Saturday, October 31, 2009

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer

For Kenna's first Halloween, I was planning on keeping it simple and just making a little costume for her... like a collar of "icing" made out of felt for a cupcake costume, or a red onesie with black dots to be a strawberry (she has a strawberry hat too). But at the last minute Matt said he wanted her to have a real costume, and of course, I was ok with that!

So one quick trip to Target later we had a skirted leotard, plus some hand-me-down pink tights and her polka dot leggings:
A tiny dancer. I was so excited about getting her all dressed in her costume and taking pictures, you would have thought I was sending her out to the prom!
We took her last night to Bayleaf's Fall Festival, which I had been excited about for weeks! We had volunteered to run one of the games and were assigned the David & Goliath bean bag toss. We had so much fun! Matt chased after bean bags for all the little kids, and Kenna and I admired all the costumes and handed out candy. She sat on my lap for 45 minutes straight, completely enthralled by all the action around her!
There were tons of people and lots of great food, and games for the bigger kids! We all had a blast hanging out and watching the kids stuff themselves with all the good stuff... hot dogs, cotton candy, cookies, soda, and candy!
Bayleaf's family life center was completely packed with people!
Nana B, Kenna, Granddaddy and Beckley... busy getting spoiled, of course!
Little cousin friends, Beckley the alligator, Ansley the pumpkin, and Kenna the ballerina!
Group picture- me, Matt, Kenna, Leanne, Beckley, Sandy, and Ansley
Kenna was not so thrilled about sitting on the hay with the scarecrow. She sat and pouted and then started melting down shortly after! We didn't even make it home before she completely crashed out:
What a good time we had! Happy halloween!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Very Fall-ish Things

In addition to going to the pumpkin patch a week or two ago, we've been able to do some other fall-ish things recently too... like going to the NC State Fair and a corn maze!

NC State Fair:
Going to the fair is a special tradition if you live in Raleigh... lots of people even take a day off work to be able to go spend a whole day there with their families! This year, Matt and I planned our afternoon at the fair around two Christian bands that came that night, Tenth Avenue North and Jeremy Camp. Grandaddy and Nana B. agreed to keep Kenna while we went so that our afternoon was relaxed with no time pressures! It sounds silly, but just having no diapers to stop and change all day was such a treat!

One of my favorite things is collecting all the stickers and wear them with pride... we brought extras of all of them home for Kenna this year too.
Every year we ride the Ferris Wheel together and take a picture at the top. Our picture this year was a little awkward since we weren't actually sitting next to each other. The little door to get in and out of the ride was right between us! Luckily we didn't fall out. It's beautiful to see the entire fair from the top of the ride.
Mercilessly, we didn't take photos of all the ridiculous amounts of fair junk food we ate... which honestly is why everybody goes to the fair. My favorites this year were the NCSU ice cream (which somehow I had never had before! Delicious!) and the awesome apple cider slushies (I had three and literally could have eaten dozens more. They were incredible!). Matt's favorite was the ice cream too, McBride's polish sausages, and the elephant ears (he loves the elephant ears, and I love the funnel cakes!)

For a fun comparison, here is the one we took on top of the ferris wheel in 2006, right after our second anniversary! I remember being bitter that my sunglasses had just broken and it was so sunshiney that day! Isn't Matt's smile is adorable? We look so much younger!


The Corn Maze:

We went to a corn maze in Morrisville with our Sunday School class, and we had a great time even though it was a little chilly and tried to rain on us a few times! There were a couple of fun things besides the corn maze (which was extremely detailed and partially shaped like a picture of Kay Yow from above) such as a corn kernel sandbox, a "cow truck" (a tractor pulling sideways barrels on wheels that were decorated to look like cows... they looked like an awesome, bumpy ride!), a hayride, and my favorite... a corn husk chucker gun. I'm sure that's not the official name, but imagine those "guns" they use to shoot out tshirts at football games, then imagine shoving a corn husk into it and shooting it out into a field, trying to hit a round hay bale with a target painted on it. Awesome! We all shot it a couple of times.

They also had duck races (our class is competitive!):
We were laughing that Kenna has already been on two hayrides in her short life! She was turned around looking at another little girl who was screaming bloody murder... apparently not so much a fan of the hayride. Kenna loved it! They started playing music over a speaker right after this, and she started clapping along and laughing.
We tried to get Kenna to crawl through the hay tunnel, but she wasn't so sure about it, and I started wondering how we would get her out if she crawled into the middle and then stopped! But it made for a cool picture:
We ate a great lunch at Smithfield's barbeque before calling it a day, and all the kids left with balloons with a bag of cookies tied to the string. We love our Sunday school class and have had such a great time getting to know these incredible families! Hayride, corn chucker, barbeque, and balloons... if that's not a successful day, I don't know what is!

