture highlights from the weekend :)

Cashel had fun "reading" to Caitlin and Kendrick :)

We were really concerned with the house being so quiet, and Mark said, "Amy - grab the camera". We found these two watching Super Why together :)

Caleb really wanted me to get a picture of how strong he was.

I really love watching my brothers interact with their kiddos. You can tell they all adore their daddies.

Kaleigh kept asking me to take a picture of her running "real fast". This is the best one to have turned out, what with all the running involved.

Cashel is just such a big boy here :( He has almost always asked to use the little baby swings, and this is the first time it really struck me that he's in a big boy swing. ::sigh::

Love these ladies, but we're missing 2 more sister-in-laws! My sis is on my right and sis-in-law Tiff on my left.

I just LOVE this picture of my baby brother with his Mama. These two have been through some pretty rough times after my Dad passed away in 2007. Jason had just graduated high school and, being the only one still living at home, bore a lot of the brunt once things initially cleared. He has become such a rock for Mom when the rest of us have been so busy with our growing families. I am so grateful for him. As an aside, however, this picture does NOT do this kid justice: Horrible angle. He has lost a significant amount of weight over the past year, and looks fantastic!

It is so busy in the toy room! It's hard to catch these little kiddos standing still for long.

I just had to snap this picture of my sweet niece Ruthie on her mama's shoulder. Love these two so much!

Mom and Amanda were so sweet to get me a cake to celebrate my birthday a little early (it's on the 28th) :) As you can see, Cashel was VERY interested in eating the cake. The kids talked about eating cake most of the weekend, so this was VERY exciting lol

These two are so adorable playing together. It's crazy to realize that Kendrick is a full 5 months younger than Caitlin is. He's kinda a huge kid!

I usually take so many close-ups at the farm that sometimes it's nice to have the perspective of the big picture. I love how Kaleigh Mae is staring at the camera in this one. She is always wanting to have her picture taken, which is so cute :)

My little sister has lost 18lbs recently, and she looks phenomenal! I can almost guarantee she probably wouldn't recognize this as her in this picture. Great job, little sis!

My love and I :)

Cashel discovered a little scooter and was zooming around :) Don't you just love the rain boots with his church clothes? We forgot to bring regular shoes, so he had to borrow a pair of cousin Caleb's for church that morning.

Kendrick was just in heaven, being able to wander anywhere he wanted (within reason). Usually we have to keep pretty close tabs on him around home because of cars on the road or disturbing someone's flower bed or the like. It was refreshing to just let him roam.

It was funny to watch Kendrick and Caitlin interact. Amanda spent a lot of time worrying about Caitlin hurting Kendrick (she's in this hair pulling stage lately), but I knew Kendrick could hold his own. She was chasing him a lot :)

Here I am with 2 of my 5 siblings (Amanda and Jason) and my Mom :) We missed Josh in this one as they had to head home and get some projects finished.

Little miss Kaleigh Mae is quite the go-getter! This picture captures her personality so well :) I love to just see all these little people grow up! I wish I got to see my other nieces and nephews as often as my Humboldt ones!

We headed off into this beautiful sunset headed home (please excuse the filthy windshield I took the photo through). I'm anxiously awaiting November 1st to get more vacation time so I can head back down for another Mama and Me day soon :)

Humboldt may not have been my first choice for a hometown (I do still desperately miss my original hometown of Warsaw), but it has really become a home away from home for my family. I'm so grateful that my Mama decided to invest in the farm house to make it warm and inviting and welcoming, and that my sister has done such a phenomenal job of making everyone feel so welcome no matter the occasion. I know this season of life won't last forever, but I will always look back on it with such fondness, and these memories are so great :)