Carving Pumpkins

We carved our pumpkins last night for FHE. The look on Grace's face sums up her feelings about pumpkins. She was so excited to make a Jack O Lantern until she saw what was inside. So I ended up doing her whole pumpkin for her but she still calls it hers. We had a fun time.

Here are the finished products. Grace's is the one with the face (I wasn't feeling very creative) and Ben's is the one with Bats. Isn't it awesome? I think he did a great job!
I love fun classic traditions like this. Now I can't wait for the Gingerbread Houses!

Princess....

Garett? When I looked over at Garett this morning after doing the dishes I saw that his loving sister had crowned him. It was so funny, she was so mad when I took it off insisting that he was a Princess!

Hee Haw Farms

On the 11th Ben and I decided we needed to get out and do something fun for fall, so we ended up at Hee Haw Farms. This turned out to be a great place for Grace to explore. It was supposed to snow and storm this day, but it didn't, so there weren't very many people there.

Here's Ben, I think this is a classic picture.

We had a fun time looking at all of the animals. Ben was super fascinated by this HUGE pig and it's large.......(you fill in the blank). The poor pig, we were amazed it could even move, it looked painful when he tried to get up and walk.

Grace and the bunnies.

Grace climbing up the tall slides.


3 little crazies.
Playing in the corn box. She thought this was great until she started throwing corn at Mom and Garett, and then she got in trouble.

Grace walking through the corn.

They had this huge slide. We all wanted to try it so Ben and Grace went up first. Grace said she wanted to go down by herself, so Ben sent her down. We didn't realize how fast you can go and the bump at the bottom. Let's just say Grace got a little thrown around and didn't like it. But she wanted to try again, so she went down riding with both Mom and Dad.

Riding the animal train. Grace LOVED this, she didn't want to get out when it was over. She is pretty fearless.

Poor Garett, it was pretty cold, but he looked super cute in this little Bear suit!

And a funny story to end the post of a hundred pictures.

We decided to go out to dinner after the farm so we ended up at a new little restaurant by my mom's house called Spanky's. It's kind of like an old fifties diner and was pretty good. I thought it took a little while to get our food, and when it finally came I was hungry! Right as we started eating this middle age couple walks in and gets seated in the booth right behind Ben and Grace. Right off we could smell something....Ben looked up when they sat down and gave me that look... you know the one, but he didn't say anything. Right at this point Grace stands up on the Bench looks over her shoulder and then says with her nose plugged, "Something stinky!" Ben and I try to cover our laughter as we encourage her to sit down and eat. Luckily the couple didn't look upset. But just to let you imagine the smell....you could tell the lady was a heavy smoker who was trying to cover the smell by spraying on a lot of fruity perfume. It was awful and almost ruined our dinner. It's hard to enjoy a nice juicy burger when you have wafts of smokey peaches filling your nostrils instead of grilled meat. Overall we had a fun day and it was nice to get out and enjoy some beautiful fall weather!

Gracie and Daddy playing

I sent Ben and Grace up to the loft to play last night before bedtime so I could get a few things done. They had a great time playing and Grace found a new hiding place...

Where could she be?

Daddy may have found her..
Oh, there she is!

Ammendment to Garett's One Month Post

My poor little guy has a yucky eye, so I took him to the Dr. today. They weighed him and he is now 12 lbs 4 oz! That is a grand total of 4 pounds gained in one month!!!!!! Seriously who knew babies grew that fast?

Tagged

Okay, I NEVER do these so I'm not sure why I'm doing it now instead of taking a nap, but here we go.

The rules for this tag are simple. You must drop everything you're doing and the following pictures WITHOUT cleaning up first!

1. The kitchen sink

2.Favorite Room in the house- Currently it's Garett's room, since it's the cleanest and cutest.
3. Fridge- nothing too exciting.
4. My Closet- I blame the messiness on the floor to Grace who is constantly trying on my shoes, so what's the point of putting them away! Also, only about 1/4 of these clothes currently fit my post partum body, isn't that depressing? Or maybe motivating...
5. The Laundry Room
6. Self Portrait- Like my new do? I got it done this morning (thanks Jenny!) I love it and am so glad to have something different. I think this is honestly the shortest I've cut it since I was 7 and my brothers called me Cowbell. (Just imagine for yourself how great that haircut was)

So apparently there are a few more items to this tag, but this is as far as I got before Garett decided he was hungry, so it will have to do for now!

One Month Old!

Can you believe it's been a month already? Me neither. It has gone so fast!

Here he is a month ago,

And here's my not so little guy one month later, doesn't he look handsome?
Grace sure loves her baby brother, even if she did push him off the couch last week....
I love to snuggle my boy, thanks to Daddy who helps out so much at night so I can sit and hold him.
My cute family all ready for church.
Being a mom is the best!

Garett's Birth Announcement

(Thanks to GG Digital Design, for the great Layout! This would have taken me ages to do without you!)

Going Private

Ben has been telling me to do this for months and months, so I'm finally going to do it. I'm not sure if it's my emotions lately or what, but I just keep having this overwhelming feeling that I need to protect my precious little family, and if going private will help then I'm going to do it. Since this blog is mostly for my journaling and family history I tend to put a little more information in than Ben is comfortable with. So SORRY to all you Google Reader Users, I know it's a pain to not be able to check for updates on that, but for my peace of mind I've got to do it.
So leave a comment if you want an invite or email me at alysonshardy@yahoo.com. (that's my older email address, but I didn't want to put my regular one out there for strangers) I think I'll do it in about 2 weeks, so hopefully that will be enough time for everyone that wants to check us out to respond. Thanks! Oh, and blog stalkers are welcome to respond!

To Ben

I just want everyone to know how great you are! Thanks for taking the past 2 weeks off to take care of me! You have no idea how much it meant to me, and even though I was totally emotional and you're not sure what to do about that, you were perfect. You are a wonderful Daddy and a perfect Husband and I love you more than words can express, or to the moon and back!

Newborn Photos

How do you pick a favorite when they all turn out good? This is not even half of them!

2 Weeks Old

Can you believe 2 weeks ago I was in the hospital and had just given birth to a baby? It has gone too quickly and I've hardly taken any pictures of our little guy. So here are the stats on Garett.

At 2 weeks he is : 9 lbs 14 oz. 92% (if you do the math that is exactly 1lb 10oz over his birth weight. Can we say BIG boy? Taking after his sister! He does love to eat, every 3 hours on the dot....even at night.)

21&1/2 inches long 88%

and his head is 14&3/4. 82% (which is much bigger than Grace she was always in like the 25th%)

It has been an amazing two weeks taking care of his precious little spirit and body. He is so sweet and loves to snuggle and doesn't ever cry if his sister is to rough with him. She almost squished him several times trying to get into this position right next to him. She just had to tuck both of them in, and share her carebears.

Since all he does is mostly sleep, that's all I have pictures of.
This one was taken today at 2 weeks exactly. Look at his face filling out, and his little arms are getting some chub. I just love to hold him and hate putting him down.
Ben went back to work today which I was a bit emotional about. I was nervous to do this all by myself, but Grace has been surprisingly wonderful today. We had to stop at the store to get diapers, (we were totally out I forgot you go through like 100 a day with a newborn!) And then I took her to his Dr appointment. I thought for sure she would freak out since she is super over protective of him and they were going to poke him and make him bleed. But she was just about perfect and I was so grateful! Then she went down perfectly for her nap and I am currently rewarding her with popcorn and a movie. She deserves it. This is the best she's been in 2 weeks! Maybe it was just the transition back to our normal routine (+baby) that helped, but I'm hoping she continues to be good.