Monday, October 26, 2009

11 Months Old!

This past week our little peanut turned 11 months old! Time really feels like it is just speeding by. I love to snuggle her at night before bedtime and whisper in her ear "don't grow up." It's hard to imagine Kenna as a little kid or even as a toddler instead of a baby... even harder to imagine that someday she will be school-age, and a teenager, and in college, and wanting to get married!

She is of course, completely oblivious to how quickly she is growing. For now, she is loving being an almost-toddler and all the perks that come with it...

pulling up and able to get into more of her toys:
sitting forwards in a big girl car seat:
helping Mommy and Daddy "clean up":
scootching around the furniture:
hanging out with her best friend Toufa:
telling everyone when she's awake and we need to come get her:
wearing awesome footie jammies:
keeping Mommy out of trouble at Target:
and getting our winter weather accessories ready!
This little one plays hard and crashes harder. I can't believe she'll be a year old in just a month!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Pumpkin Patch

The day after our anniversary, we were invited by uncle Jason, and Alisa, and Evan to go to the pumpkin patch to get our pumpkins! Matt and I suggested Hillridge Farms in Youngsville, since we had gone there for their annual Haunted Hayride right after we got married, and had remembered them having lots of fun things for kids. We had no idea they had changed so much over the years, they now have tons of fun things for kids! We picked up Kenna from her Grandaddy and Nana's house since they kept her overnight for us for our anniversary date, and headed out to the farm.
The Broglis
The DeansKenna was a little bit small to enjoy some of the activities, but we had a blast watching Evan play and we all enjoyed the farm! They had some really creative things set up such as a huge slide made of corrugated plastic tubing, a hay bale jump house, and a corn kernel sandbox (I'm not sure whether Evan, Jason, or Matt loved the slide best!) Matt's favorite was, of course, feeding the goats, and I loved seeing the little baby ones hiding under the shed for shade. We somehow managed to find the one 80 plus degree weather day to go to the farm in a week of weather that had us convinced it was finally fall! Hillridge also had bouncy houses, a maze, a train (similar to the one at Pullen Park), other animals to see, duck races, a general store, and a hot dog stand for lunch! Everything except lunch was $10 per adult (Kenna was free) and we each got a pumpkin!

Feeding the goats:
The giant slide!
We went on a tractor hayride through the whole farm to get to our pumpkins. (It counted as a "real hayride" to me since we actually sat on hay bales during the ride. That's an important detail for it to be real!)
At the end, we were deposited in a bright sea of pumpkins. Kenna and Evan weren't sure what to think or which one to pick!

Orange pumpkins everywhere!
I think we like this one. (Kenna kept making this crazy face most of the time. I think she was just amazed at all the pumpkins!)
Kenna and Daddy with the winner!

Even though it was too hot to wear her pumpkin shirt (since it was long sleeved) we took a fun family picture amongst all the pumpkins to remember Kenna's first fall. It's so hard to believe that this time last year we went to Boone for the fall leaves and pumpkins, and we were still 8 months pregnant and hadn't even met her yet!

October 2009:
October 2008:
What a great day with family and a fun tradition! My favorite part, of course, was bringing our little "pumpkin family" home and putting them on the porch with our gourds from the farmer's Market and our fall twig wreath on the door.
Welcome, Fall!

Friday, October 2, 2009

Five!

Today we're celebrating 5 years of marriage!
Dating:
Wedding:
1st Anniversary:
2nd Anniversary:
3rd Anniversary:
5th Anniversary!
5 ways we're celebrating
  • eating 5 doughnuts for breakfast
  • looking back over pictures and cards we wrote for our last 5 anniversaries
  • watching 5 movies?
  • picking 5 family traditions
  • we stayed up until 5 am last night talking like we did when we were dating!

5 goals for the next 5 years
  • keep losing weight and staying healthy together!
  • keep following Christ's purposes in our lives together.
  • raise children that know God's love and serve others through it!
  • learn a second language together
  • memorize a book of scripture together
I love that when someone asks what your favorite dessert is, there is one answer and I know it for sure... and when someone asks what my favorite dessert is, there are about 15 answers and you know them all. I'm so proud of the way God is growing us, closer together and for his purposes! Life with you makes perfect sense, you're my best friend!
I love you!