We've stayed pretty busy this fall. Here are a few of the things that filled up our days. I can't believe that it is almost Thanksgiving. November has flown by and I'm sure December will feel the same way.  Curt took a trip to Seattle for work. It was a long week without him, but we survived. :)   Curt loves to pose with statues in all the cities he visits. Just kidding. :) Ben is getting better and better at riding his bike. It's taken much longer than I thought it would. He is very cautious (no daredevil in him), but he is gaining more and more confidence.   This is how we dress up for movie nights.  Ben played basketball again with school. They play in the fall and then start again after Christmas break. Ben loves it! What a cute smile. I wish the picture didn't turn out blurry.   Lucy enjoyed going to several practices/games. 

Ben and Lucy love dressing up in costumes, so Halloween is always a fun time to add something new to all of their dress up clothes. This year, the weather was horrible. It was freezing, windy, rainy, and started snowing. So, I only took Lucy to a few houses and Ben went down a couple streets with Curt before they were too cold to stay out any longer. Ben did come home with a TON of candy though. I guess many people were passing out handfuls to all of the freezing kids.     Lucy was Elsa and Ben was a Minion.  Ben had Bananas visiting from his class at school and he decided to be a pirate.    Bananas also stuck around to play with some Legos over the weekend.  The Vera Bradley crew always gets into the Halloween spirit. This year, Curt's group dressed up like different SNL characters.  Curt was one of the Wild and Crazy Guys. (Thankfully we already had the plaid pants and disco shirt in the closet. :) ) We kep...

 October always feels like "the month of Ben" around our house. We usually fit in a weekend trip to each side of the family to celebrate his birthday and then he has his actual birthday at home...so that's a lot of birthday cake! He wanted to stick with a Super Mario theme (again), so I just pulled out some old decorations I had from the last couple birthdays. Then I added some green, because Ben's love for Luigi and the color green runs deep.  When we celebrated with my family, my mom made a chocolate peanut butter cake that we all love! Ben got a new Super Mario blanket from my sister. He loves soft blankets and quickly added it to the 3 other ones that he already sleeps every night.  Another weekend, we went to Cadillac and celebrated these 3 cousins that all have October birthdays. Lucy always has fun with Jenna and Uncle Mark. Cousins eating cupcakes. Yay! New Legos! On his birthday at home, we had some yummy chocolate cake after he ...

Instead of a bigger friend party, we decided to keep Ben's birthday simpler this year. He really just wanted to have his best buddy Evan come over for a sleepover & go to Jungle George's...so that was a pretty easy request to fulfill. The kids had fall break a couple weeks before Ben's birthday, so that worked out great for the sleepover. Ben and Evan always have a great time together!     Yay! Time to get wild!    A competitive game of air hockey.  Evan won 100 tickets from one of the games! It was crazy to see the tickets keep coming and coming.      Ben helped pick out/put together some goodies for the party. We also had really delicious cupcakes from Courtney's Bakery, but we gobbled them up too quickly for a picture. :) 

 This year we finally visited the zoo for Wild Zoo Halloween. The kids wore some other costumes that they had at home and saved their new ones for Halloween. Ben wore Luigi (of course) and Lucy was Rapunzel. They had trick-or-treating for the kids, a hay maze, meeting Broomhilda (a friendly witch), and they got to pick out a little pumpkin. The zoo had really cool painted pumpkins all over. The kids loved seeing some of their favorite characters on the pumpkins. Overall, it was a really fun time and hopefully we will make it there again next year.  Elsa and Anna pumpkins were a hit with Lucy!    Picking out their pumpkins. Checking out the GIANT pumpkins.  Meeting Broomhilda the witch.  Curt took Lucy and Ben through the maze.  Mario and Peach pumpkins...Ben was sad that there wasn't a Luigi one too. I love that Lucy is yelling "CHEEEESE!" It's so hard to get a good smile out of her lately. :) 

In October, we visited the Hilger Family Farm for the first time. Now that Lucy is getting a little older, places like this are more fun. We thought it was a nice farm with lots of fun things for little kids. Lucy had lots of activities to do that were just the right size for her. We got there soon after it opened and by the time we left the place was packed! I don't always enjoy crowded (claustrophobic) places, so I'm glad we got there early.    Ben and Lucy are standing in front of a kid's maze. Lucy loved it and went through several times.    In the barn, they had some swings set up.  A super easy hay maze. :)  Ben liked this slide and some big tube slides that were hooked to a swingset. (I didn't get any pictures of those.)    They also had a corn maze that we went through really quickly. We might have to find a more challenging one next year. Then, we went on a hay ride before picking out some pumpkins an...