Sweet Sadie

My good friend from high school, Meagan, was in town for the state fair. I got to keep her youngest, Sadie, for most of the day while she took Avery, her 3 year old, to the fair! Madelyn and I had so much fun with a baby in the house! Madelyn insisted on helping me do everything!

Sadie and Madelyn...

M read a Rapunzel book to her. Sadie pretended to be interested and M was thrilled!


Sadie was such an angel and didn't give us any trouble at all! Drop her off again anytime!!

Silly Girl...

I really have no captions for these...I guess they speak for themselves...

Madelyn hit her head and thought it would be a good idea to put a bandaid on it. It got COMPLETELY stuck!
For Papa's birthday, Madelyn wrote him this sweet note. At the post office, she walked up to the counter with it and said, "I want to mail this to Papa!" too cute :)
We went to a milk and cookies birthday party! It was straight out of a magazine! I was impressed...

This was the cookie buffet where the kids got to pick out whatever they wanted, so of course that was everything!

They got to pick regular, strawberry, or chocolate milk...

And they decorated cookies too...or at least ate lots of icing :)
The birthday girl, Corinne, blowing out her candles! yeah, they got cake on top of the whole cookie theme! AND, they took home a bag of cookies as party favors. I am honestly surprised I was not up in the middle of the night cleaning up vomit :)
My friend Melissa was in town with Ananda and her new baby, Alden. I was so glad to finally get to meet the precious boy!
And Madelyn and Ananda had fun playing together...

Halloween!!

We had way too much fun this Halloween! It started Thurs when, to avoid everyone showing up in full costume, Madelyn's school had crazy hat day! They celebrated by having a fall festival! Parents didn't go but M said it was fun!

Friday night, Rapunzel went to a fall festival with Batman and Robin!! (Lincoln and Jackson)

Here is her very long braid...
She thought it looked good on Daddy too!
Here are a few of the games. This one was really cute! The kids had to use all their strength to push out the pipes in order for balls to fall down from the top...every single one of them bought into it and you could see on their faces how much energy they were exerting...really funny :)

The end of the night...these two are so cute together! (JORDAN: Lincoln says "Madelyn is my girlfriend, but she has two boyfriends...me and Carter!!")
This is her "scared face"...
Saturday, M carved pumpkins with Daddy! we didn't do this last year, so it was a first for her!


proud of the final product...

and I roasted the pumpkin seeds. they turned out great as well!
Then we went to a costume party! It was a 3 year old's bday, but everyone got to wear their costumes! The kids took turns in this giant inflatable ball and the others rolled them around...it was AWESOME!! Madelyn is inside here...
she had some crazy hair :)
Sunday, we went trunk-or-treating with my mom's group. If you haven't done this, you decorate your trunk and kids go from car to car getting candy. Here is my lame attempt at decorating a trunk. I don't think anyone cared though because I still had candy :)
Madelyn's friend, Anna, was Rapunzel too...
This family won the award for best trunk. Hmmm, I wonder why...this was the cutest thing I have ever seen!

Madelyn found a "big Rapunzel" to sit next to...

Then on Monday, we finally went trick-or-treating!! Here is me and Helen...

and here are all the adorable kids. We trick-or-treated with 2 firemen, a Cinderella bride, Captain America, Daphne (from Scooby-Doo), and R2D2 (not pictured)

We took a mom picture! not great, but since none of us are ever in the pics, I had to include...

When that group got tired of trick-or-treating, we met up with another friend, Fireman Jensen, to hit up another block!
Yes, we got way too much candy. But after Clint and I (ok, mostly me) were done pigging out, most of the candy somehow disappeared overnight! and thank goodness, Madelyn didn't notice!

Pumpkin Patch

There was a Bahama Bucks on our way home so we had to stop!! If you are from Lubbock you know what I am talking about...the BEST shaved ice anywhere :)

State Fair of Texas!

We went to the fair the first Saturday it was open and had a fantastic time!! We got there when it opened and did all the most popular kid things before it got too crowded.

Waiting in line for the ferris wheel...

The ferris wheel is SO tall and it was neat to look out at the city...

The little hands on the farm exhibit is really cool. She did it last year too but had a better idea of what everything meant this year. You are the farmer and you plant and pick crops, milk cows, feed chickens, etc. Then you take everything by tractor to sell at the farmers market. You are paid $1 and get to buy something from the store!

This mama kangaroo was my favorite part of the petting zoo. She had a baby in her pouch!! I've never seen that before! You can see the baby's tail sticking out...

GRRRR...

There was a rapper for kids that was very entertaining! Here is M jumping up and down and dancing...
FREE ice cream cones! The fair is ridiculously expensive, so the ice cream cones were a much appreciated treat!!
Big Tex!
Last year Madelyn only rode one ride...the whale ride pictured below, and Clint had to ride with her. This year she was ALL ABOUT the rides and wanted to ride by herself, if she was tall enough! Wow, she is getting big! We had to drag her out of the ride area when we were all out of money! She even wanted to ride the crazy rides that go upside down! She wasn't tall enough for these though, thankfully!
She went on a kiddie roller coaster!

I think it's the law that you can't leave the fair without indulging in (at least) one corn dog!
another ride...
After 6 hours at the fair, we saw a very unusual site in our backseat...