Nuggets Game, Baking, Potty Training & Neighborhood Friends

A few random things from our week…

Nuggets Game

Brandon’s best friend Travis called on Wednesday night saying he had 20 tickets to the Denver Nuggets Pre-Season Basketball game that were in a private suite and wanted to see if we wanted to go. Of course we jumped at the opportunity to go see an NBA Game in some awesome seats at no cost. The only thing was that the game didn’t start until 8pm which is normally bed time for the kids in our house. At any rate, we decided to live on the edge a little and go for it and let the kids have a wild night of extra late bedtime. So glad we did because we had a blast and the kids were SO well behaved. Since we had the entire suite to ourselves, when the kids needed to stretch their legs they were able to run around without disturbing any other fans, it was awesome. A HUGE HUGE thanks again to Travis for including us in such a fun night.

Travis, Owen, Autumn & Brandon enjoying the Basketball Game. Travis & Brandon have been Best Friends for many many years. We just love Travis, he is such an awesome person!

The kids had an absolute blast at the game, especially when daddy surprised them with a big bag of cotton candy :)

Pretty bad pic, but here are the kids and I in front of the Pepsi center after the game. We snuck out a little early because it was snowing and we weren’t sure how bad the roads would be, not to mention it was LATE.

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Baking

Since everything and I mean everything is all about ‘pumpkin’ right now, the kids and I decided to bake up some Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars the other day.

They both love to help me bake. We had a great time and boy were the bars delicious.

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Potty Training

Since I am not sure I will ever get around to blogging about Autumn’s Potty Training Adventures, here is a small recap of what ours days look like…

Owen is SO awesome at encouraging Autumn through the process. So Sweet!

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Neighborhood Friends

We have made really good friends with our next door neighbors, Bonnie & Chris. They are a really sweet family and have made us feel so welcome on our cul de sac. They have a 6 year old boy and a 3.5 year old daughter and the kids all get along great. So much that we find ourselves hanging out in the cul de sac together almost every afternoon. Bonnie and I talk each others ears off while the kids ride bikes/scooters/power wheels, play with side walk chalk, kick the soccer ball, anything they can think of. It is so wonderful having such great neighbors. Here are a few pictures of the kids playing with our good friends & neighbors.

Here is Autumn & Millea. They have a blast together. Autumn really likes hanging out with older kids so she always has a good time with Millea.

And here are the boys being boys. Even though Andrew is 2 years older then Owen, they have so many similar interests and could spend all day playing together.

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That’s it for now, but I will be back very soon with some Halloween Fun from this past weekend :) As for now, my bed is calling my name. Bye!

A weekly check in…

So remember my latest blog post from last week titled “The Beauty of Fall”? It was beautiful, and then we had a giant wind storm that knocked down all those beautiful gold & burgundy leaves off all the trees. I know that happens (hence the name of the season Fall) but I did not realize the amount of work that all those beautiful leaves could create. Needless to say, raking leaves is an insane amount of work. I decided one afternoon that it would be nice to surprise my vey hard working husband by raking up all the leaves in our front and back yard so he wouldn’t have to on his days off without realizing just how many leaves there were. So,

 

13 (39 Gallon Lawn & Leaf) Bags, 2 sore arms, and 1 thrown out back later the majority of the leaves are raked up courtesy of me. And no that was not a typo, 13 bags!!!

And I am so glad I made my beautiful fall post and raked up all the leaves when I did because fall didn’t last all that long and now winter has hit,

Crazy, right?! Okay, probably not crazy if your from here, but I don’t think I have ever seen snow in October?!

Needless to say, we are LOVING this weather. Ask me this same question in Feb and I am sure my attitude towards the snow will change drastically, but as of now we are going to enjoy this beautiful white powdery snow and very cool temps.

Here I am last night frolicking in the snow as we got our first snow storm of the season. I got invited to a girls movie night out so I got to drive home in this loveliness and it made me so happy :) Driving in it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Well, that was until I couldn’t get the car up our extremely steep driveway, my car was sliding all over the place. I finally had to park in the street, walk in with my head down and ask my hubby to assist me. O well, better than ramming our vehicle into either our rental house or our other car right?! Okay, that’s just what I have to tell myself instead of feeling like a total loser. Haha. Did you also catch that I was at a Girls Night Out, I am finally making some friends here and its wonderful. They are wonderful. This Colorado life is growing on me :)

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So what else has happened this week?

Autumn got a much needed hair cut. The ends of her hair were getting pretty scraggly so I took her to this cute hair salon for kids called Cool Cuts 4 Kids. It was great. Autumn had a great time sitting in the Fire Truck seat watching Barbie Princess Adventures while getting pampered and Owen got to play video games the entire time. Win win.

 

Owen was SO bummed when we had to leave. This kid likes video games WAY TOO much for a 4 year old. Guess that is what happens when his Dad is a HUGE gamer nerd.

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The kids got some very generous Halloween treats delivered to them from their Great Aunt Rose. She is so sweet and absolutely made their day…

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We got to spend an afternoon with Mimi & Cousin Bailey while my sister in law was out of town for work,

Bailey had a blast in her first adventure on the swings. Cutie Pies!

