Category Archives: family

Belated Pumpkin Fun

Now seems like as good of a time as any to relive our corn maze/pumpkin patch fun since the high for the day is whopping 15 degrees (with a real feel of -2). We won’t dwell, though. Onward to pumpkins and corn mazes!

If there’s one thing to say about Minnesota in the Fall it’s that there are no lack of corn mazes and pumpkin patches. We decided to go with one that seemed to have more included in the price and hoped it wouldn’t be too crowded. We also figured it would be a great time to break in our new wagon rather than bringing a stroller.

It was our first corn maze, and surprisingly the kids didn’t even get bored – I think they were too excited about the wagon to care about anything else. Phoebe usually likes being carried, but LOVED getting to sit facing her brother… even though he was being a little cranky. Thankfully there was a helicopter flying around that made him happier. The kid loves helicopters unless they’re the remote controlled kind, in which case he doesn’t even want to be in the same room with even if it’s turned off.

Aside from the corn maze, there were a few attractions like a bouncy house, slide and pony rides as well as food. Once again, though, we had to deal with some hornets (sigh) and Enzo had a minor meltdown. Seriously, what was with all the hornets this year? I’m actually a little glad colder temperatures have hit if only because there are no more hornets/wasps and spiders. Anyhoo, oh yeah, there were pumpkins!

Our front stoop is generally really boring and lacking in decoration (especially since we also never finished our whole landscaping plan), so pumpkins were a must this year. We figured it would be fun to have Enzo help pick them out and he thoroughly enjoyed the process. He’d copy his dad and brush off the dirt and attempt to pick them up to get a better look. All in all, we got some fine pumpkins… that are now covered in snow. Whoops.

Date Night… crafting?

One of the many great things about having a specific bedtime for our kiddos is that we are guaranteed time to ourselves every night. It may not be much, but it’s better than nothing. More often than not we’ll either do our own thing, or wind up in front of the TV watching something on Hulu/Netflix/Amazon. Sometimes this routine can get boring, though, so about a month ago we both found ourselves with little projects we could work on and we decided to make a night of it.

Josh had his Lego Ghostbusters set to put together and I had a little DIY constellation kit thingy that I have literally had since before Enzo was born and it has been sitting and collecting dust. I can’t even remember where I purchased it from, but thankfully had the good sense to print off the instructions in English at the time.

Because crafting in silence is boring, we put on a movie in the background. You can’t go wrong with ‘Tremors,’ am I right?

Josh’s creation was fairly straight-forward since Lego is awesome and includes really well-written instructions, but mine I definitely struggled with.

For starters, I was missing pieces and I quickly discovered that the English instructions were also lacking in areas, and one of the big portions of the project was missing something fairly important. To hell with accuracy, I just wanted to complete the freaking thing at that point.

We have light! Hooray! My little project actually ended up being really cool and I meant to get a picture of it all put together, but didn’t. Basically imagine the night sky stretched across the ceiling, floor and walls. Enzo was ecstatic when I showed him… and then it stopped working. I tried everything (that I could think of anyway). Electrical do-dads are not my speciality. At least Josh’s project doesn’t break. 😉

Randomness and thoughts on self-sabotage

Much like this post, we are random sort of people. It’s good that the kids fit in so well, although I imagine when they’re older they will look at us with confusion, but also that look that teenagers give their parents when their parents are being… parents. They’ll roll their eyes and give us pitying looks, their poor ridiculous parents. And then I’ll have to remind them that once they thought we were pretty cool.

I know, I know, this post has zero direction to it, much like our lives at times. We have plans for the future, but in all honesty they’re a bit foggy. We sometimes plan for the weekend, but more often than not, we just wait and see. There is a lot of waiting and seeing. I like to think we’re living in the moment, but I’m not sure that’s exactly what it is.

Perhaps I should finally finish reading that books I picked up so long ago… Face the Fear and Do It Anyway. Uncertainty scares me and rather than actually living in the moment, I kind of put a bubble around myself. Rather than seeing endless possibilities as a great thing, I see it as a frightening prospect, even if I’m not entirely happy with how things are at the moment, in which case I should change things, but change can be unnerving. It’s a really silly thing.

I think what I need to do is set realistic goals and not subconsciously sabotage them, which I’m really good at doing. I couldn’t figure out why suddenly I was having trouble sticking to a budget, and ultimately, I’ve figured it out. If we save and meet our goals then there will be no excuse but to jump into the unknown, however, if the money isn’t there and other things don’t work out then nothing will change, which isn’t better, but it’s comfortable because I know it and exactly what to expect.

