Clean up, Clean up, Everybody Do Your Share!!

Yesterday we spent the afternoon and Jason's Aunt Cindy's house with her family, Jason's family, and Great Grandma and Grandpa Thrap. We spent our time there eating a huge meal, playing games, and letting the little kids open up a present. It was a great time but it also left a big mess. We all pitched in to clean up before we left and Carter decided even he would contribute.

Oh Christmas Tree!!! Oh Christmas Tree!!!

After six years this Christmas tree is about to retire. It has made it through nine moves and two young children. Carter is into EVERYTHING and so our tree is up on a table in the corner of our living room where he can't get to the ornaments. He thinks that the little red balls are apples. The thing about our tree that I am most proud of is all of my ornaments. Every year my parents always gave us an ornament and then when I got married and moved out of the house I got to take my ornaments with me. So there are a total of 20 ornaments. In addition, Jason and I have continued the tradition so we have an ornament for each year we have been married and and also one for each kid for every year. By the time we're done having kids my tree will look a lot like my parent's tree. (You can't really see much tree...just lights and ornaments.)

Thanksgiving

We had a great thanksgiving last weekend and we wanted everyone to know how much we appreciated seeing everyone and getting together with family. We had Thanksgiving on Thursday with the Thrap side of the family and then on Friday with the Zalesky side of the family. We ate waaaaay to much food. Now it is countdown to Christmas and Grandma Bell has already sent us the perfect outfits for the kids. I've taken some pictures and the Christmas cards are ordered so look for them in the mail in the next week or so.

Halloween

This year was a lot of fun because Charly actually got into the dressing up and trick-or-treating. I even let her wear her costume ALL day long. Both the kids were really cute!!! Here in Iowa we celebrate Halloween correctly and we take the kids trick-or-treating on Beggar's Night which is Oct. 30th. So Thursday Charly got to go door to door getting candy and Friday we got to take the family to a Halloween party.

PUMPKINS

I love how I can talk my husband into doing things he might not otherwise do. I think that things like pumpkin carving and egg dying (at Easter) are a couple of things that Jason must have avoided as a youth but now he will do it "for the kids." He and Charly had a lot of fun tonight carving our pumpkin. Charly dug right into the gross insides right away and then she actually was biting off pieces of the pumpkin and saying that it was good (eewww!!). I'm glad they got to do it tonight though because tomorrow is when we go trick-or-treating here in Iowa. Most cities here celebrate "Beggars Night" which is technically the correct tradition but most everywhere else just does it on Halloween. I will have to post pictures of the kids in their costumes tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Carter!

So I realize this is a little late but Carter's 1st birthday was this past Saturday. We had Josh and Becca and their kids over for celebration on Sunday. (I actually didn't get to see Carter at all on his actual birthday because I had skipped out and headed to Omaha with a bunch ladies from our ward. We were at Time Out for Women.) Of course we let him dig into is own cake and of course he loved it. Lucky for him his Aunt Becca got him a nice warm sweatshirt for his birthday so he was able to change into it after getting a good hose down. He really likes his big truck too.

Another One?

Introducing baby thrap #3. No, it really was not planned. There will only be 19 months between this one and Carter but we are still excited. I had my first appointment on Tuesday and figured out that my due date is 2 weeks later than I had originally thought. That means I get to feel crappy for longer but I'll take it because there is a good healthy baby in there with heartbeat. The due date is May 30th.

Fishing at the Lake

As many of you know, we got to spend this last weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. We got lucky because it was probably the last great weather weekend for a long time. We really enjoyed getting to be with the Bell family for the weekend in probably the SWEETEST resort we have ever been in. Our accommodations had 4 rooms a full kitchen, living room, basement with a big screen tv, and a balcony overlooking a perfect lake with a hot tub. Carter decided that he was going to get up at 6 AM every morning so I got to enjoy the sun coming up and it really was beautiful. We had a really relaxing time. We swam, fished, went jet skiing,the guys went out to play golf and a few of us went to the outlet mall. It really was just great and as always it was way too short.

Shiner

The kids both recently got a couple of bad boo boos that I'm sure have caused people to wonder if I am beating my children. First, Charly had a run in with her bedroom door that made her top lip the size of a large olive. The day that it happened we had been invited to friend's house for dinner and they got to see her beautiful lip not too long after the incident. I was for sure that when we left they would be calling social services on me. Then, two days later, the kids were taking their evening bath and Carter tried to stand up in the tub. Of course he slipped and ended up with a black eye. I almost didn't go to work the next day. I had Charly with fat lip and Carter with a black eye. Not exactly a good sign when the child care supervisor comes in with her kids looking like that.

A Video

So we we were playing today (which is something I don't feel like I get to do with my kids as often as I would like) and I figured I would try taking a video of them. Pictures don't catch their personalities as well as actually getting to see them in action. I figured grandma would appreciate getting to see them play together and hear Carter attempt to talk.

Camping as a Family!

We bought a nice tent on sale at Target around this time LAST YEAR. And this past Friday we broke it out for the first time. We'd been talking about going all summer and we could not have picked a better time to go than this weekend. The weather was perfect...highs in the mid 70s and lows in the mid 50s without a cloud in the sky. Jason got off of work early and we headed up to Saylorville Lake. When we got there we set up camp (air matress and all) and got a big fire. The fire is Jason's favorite part. After a couple hours our tin foil dinners were ready but neither of the kids wanted to eat because they ate way too much junk before hand. But they were having so much fun running (or crawling in Carter's case) around that they quickly tuckered out in the tent and Jason and I got to spend a few hours just talking out by the fire. That is something that very rarely happens so it was really nice. In the morning we were woken up by flocks of geese landing in the lake near by. Jason made us a great pancake breakfast on the fire and we packed up and went home for the rest of our busy Saturday. It was really nice to be out and away from things even for night and it was a great time for our family to bond. It was after ward and all of the loads of lau

A couple pictures

Of course the biggest part of having a blog is being able to post pictures of the kids for grandma to see. These aren't professional or anything but they are still fun. The picture to the left is basically Carter at his best. He loves nothing more than to be right in the middle of what I am doing and he pretty much gets away with it. (I thought you weren't supposed to get so bad at letting kids get away with whatever they want until you had like 5 kids or something.) He's just too cute though. Who can resist those dimples? The picture to the right is Charly at her best. Always curious about everything and ALWAYS asking questions. She really keeps me on my toes. This picure is her on her 3rd birthday discovering the nest that a bird decided to build right next to our front door. The nest looks small but it was made with so much mud and so many sticks that I'd be willing to bet it weighed 10 lbs.

Finally a Blog :)

Ok! So I did it! After being asked over and over again if our family has a blog I finally did it. I know that this will be a good way for me to keep record of what my kids are doing and keep all of our extended family and friends updated on us. We will just see how well I can keep it up. Anyone that knows us knows that we are always on the go. I am the stay-at-home mom that is never at home. No wonder my kids are showing signs of ADD. Oh well! Stay tuned to more pitctures and fun on our blog.