Happy 1st Birthday Baby Hunter!

We celebrated with one of our favorite families last weekend! Baby Hunter turned 1!

Hunter had a pretty cool farm animal cake and got some pretty cool presents.

And the kids at the party got presents from Hunter! Jeremiah, Andrew and Claire enjoyed decorating the driveway with their sidewalk chalk!

It took a while but Hunter finally got in to his cake! He sat like such a little angel the entire time! Unlike when Claire turned 1 and wouldn't sit still long enough to see what kind of presents she got!

Hunter shared some hugs with Claire before we headed out for the night!

A little bit of life

The past few weeks of been my "busy" season at work. All 10,372 acres that we grew this year had to be inspected prior to being harvested. I walk through the fields looking for little guys like this who don't quite look like all of the other soybean plants in the field. I have to check to make sure that there aren't too many pesky little off types out there.

I came across this interesting old crib on one of my trips to Vermillion County.

Claire re-discovered her apron that Grandma Great made for her this week. She loved cooking me dinner in it.

Of course she didn't wear it to help me make her real dinner. She loves helping make scrambled eggs and cereal.

Friday night I let Claire stay up until Trever got home. He helped brush her teeth, but since he isn't home for this most nights he didn't know that Claire HATES her Dora tooth brush. He found out though! And I laughed really hard!!!

Saturday is game day! Claire has to wear her sunglasses in the car!

She also enjoys running off with any spare change that gets left around. I'm hoping that this means she's going to end up with lots of it some day!

We had a rough week around our house this week...including Claire climbing out of her crib one night. So, yesterday her crib got transformed in to a toddler bed. She slept in it last night but was zonked when we got home. This morning she knocked on her door so we would let her out. Nap time was a bit of a challenge, but she stayed in her bed and eventually fell asleep.

After nap, Claire and daddy watched one of daddy's all time favorite movies, The Lion King. She didn't quite sit still for the whole movie and daddy wasn't quite sure how to respond when she asked "what happened to his daddy?" (when Mufasa dies)

We also have been working on going potty today. We had an accident at nap time (my fault, I should have put a diaper on her), one accident when she was outside playing with daddy, and one time she peed through her panties while sitting on the potty...but at least she was sitting on the potty....next step teach her to pull her pants down!

A special wedding

On October 1st Trever had a 1st of his own. He "officiated" his first wedding. He will tell you he was the master of ceremonies, and I guess that works, but he did put together a pretty nice service.

Kendra & Zach Monk both wanted a little bit of religion in their wedding ceremony even though neither one of them have a church family of their own. Trever can't legally marry anyone since he is not an ordained minister. Luckily, Zach and Kendra know one of the Iroquois County Judges and he made the marriage official. The county clerk played the piano so the Judge delivered the signed marriage license the same day!

Zach is the daughter of one of my best teacher friends, Barb. She picked a pretty cool mother son song for their dance and even sang along!

We enjoyed being part of Zach and Kendra's big day!

Happy Birthday, Grandma Great!

My Grandma, and Claire's Grandma Great, turne 85 this month! We had dinner at mom & dad's for her birthday. We were short a few family members but it was nice to have a Sunday dinner. They don't happen as often as they use to.

Claire was so excited to help Grandma Great blow out her candles since she couldn't help Hunter blow out his. But then she ended up falling asleep during dinner. Since Claire always gets what Claire wants, she got her own candle to blow out after her nap.
And she even got a present from her 2nd Cousin Kim.

I miss my daddy

That was the theme of the night. Claire was full of tears tonight and anytime she didn't get her way she would burst in to tears and say "I miss my daddy". She absolutely refused to eat dinner. So, instead of fighting with her I told her to go play. I had just put a pair of dora panties on her and she was bound and determined that the cat needed a pair of panties too. When I informed Claire that was a bad idea, there were more tears. Since the cat wasn't an option, she decided to put on some more panties. In the end she had 4 pairs of panties on at once. And about 2 minutes after this picture was taken she peed through three sets of panties. The 4th pair was still dry because she had one of the leg holes around her waist.

Cutting Edge Open House

Another weekend another roadtrip. This time to Tradersville, Ohio for the Cutting Edge Show Pig Sires Open House. Or, in other words, we went to visit our nieces and nephew. But, while we were out there, they threw us a BIG party and Claire partially overcame her fear of pigs!

Claire and Maddi each had their own whips....Claire called them lips.
Kempton...well, he just kind of got passed around. He is such a good little guy! And boy is he happy!

And, Claire is a bit silly sometimes.

And Maddi has 4 goats!

Sunday night the girls got all dressed up so they could...splash in puddles.

Uncle Ron gave a speech.

And the girls played in a brand new trailer!

Some sibling love...

And a picture of a SMILING Maddi!

Caisey & Maddi getting ready for the show ring.

Caisey carrying Claire because "the pigs are scared"

now she's getting a little more in to it!!!

cheesin for the camer before along ride home.

And crashed after a BIG weekend!

A little vacation

A couple of months ago I got a phone call from Wyndam Resorts offering me a 4 day-3 night vacation for around $150 bucks. I told them I wanted to discuss it with my hubby and they dropped the price some more. Being married to a salesman and knowing that the girl on the other end was being paid on commission, I jumped. 3 nights hotel, a $75 American Express card & a voucher for another hotel stay and all I had to do was sit through a 2 hour time share presentation. DEAL! Oh wait, we'll throw in a second package for half price.....DEAL again! Can you say SUCKER!

We actually enjoyed the time share presentation, and no we didn't buy one...but thanks to Big Al, it is now on our list of possible future investments when the insurance business makes us rich. But most importantly, it FORCED us to take a family vacation. Something that neither one of us are use to...unless there is some kind of livestock involved...and wouldn't you know it, there was.

We left Saturday morning and made it to Mazon before Claire said "I GOTTA GO POTTY!" This isn't a normal thing for her, but we pulled off at Casey's and sure enough she went potty! We only changed one wet diaper the entire trip up! The next stop was in Ottawa for some lunch and gourmet popcorn. Trever and I shared some strawberry shortcake popcorn and Claire had some plain old borning stuff.

We made it to the Wisconsin Dells around 5, checked in to our hotel and did a little swimming. Our hotel pool was perfect for Claire! There were indoor and outdoor pools but we stayed inside for the most part since the outside pools were FREEZING! Claire really enjoyed the little slides and the castle!

We hit up a few of the local eateries...including a vegan restaurant where I gave tofu a try...enjoyed the outlet mall and the Original Wisconsin Ducks.

Claire like's to refer to them as the car boats and she was a good sport while we were riding them but complained about them being a little loud.

We stopped at this place for lunch called the Cheese House. Being in Wisconsin, I expected it to be Grilled Cheese, Cheese sticks, cheese burgers, cheesecake....CHEESE....there was a little cheese on the menu....but that was the ONLY animal product on the menu. Little did I know that this cute little restaurant with pretty flowers was a vegan/gluten free restaurant.

After naps for Claire & mommy, we hit the pool again. Daddy even took Claire down the big slide. After daddy went to the room, Claire got a little gutsy and decided to go down the slide like the big kids....face first.

Daddy is going to shoot me for posting this picture but I love it!

Monday night Claire decided we needed to go to a pirate restaurant. Turns out it was a very expensive "seafood" buffet. I'm talking $20 for fish sticks.

When were packing up Tuesday morning Claire thought it would be fun to dress up in some of mommy's things. She kept saying "no pictures, no pictures"

We had a really good time. And we even made a stop at a bull stud on the way home.