We kept Miss Bailey up a bit past her normal nap time so she passed out on the walk back to Auntie Megan’s house.

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This is kind of a random picture, but Owen absolutely adores his Daddy Time on Brandon’s days off. I love to watch the relationship between a Father and a Son. So sweet!

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We had a family dinner out. I know this doesn’t sound very big or exciting, but for us it is. We rarely ever eat out at a restaurant other than fast food places because it can get a bit crazy and stressful with a 2 and 4 year old. Well, Monday night we decided to cash in a gift card to Olive Garden that we have had for way too long and enjoy a nice family dinner out. So glad we did. It was a sweet time spent as a family and our kids shocked us and were on their absolute best behavior. Yay!

Here they are coloring while we were waiting on our food. Goodness, we are so blessed!!

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And this morning Owen had his very first Play Date since we moved to Colorado. I have made some really good friends, but most of them are newlyweds with no kiddos yet. Not a big deal, but it doesn’t benefit the kids all that much. Any who, Since Owen started school he comes home talking about his Best Friend from school Luke. Well, Luke’s mom came up to me a couple weeks ago and said Luke talks about Owen non-stop too. We decided since we are both stay-at-home mom’s that we HAD to get the kids together outside of school. So we decided to take the kids to Chick-fil-a for lunch today after we picked the boys up from school. I am so thankful for Luke. He is such a sweet boy and has been a great friend to Owen. His mom is great too and I can definitely see a good friendship for me starting their. Yay. Up until this point in life, Owen has mainly just had friends based on who my friends were because we would get together for play days that way. That’s not a bad thing and he had some great friends, but it is so sweet to see Owen create this friendship all on his own. Owen is 7 days older than Luke and they get along SO SO well and have become inseparable in school. Luke is about a full head taller than Owen (his dad is 6’8’) and he has an older sister who is 7 and is in second grade. Every time I go pick up Owen, him and Luke are always attached at the hip. He was beyond excited today to get to play with Luke outside of school, and I was very grateful for the adult conversation I got to have with Michelle, Luke’s mom. She is great and we talked each others ears off without a single ounce of awkward silence which is a sign of a great friendship.

 

Here is Owen and his BFF Luke. The other picture was because Autumn was very upset that she wasn’t a part of the first picture. Haha. Poor little sister didn’t want to be left out.

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Other than that we are very busy trying to potty train our very stubborn 2 year old little girl. I’ll blog more on that later so I can have some record of this milestone for Autumn, but she is doing pretty well so far :)

Here she is playing on the iPad while trying to go “tee tee”. Lol!

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All in all we have had a FABULOUS week! Thanks for checking in :)

The Beauty of Fall

I get that I may be sounding a bit redundant since I have already blogged about how much I LOVE fall but I don’t really care. I LOVE FALL. I always have but moving to a state that has huge trees every where you look has really amplified my love for the season. It is BEAUTIFUL here. Absolutely breathtaking. Any who, since I am loving this beautiful season of crisp air and colorful trees every where you look, we have been spending a lot of time outside soaking in the beauty. So this blog is basically going to be a TON of random pictures of the beauty that surrounds me.

I will start off with pictures from this past Sunday. After church the kids and I packed up a lunch and headed to the park for play time and a picnic. We went to a park we have never been to and the views were amazing.

O’ how I love these two. They melt my heart daily!

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On Tuesday while Owen was at school, Autumn was playing around in the front yard. As she was playing I began to span a few pictures of how beautifully gold the trees on our cul de sac are…

Aren’t they beautiful?

Speaking of beautiful, check out this beauty!!!

After naps on Tuesday we decided we needed to get outside because the weather was so nice. We decided to go take a nice long 3.5 mile walk along the Platte River as a family. We took the camera along and ended up getting some really nice pictures. Some of them are so gorgeous they almost look fake.

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Playing out in the cul de sac is an every afternoon affair…

Bike racing love.

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Some other random fall(ish) things that happened this week,

Owen had silly hat day at school this week. I didn’t realize it was “silly hat day” until the night before, so I scrounged around the house to find something to make and between Brandon and I we came up with a Cone Candy Corn Hat. Thank goodness for felt scrap laying around! Owen loved it!

Autumn and I had our own Silly Hat Fun at Michael’s while Owen was at school. Haha

The Bronco’s pulled out an AMAZING win against the San Diego Chargers on Monday night football which left me with 1 very happy happy husband :)

And this morning, the kids and I took a trip to the Denver Zoo since it was such a beautiful day…

Monkeying around with the Monkey’s!

Say “Zoo”

The zoo was absolutely gorgeous this time of year.

It was a lovely morning with my two little cuties :)

And to end an amazing week with my family, I made a delicious fall meal for dinner last night and had my wonderful Mother-In-Law over to enjoy it with us (we also watched the season finale of Project Runway together too. Woo Hoo!).

Carmel Pecan Pork Chops & Apples, Parmesan Roasted Potato Halves and Steamed Green Beans. The Pork Chop & Potato Recipe were both Pinterest finds and they were AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS! I highly recommend them both fellow pinners.

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I hope you are all enjoying all the beauty of Fall along with me. Have a great weekend!