Yet another pumpkin patch

 While Matt went to work, I took the girls to a pumpkin patch held at a local church and met up with neighbors. We had a real tractor ride this time but the highlight was the hay piles. The kids loved playing in the hay! We were picking it out of our hair all night.

Who needs Little Tykes when you can have hay?



I even got in on the action.  The kids really enjoyed dumping hay on me.

Pumpkin "Patch"

So there are no real pumpkin patches or apple orchards in Florida and for some reason I thought that once I moved back to the mainland, I would be able to participate in all the fun fall activities...silly me forgot that Florida's tropical weather is not conducive to fall activities.  One exit away though they have a garden center that transforms into a season pumpkin patch and later in the year, a Christmas wonderland.  I was pretty surprised by how many activities they had for the kids to participate in.  The focus was more on toddler fun than pumpkins and produce though.  They had a mini "train" ride:

A makeshift superslide:

A tarped maze with corn painted on it

a petting zoo

and a mini "hayride"that circled the palm tree farm they had growing in the back

and of course, what pumpkin patch wouldn't be complete without a bounce house and slide.

The kids had a blast though and that is all that matters.  Oh and by the way, we did come home with two pumpkins :-)

Getting ready for Halloween

Halloween is a big deal around this neighborhood and since Makaela has been complaining our house isn't "spooky" enough, he headed off to the Halloween store to get some Halloween decorations.  I think he and Makaela went a little overboard, but they had lots of fun decorating the front of the house.  You can't see it in the picture, but we even have "blood lights" wrapped around our columns.  A bit too morbid for me, but when in Rome...

Dirty...Ghost?

 I have been Boo-ed! I came home from work today to find a stash of goodies on my doorstep and a note.Makaela was so excited!  It totally reminded me of the Dirty Santa's work back in Hawaii, only this is Halloween. I guess this a game that my neighborhood plays and one of my neighbors got me. So fun. I thought I would post the note too just in case some of you have a close neigbors or want to get your neighbors involved in some fun Halloween antics.

More Zoo time

We finally convinced Matt to come to the zoo (he is not a fan of walking around in the heat), but we had a great time doing all the activities the zoo has to offer and showing Matt around the zoo (Makaela was a fabulous and overly directive tour guide).



Slide races

Matt playing "vet" at the zoo Discovery Zone

Mia dressing the part

Makaela showing us the Xrays of some animals

At the petting zoo

Mia showing me the penguins swimming over her head

Feeding the giraffes

Even Mia got in on the feeding.  Wasn't scared at all.

Momma giraffe and Baby nuzzling- how cute

Oh Mia

Mia is hitting the Terrible Twos early which is putting her accident prone self at an even bigger risk.  She has recently taken to running away from me when she knows it's bedtime.  One night in particular, she ran away (half naked as well) and dove into Makaela's little tent to hide from me.  What she didn't know was that Makaela's wooden doll castle was inside the tent, so she ended up diving head first into the wooden castle.  The fact that she didn't start crying at first scared freaked me out, but then she started bleeding and I was worried I had to bring her to the ER.  She had a decent sized puncture wound in her forehead and considering how my forehead is held together with stitches, I immediately thought of that.  After a few panicked phone calls to Matt and sending him different pictures, we decided not to go (oh yeah, Matt was working which made this incident even more fun).  I ended up keeping her up until midnight watching for concussion, but this kid has a head like her dad...hard.

20 week Ultrasound

Today was our 20 week ultrasound for baby #3.  Matt was able to switch opening and closing times with another person, so luckily he was able to be there to witness seeing the baby. The first thing the tech measured was the baby's head and of course she commented on the size of the baby's forehead (what else is new?)

She also mentioned that baby has a long femur and very long legs. She was shocked when we told her both our girls were only a little over 19 inches long at birth.  She thought we would have had longer kids by the size of his baby's femur.

baby's leg stretched out (thigh is towards the left, foot towards right)

The baby was definitely playing peek-a-boo with us and on the video (which I'm too tired to edit to post right now), the baby kept bobbing his/her head in and out of the camera shot.  Here the baby's fists are balled up in front it his/her face.

Face

Here is the money shot.  You can see the pelvis, both thigh bones and toes (look how cute!!)  The tech didn't tell me the gender for sure, but I have my guess.What are yours??

As for names, for a girl we are thinking Madison (Madi) Lynn or Morgan (not quite sure of the middle name yet).  And for a boy, Aidan Robert or Jeremy Robert.