So, no more excuses. Time to actually set some dates on some goals and put forth real effort to make them happen. Every time I see Enzo struggle with change, I am reminded of how hard I struggle with change, and I want to learn how to roll with it and show him how to do the same. I have to be a strong role model in these kids’ lives, which means I need to step out of my comfort zone and become a stronger person.

Visitors from Colorado

Without a fail, the weather will never cooperate when you have family visiting from out of town, so my dad and stepmom got to experience some blustery fall Minnesota weather while they were here at the beginning of the month. The kids could have cared less about the weather, though. They were simply happy to have Grandma and Grandpa visiting.

We stayed pretty close to home for their visit, which was fine for all of us. They braved the wind one afternoon and went for a walk, while the rest of us stayed in jammies… which is kind of just what we do when we aren’t planning on going anywhere – guests or no guests. Ha ha.

There’s nothing quite like having grandparents around that makes kids get extra silly for some reason whether it be in person or on a phone call. Both of the kiddos were eating up the extra attention and Enzo would wake up in the morning and immediately want to know where Grandpa and Grandma were… alas, he did that for a few days after they left as well.

We did get at least one nice day out of the weekend, though, and decided to go to the zoo so we could walk around and get some fresh air. It could not have been a more perfect day. The animals were loving the cooler temperatures and were being more active than I’ve ever seen them before. I also didn’t get the camera out once… it seemed like so much work as we had once again schlepped way too much stuff with us and I didn’t want to dig it out from under coats and who knows what else. Anyhoo.

The animals were all in a playful mood and it also wasn’t super crowded, which was even better and meant we could linger at a few of the enclosures just a bit longer than usual. I mostly wore Phoebe so we could pile stuff up in the stroller, but the stroller was nice when it got chilly looking at outside animals and then I could put her in her puffy coat. She loved watching the fish, as did her brother, so we are probably due for another aquarium visit soon. Maybe that will be her first real walking adventure too!

One of these days we’ll hopefully end up closer to Colorado and in a more central location to all of the family on both sides. It’s always been the plan, the puzzle pieces just haven’t matched up yet. I’d love for my kiddos to be able to get to know my side of the family a little better, though, before they get too much older. On an unrelated note… kids are so uncooperative and hard to photograph. I don’t think I have a career in child photography ahead of me. Ha ha.

And…. Surprise – everyone look surprised!

Ha ha. Outtakes are so much more fun, right?

Miss you guys already!

Are you having more?

There are days when the kids are just so cute/hilarious/awesome that I try to convince Josh that we should have at least a dozen more. Okay, that would be ridiculous, but how can we just stop at two when we make such cute babies? It would be a tragedy to stop now!

Girl hormones will tell you crazy things and make you completely forget all of the sleepless nights, the pain of childbirth, the fact that your body is totally different then pre-children. Admittedly we did go back and forth over having a third for a while… but ultimately have decided that two is a good number for a variety of reasons.

Let’s be honest, kids are expensive and having three kids in day care made us both cringe, and I don’t know that I’m the type to be a stay-at-home mom. Plus, we wouldn’t wait until Enzo was old enough to leave day care/pre-school because that would mean we’d be that much older and that would be a fairly big gap (to us) between Phoebe and a potential third baby.

We also thought about travel and the fact that right now while our cars don’t have a lot of space, at least we aren’t being forced to buy a bigger vehicle. One day we will because we have lots of plans to go on road trips, and it would be nice to have extra seating, but for now I really like my car and would like to keep it for a while longer.

Ultimately, we looked at our ages, and while we aren’t old by any means, Josh will be 50 and I’ll be almost there when Enzo graduates from high school. We have plans to have a life once the kids graduate and go out on their own, and we want to still feel fairly young when that time comes.

Sure there are days when a little part of me taps on my shoulder and tries to convince me that we shouldn’t stop, that I’m not ready to stop, but this was always our dream… since before we were married. We talked about having a boy and then a girl, and that’s exactly how it worked out, so I’d say our family is complete. As Phoebe gets older and more independent, I treasure these lingering days where I still get to feed her a bottle and snuggle her before bed, but definitely get excited as she gets closer to being done with bottles entirely.

While I wanted to keep them babies for as long as possible, now I love watching these new toddler milestones happen as Enzo gets older. He has such a great imagination already and he also knows exactly how to break me – I can only resist the dimples and whispered “Please” so many times before I cave. Yep, I’m ready to be the mama of a toddler and a preschooler – I’ll leave the babies to someone else.

Dino and Bunnies

Every day adventures