Last Year's Christmas Present

A year ago today we found out we were going to have our Jackson Hal! He is a wonderful baby and we just adore him. No Christmas presents like him this year though. :)

Santa Came in a Semi

I heard a bunch of noise today while I was doing my hair yesterday, so I looked out my bathroom window and what did I see. A semi backing up to my front door of course. I couldn't figure out what in the world was going on. Were they stuck? Did they know they could go the other way on my street?
As I got to the door there was a gentleman there who said that he had a piano to deliver for our house. Needless to say I was shocked but super excited. They brought it in and it is beautiful! Evan loves to play it and so does his Momma, (Nathan also bought me the music to Wicked and I have been picking at that all day.)
Our piano was made in 1933 and was originally purchased in 1933. The same lady owned it until 1992 when she died and a coworker of Nathan's purchased it at an estate auction. Then she moved here and now her children are gone and she wanted it out of the way, so Nathan got it for our family. We love it!!!!

Jack's Smile and Evan's Nose

Our Boys with Santa

Here are our boys with Santa. After waiting in line for and hour and 15 minutes with a cranky toddler and a hungry baby, Santa at this age is only a photo op. But aren't they cute!!!

Our Trip to the Zoo

Nathan had today off, we are having beautiful weather, and one of his friends was in DC so we decided we would drive in and go to the zoo. We were very glad that Evan fell asleep in the car on the way. He only takes naps in the afternoons now so we were worried he would be super cranky, but then he just passed out.

When we got to the zoo, we let Evan out of his stroller so he could move around a bit. I think this was his favorite part. To not be strapped in.

There was a new baby in the gazelle pin. A little female that was born on October 1st.

We went and saw the Elephants again. They are one of Evan's favorites. His new thing is to make noises. He hasn't really learned any new words, but he has started quacking, mooing, choo..chooing, and barking. So there was our little boy, barking at the elephants.

He was not happy to have to leave the elephants.......

Those are real tears.....

But he liked the Mongolian horse....

The gorillas also had a new baby. Evan enjoyed watching her climb and crawl around. It was so funny to watch her and her mother. The baby would climb over the edge and the Mom would reach down and grab her after she had been hanging there for a little while.

Here she is crawling around....

Then we saw some turtles... Evan wanted to jump in with them.

Evan kept pointing to the Triceratops and yelling. Good thing it isn't real.

Then we went to a giant pizza and let Evan run around for awhile, which he was happy about. he isn't a big fan of always being strapped in the stroller.

This is baby Jack after we got back in the car and were deciding where to go for dinner. His smile is so sweet! We didn't get to many pictures of him today, but he was a good boy!

My Boys

These are my boys! I came down stairs from getting ready for the day and found all three of them in a chair together. Nathan was reading them a story and it made me so happy that Jack and Evan have such a good Dad.

Happy Halloween!!!

Here are our boys in their Halloween costumes. We had a really fun day. First we went trick or treating on the Old Town Mall and then went to a party at one of Evan's little friends house. Happy Halloween!

Seneca Rocks!!!

We had to put a new engine into our car, OUCH!! There was oil leaking into the radiator and the mechanic thought the problem could be solved by replacing the head gasket our valve or something or other, but it didn't work. It turned out that the entire engine was ruined, so we had to put a new one in. We could put a brand new one in for around $4,000 and some change, or we could put in one imported from Japan for around $1,000.

These engines, our mechanic explained to us were refurbished and had low miles but they didn't meet the emmissions standards in Japan. Therefore, they were shipped to the US and put into the cars of people like my husband and I that can't really afford the $4,000 right now.

So what do you do? Go into debt but have a two year warranty or afford it, barely and have a 60 day warranty. We did the later and decided to go on lots of road trips and that is how Seneca rock comes into the picture. We wanted to test it out and made sure it worked well, so we decided on a road trip to see the fall colors. It was a beautiful drive and a fun day for our family!

Baby Jack is getting so big!! He did great on his first road trip. It is interesting how much more relaxed Nathan and I are with Jackson than we were with Evan. We would never have attempted a road trip this long when Evan was 6 weeks old. Now we just get in the car and hope for the best and imprevise if it doesn't work out quite like we planned. It is so much easier!

These are the rocks that we came to see. It was like a castle on the hill. Apparantly people come from all over the world to climb these rocks because they are difficult. Also, soldiers from World War II trained here for mountain warfare. There are still active bombs around. Scare me out the door.
We waited one week to long to see the colors at their peak, but it still was breath taking. And that is a huge wasps nest!
Our Family!

The old homestead. What a great place to build a house!

Evan enjoyed playing in the garden. Then we went home! Great day!

Fall Pictures