Blueberries & Hot Sauce

Happy Birthday to Grampy Jarvis today!! (And also Happy late Birthday to cousin Tyler last week!)

Charlotte is a sauce girl. Whenever we eat something that has sauce, she dips everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) from her meal into the sauce. She's come up with some awesome flavor combinations--kiwi and ranch dressing, strawberries and ketchup, pears and taco sauce. One recent discovery was hot sauce. With the cooler weather, we've been eating more eggs at breakfast; which of course have to be accompanied by hot sauce. Here's Charlotte meticulously dipping every morsel of her meal (including blueberries) into some hot sauce.

From another breakfast (pancakes and hot sauce).

Does this mean she has a really sophisticated palate? Or no tastebuds at all?

 



And lastly, a shout-out to our Georgia Bulldogs, who clinched the SEC East title with their awesome win over Auburn on Saturday!

Photo shoot

I couldn't resist sharing some of the pictures from a recent photo shoot, even though it will be kind of a spoiler for our Christmas card :)

In late September, we took advantage of a coupon for a photographer to come to our house, and our disc finally arrived yesterday!

 

When Jack was younger, we had some professional photos taken of him, and I wanted to do the same for Charlotte. So most of the pictures taken were of her, but we also got some good ones of them together. Fortunately the weather had worked out perfectly that day for the shoot to be done in the backyard. I absolutely love this photo of Jack. He looks so grown up!

Sweet baby girl.

Charlotte's hair was particularly wing-tastic that day.

And I even kept some of the photos where they let their true personalities show.

If anyone wants some of the pictures, just let me know and I can email you the file(s).

Superheroes and Monkeys

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Jack and Charlotte had a great Halloween--despite being chilly and tired, they both were all smiles after coming home with buckets full of candy. Jack was Spiderman, and Charlotte borrowed Jack's monkey costume from a previous Halloween. It was glammed up a bit with a tutu and cute bows that Aunt Lisa made for her.

 

Here they are heading out on their trick-or-treating journey with Dad, Sarah, and Aunt Lisa.

So many houses had stairs! A challenge for our litte short-legged one in a bulky costume. But with candy as a goal, she didn't let any obstacle get in her way. If one of us wasn't close by to hold her hand, she'd just climb up the stairs on all fours.

Big smiles from Spiderman! Guess superheroes love candy too.

I don't know how well it shows up in these next couple pictures, but look for Charlotte's tongue. Apparently the thought of candy was so exciting that every time she got some more treats, she'd be licking her lips as she headed away from the house.

Some of the houses were pretty decked out.

Charlotte checking out her stash when we got home.

These last pictures were actually taken from Saturday, when we went to the Halloween bash at Andy's gym and met up with the Johnstons. Will the hockey player actually wore his skates the whole time we were there, which was pretty impressive. The 3 kids somewhat cooperated for a picture together.

Harassing the swimmers.

Happy Halloween!!

More pumpkin farm fun

 We went to another pumpkin farm last weekend, since Jack didn't get to go with us to Goebbert's with Aunt Lisa. We tried a farm a little closer to us in Bolingbrook; it wasn't as nice and big as Goebbert's, but the kids loved all the inflatable bounce houses and slides. Unfortunately I only got 1 picture of Jack because Andy took him while I had Charlotte. Here's Charlotte going down the various slides.

Going way up on this big one. It took her a while to climb up the first time, and I was a little worried I would have to climb up after her, but she figured it out. And then she got faster each time she went.

 Peeking out from the very top.

She didn't slide down normally any of the times she went. It was always backwards, and toward the end she even went headfirst a couple times, which was against the rules. Oops.

 This was the one picture I got of Jack going down the REALLY big slide. He's just a blur!

And one taken a couple days ago; a little hard to see through the screen door. Mr. Squirrel here had a feast on our pumpkins. Someone told me to try spraying them with hairspray to keep squirrels away. I tried it last night and so far have seen no more nibbling on the 1 pumpkin we have left. 

Goebbert's with Aunt Lisa

Last Sunday while Jack was in Michigan with Andy, Charlotte and I went with Aunt Lisa to Goebbert's Pumpkin Farm. The weather was bad most of the day, but we lucked out and at least for an hour and a half we had no rain. Charlotte was feeling shy about getting her picture take with Scooby-Doo for some reason.

We saw all sorts of animals. Charlotte wouldn't get too close to the long-tongued giraffes, but she liked to watch other people feed them. When we first got there, she had ran up to the top of the giraffe obervation deck without understanding what was up there. She barged right to the front of the fence and came face-to-nose with a giraffe looking for carrots. She backed off after that :)

Cute baby piggies! Charlotte loves to make pig noises so she definitely had lots of opportunities at the farm.

Pigs racing for Oreos!

Charlotte was not as big a fan of the camels, but at least we got a picture with Aunt Lisa here.

Charlotte trying to decide if she was scared or not of the loud pumpkin-eating dinosaur. 

Cute bear cubs

Checking out the little kangaroos.

This was by far Charlotte's favorite animal. She spent several minutes just standing here watching the tiger cubs. Not that I could blame her much; they were very cute.

She really wanted to pet him.

The baby goat really wanted Charlotte to give him some food. I chose not to buy any food so Charlotte could feed the animals. I didn't want her to get bitten or have to deal with the mess, and in the back of my mind I was also worried she might try to eat the food herself.

And of course she loved the monkeys just like her brother.