Santa Train

Kellen loves trains, so when we heard about the Santa train we excited to go!

The night before we read books about trains, wore train pjs, and blew train whistles to prepare.

Our attempt at train pancakes for breakfast.

Thanks Grammie for the train shirt!!

Choo-Choo!!

Thanksgiving

I know we should be posting about Christmas and we were on track for that before our computer came down with a virus that delayed some posts.  Hopefully, we can finally get caught back up this week.

Over Thanksgiving we made some fun crafts with cousin John Paul

Gobble, Gobble

Snack time 

My parent have some friends that have a clydesdale and were getting him out for a ride.  When else would Kellen have the chance to ride a "big horse"  as  he kept calling it?

Build a Bear

Kellen had the opportunity to go to his first Build-A-Bear birthday party.  He loved it.  Don't worry I didn't let him get a pink bear he was just holding it for a friend.

We made a cute little pilot named Scout

He was so proud!

After the bear making we headed over to the Miller's for dinner and a hayride around the neighborhood. 

Sewing

Thanks to my mom we have beening making Kellen some fun holiday shirts.  I have never considered myself very crafty, but I think they turning out pretty cute.

C of O Homecoming

We had the opportunity to catch up with some friends at College of the Ozarks Homecoming.

Kellen loved the jump houses

Former roomate Ashley and suite mate Sara-- love these girls!

It seems like just last year we were running around campus and Ashley was trying to help me decide what I would do with my life and now we were chasing after our children.

Future College of the Ozark students ( guess I can only speak for Kellen- but I hope Molly Scout is there too)

Corndogs!

Do you need a good, quick, fall/winter treat? Try making these corndogs. All you need is some Jiffy mix and hotdogs.

K was pretty pleased with the fact that he could smash the hotdogs down into the batter. Plus, he ate a lot more than normal as he so was proud of himself for "making" his own dinner.   

Halloween

We borrowed this fish costume from Jill's mom and it was our hope that K would want to wear it for Halloween. We were sadly mistaken as he put it on, but he couldn't really see out of it, so we went with Plan B.

Bye, bye fishy --- Hello, Bob the Builder.

K was much happier in this outfit so we went with it.

We went several places but our favorite had to be a nursing home that is pretty close to our house. The majority of the residents were participating and K loved going up to each one and picked out the candy that he wanted.  

We ended our night by coming back home and turning on our own porch light for others to come and trick-or-treat at our house. K was so excited every time the door bell rang as he was anxious to see what others were dressed up like. He loved handing out the candy to others but we think this will be the one and only year that we will be able to do this as next year he will probably catch on to the fact that he is giving away the same candy that he worked so hard to get earlier in the evening.

Don't judge -- 22 month olds don't need the candy.

Wordless Wednesday

Rock and Roll- Number 5-- St. Louis

This fall we made a trip back to St. Louis for our fifth marathon in the Rock and Roll series. We chose this race because we will take every chance that we can get to go back to one of our "hometowns". Although it's not really either of our hometowns we feel a special love for the city as we enjoyed so much about the city during Jill's four years of optometry school there. So we loaded up the car, picked up "Grannanny", and off we went.  

We started off at the race expo. After four other races we finally wised up a bit and decided to take K in this hiking pack instead of trying to manuver a stroller through 30,000 people.

We visited Anheuser-Busch for the tour and so K could see the clydesdales. He liked seeing the horses and his second favorite thing was being able to ride the escalators towards the end of the tour.  

 K loved our lunch stop as it had live music. He danced the whole time and didn't take the time to eat.

The whole highlight of the trip for him was supposed to be the zoo. We had built this up so much and we had spent several weeks preparing him and teaching him about all of the animals. But...we carted him around so much that when we finally arrived at the zoo he couldn't even keep his eyes open.

Maybe we are bad parents but we let him catch a five minute power nap and then we woke him up.  

He didn't seem to mind as he loved walking around and seeing all of the animals. It was a toss up between the elephant and the penguin as to which animal was his favorite. We would pick the penguins just because we liked to hear him say, "waddle, waddle, waddle." 

Sunday was the race and we couldn't have asked for better weather. We were able to run the first eight miles together and so that added to the enjoyment level a bit. Overall, it was a good run and a great way to cap off the weekend.  

Hiking

During one of our trips to Cassville we went to Roaring River to hike. After all of these years of hiking there we actually found a new trail that we didn't even know was there. We weren't really planning on hiking and so we didn't have K's pack so it made the hike a bit more difficult as we just had to pass him back and forth to carry.

No matter who had him, we all had to understand that the stick came with him. It was his own little walking stick.

We made lots of stops along the way as K is at the age where he is interested in everything. We probably hiked for 30-45 minutes and the total number of "What's that?" more than doubled that.

Apple Butter Makin Days

One of the highlights of the fall is returning back to Mt.Vernon for Apple Butter Making Days.

K started the weekend by riding this trike around everywhere. He was set on riding it as soon as he woke up, which you can see was accomplished as he still has on his pajamas.

K and John Paul were very excited about the parade. John Paul loved getting all of the candy and K loved the bands.

He would dance from beginning to end and he was more entertainment for us then the actual parade. There were a few times that he wanted to join in with them and march beside them so we had to keep him close by, but for the most part he just danced and gave everyone around us a good laugh.

We have to pick up our yearly supply of Apple Butter. It is cooked right on the square.

The weather was great during the weekend and we were glad that we were able to return home and enjoy ABMD.

We think that K liked everything about it, but we know for sure that he loved the "bounce house." Even though he may have been a bit young for it, he just went right in and did the best that he could. He loved it so much he started crying when we made him get out. He still asks to go back so that he can "bounce, bounce, bounce."