Fall Tradition

We are back! Our computer is back up and running, and now we are just waiting for my genius, computer loving brother to help us get all of our files off our old hard drive. And no, we didn't have all of our documents and pictures backed up before this happened...and yes, we will be getting an external hard drive soon!

This post is pretty old now, but I started it a couple weeks ago before the crash. One beautiful Saturday in September, Kristoffer and I took the boys over to Greenfield to explore Tuttle Orchards. We have been going to an orchard every year since we got married, but not that we are back in Indiana we had to go much earlier in the year than when we were in Minnesota.

The orchard had a neat little area for the kids. It had several different play grounds to play on.

Karter loved climbing the rock wall. Kaden really wanted to climb too, but he settled for us helping him up!


What a big boy!



The slide was incredibly fast, but that didn't stop Kaden from going down again and again!

The next stop in the kid zone was the maze...where I had a slight advantage over the kids!

Karter had a lot of fun trying to direct Kaden in the right direction.




Me and my boys! After about 6 takes...this is the best one!



After the maze, Karter took me on a tractor ride.


Then Kaden decided to help Karter steer...maybe the next time he decides to drive, he should at least look at where he's going!

After a visit to the snack shack for an apple cider slushy and a caramel apple, we were finally ready to pick some apples. The orchard had little red wagon for everyone to use, and Karter was excited to pull Kaden in the wagon.

They only had two varieties ready when we were there. Karter was very particular about the apples he picked, but once our basket was finally full we headed pack to the front of the orchard to pay.

They also had a "petting zoo"...it only had 2 animals...and we had a really hard time actually petting them!

It was such a gorgeous day, we packed a picnic for dinner and headed to Pendleton to finish out our fun day. We didn't realize that Pendleton was also having some sort of festival that day, so Falls Park was extremely busy and we had a difficult time finding a free area. We walked across the falls and found a quiet place right by the water. I'm not sure who ate more...us or the mosquito's! The bugs were bad! Before heading home we took the boys to play on the "toys". A fun way to end our perfect fall day. I'm so glad we can keep up our annual tradition of visiting an orchard...even though we technically have an orchard just outside our back door!!

Crashed

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last week. We are experiencing a minormajor technical difficulty...our computer crashed!! After spending one entire nap time on the phone with Dell, they had me run a series of tests on our computer and they concluded that our hard drive was fried...bummer! We ordered a replacement and according to ups it should be here by this afternoon. So hopefully we will be back in business by tomorrow. Thank goodness for our iPad!!! It is great for everything...except posting, it takes much too long. Hopefully our next post will be from our computer with a fresh hard drive!

Handsome Face

This morning has been kind of a lazy morning...if you can count baking and icing 6 dozen cookies by 9:30am lazy! I mean lazy in the fact that we don't have anywhere to go...all day! Usually we are running out the door to get to the Y or to BSF every morning, but today I knew I had an order of cookies I needed to do, so we have been hanging around all morning. In fact, we are still in our PJ's (at 11:30)!! We have had a good time playing, and the boys are really enjoying the slower pace of this morning. We just finished up a little photo shoot with Mr. Karter...which he asked me to do, wanted to see every picture after I took it and now demands that I put them on the computer!

He has such a handsome face!! When we used to ask him to smile he would give us a scrunchy face, but now I ask him to give me a "good face" and he looks normal!

He knows how to work the camera!!

Wordless Wednesday

SOLD!!

One year ago this coming Saturday, our lives changed and we Kristoffer accepted his new job back in our home state of Indiana. For the past 51 weeks we have been praying for our house to sell, praying for the right people to find our house and fall in love, and praying for patience as we wait for God to reveal His perfect plan. Last Friday our prayers were answered and we finally closed on our house in Minnesota...finishing up that chapter in our lives. Not only did we sell our house, but our first home is in the hands of a nice young couple who are so excited to make our house their home!

God has a plan for each of our lives, and it isn't for us to know at this time, but to trust in Him to guide us through each day...which is not always easy to do. This past year has really tested us and strengthened our faith, our love, and opened our hearts to the words spoken by our Lord, "Seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and all things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6:33-34).

To celebrate, of course I had to make some cookies!! I have had these cookies in my mind for a couple weeks, but I didn't want to make anything until all the papers were signed!

I packaged (most) of the cookies up and sent them to our realtor in MN as a little "thank you". She should be receiving them today, and I hope she enjoys them!!

(For some reason blogger keeps rotating this picture...sorry!)

This "Thank You" goes out to...

1. Mandy, our realtor who has put up with us for the past year trying to sell our house.

2. Kim & Terry, my husband's wonderful parents (technically my in-laws, but I really hate that word!), who have also put up with us for the past year. We have been living under the same roof for nearly a year, and I am happy to say it has gone rather smoothly. Of course, none of us would like to live this way forever, but it has been really special watching the boys develop that special bond with their grandparents.

3. God, from whom all blessing flow!

We are so happy to close the book on our lives in Minnesota and to be able to keep on writing new chapters about our lives here, back home in Indiana! :)

Minnesota Adventure - Day 4 & 5

I am finally getting around to posting about the end of our trip....two weeks ago!

On Day 4 of our adventure, apparently we didn't take any pictures, but the morning started out in our hotel in Minneapolis again. After a breakfast of cereal again, Kristoffer took the boys down to the pool so I could get our room packed up. It is amazing what the 4 of us can do to a hotel room after just 2 nights! We were packed up and on the road by 9:30, and needed to stop at our house one last time. Kristoffer took the boys across the street to the park, and I went inside to sweep and do a little cleaning. After about 45 minutes we were saying our final goodbyes to the house and then back in the van for the journey home. It was 50 degrees and raining...goodbye MN!

We broke up our drive home with a stop in Chicago, to visit my favorite brother and his family! We texted him as we pulled into our hotel, and they came out to the hotel to swim and have a pizza party with us. I really wish I had taken some pictures, Karter and Jonah are CRAZY when they get together....cousin love!

The next morning the Tomaw's came back out to our hotel and we all went to the nature preserve near by to do a little hiking. The path we were going on was paved, so the babies got to relax in their strollers.

The big boys saddled up on their daddy's shoulders...

The trail wrapped around an elk pasture.

Too cute!!

Why hello there Mr. Elk!

We walked for maybe 1.5 hours and it wore this little guy out! Just as we were finishing the path, his head started to bob and he was completely out by the time we made it to the van!

So out we were able to make the transfer to the van without waking him up! After a delicious lunch at Buona Beef, we were back in the van for the LONGEST 4 hours final leg of our journey. Even though we had an amazing time, after being on the go for 5 days, we were all so ready to be home. The drive from Chicago is familiar to us, but on this particular day it seemed to be the worst day of driving we had. Our time in the van had Kristoffer and I listening to a few too many "Karter songs" and Wonder Pets episodes!!!

Thankfully Indiana is our home once again, and our time in Minnesota will always hold a special place in our hearts!!!

Minnesota Adventure - Day 3

Day 3 of our adventure started out in our beautiful (and very white) DoubleTree hotel room. Luckily for Kristoffer the hotel had a wonderful selection of coffee in the room, and luckily for me (who only drinks fru-fru coffee) there was a Starbucks in the lobby! The boys started there morning with a few "Karter shows" and some cereal. (Karter is obsessed with Kaden's feet. He is always saying "I just love his little footie, I think I will keep it forever!")

After breakfast, Kaden decided to practice his counting skills. He is getting pretty good and when he wants to, he can make it all the way up to 20! Please excuse the terrible video quality, my video camera got "toasted" and this is taken with my actual camera.

Today was our "fun" day of the trip. We didn't have anything that needed to be done with the house, we could just be tourists in the big city! So, since we live in the country now, we did touristy things...like, take pictures of really big buildings!

And of course we had to get one last picture with Mary Tyler Moore!

(Kaden baby, could you please not look so concerned in EVERY picture?!)

We mosied our way down the Target Field. And Daddy and his boys sat in the golden glove.

Oh family pictures are going to be interesting this year!

What a stud!!

Karter wanted to pose with this guy (some famous Twin...Rod Carew maybe?), but was a little scared to do it himself!

After one with me, he thought he was safe!

Before leaving downtown, he had to stop at one more place...Candyland! It is an old fashioned candy store and Kristoffer used to go by there to get special treats when he worked downtown. They had pretty much any kind of candy you could want...we walked out with our share of yummy treats!

Kaden loved the cheddar popcorn!

After walking all morning, we were all pretty hungry and tired. We got back into the van and headed towards the hotel, with "Betty" directing us towards the closest Chinese restaurant! After eating too much, we made it back to the hotel just in time for our afternoon naps. During our trip the boys had been so good, but running on very little sleep. They would sleep well at night, but for 2 days they had very short naps. So, on this afternoon they made up for and napped for nearly 4 hours! Once we reached the 4 hour mark, we kind of started being a little loud on purpose to wake them up...normally I wouldn't do that, but we wanted to go swimming!

Before we headed down to the pool, I took this picture of our iPad. I am always so leery about leaving stuff in the hotel room, so I took this picture as evidence!

For dinner, we went to Apple Valley and met up with some of our friends, Brian and Mary Davis. Their daughter, Martha, was one of our first youth group members, and later became Karter's first babysitter. During our 5 1/2 years in MN, the Davis family became like family to us. They have and always will be very close to our hearts! Unfortunately, Miss Martha had to go off to college and we didn't get to see her, but I'm so glad it worked out that we got to see Brian and Mary...even if Kaden was NOT in the mood to cooperate with us during dinner!

Before bed the boys had a little energy to burn off, so we let them run around the room for awhile. They came up with some crazy games, but their favorite was hiding between the wall and the bed. Karter decided he wanted to sleep there, and wasn't very happy when we made his sleep in a bed!