Carving Pumpkins...

With Halloween only a few days away, we decided to carve our pumpkins Sunday night. It's a much anticipated event in our house, especially for Sullivan Grace. 

She was eager to carve an intricate mummy - so she and Ryan together tackled that one.

Tessa wanted in on the action, although after smelling the pumpkin, she changed her mind.

Quinn wanted to make a disco pumpkin like last year - making lots of holes all over the pumpkin.

  When her tool busted on the first hole, we had to resort to plan B.....the drill.

Boy, did Quinn have fun poking holes with that drill.

In the end, the pumpkins both turned out phenomenally!  

Bring on Halloween, we are ready for it!

Smile...

This year's installment of school pictures turned out fabulous as usual...

Quinn - 7th grade

Sullivan - 4th grade

So hard to believe that the girls are getting so old!

Fabulous at 41...

We celebrated a very special person's birthday this past week.  

Ryan turned the big 4-1!!

We celebrated the usual style - going out to eat and partaking in the traditional ice cream cake.  What birthday would be complete without an ice cream cake?!

We also celebrated with a few presents as well...

The girls got Ryan the NES Classic Mini... which is a replica of the Nintendo we had as kids.  They were THRILLED for him to open the present, but even more THRILLED to get it set up and begin sharing this special gift.

It goes without saying that we have played our fair share of Super Mario Brothers over the past week.  It's been fun to relive the game ourselves and to share the nostalgia with Quinn and Sullivan.

Happy Birthday, Ryan.  Forty-one looks good on you!

Fall Break 2018

We were lucky enough to have Grandma Jane come spend the week of Fall Break with us last week.

 The girls were ecstatic for Grandma to visit and got busy planning the week's staycation activities.  Ryan had to travel for work, and while we missed him, that didn't stop us ladies from having fun.  Quinn and Sullivan managed to fill up the week and before we knew it the week FLEW right by. 

We started the week painting at Cookies and Canvas.  It was an open studio time, so they were able to choose a design of their choice to complete.  Sullivan chose a flip-flop sandal that was nearly bigger than herself, while Quinn chose a cute narwhal. 

We played an infinite amount of games...bless Grandma for the amount of patience she had to play all sorts of games (ie. the picture below where she is rolling ping pong balls on the ground).  Like I said, Bless Grandma! 

Keeping on the theme of games, we visited the arcade.  What trip to Indy would be complete without taking Grandma to the arcade!?!

Grandma made us dinner one night - at the request of Quinn.  Quinn got her fill of Chipped Beef on Toast.  Yum!!!

We also visited the Corn Maze where we (purposely) got lost among the corn!

We tootled around the maze for a couple hours trying to find all 24 trivia questions, but sadly gave up without finding 2 of them.  Not bad!

While at the corn maze, we also did some gem mining...

Quinn and Sullivan also took their turn on the large, inflatable jump pad.

We had family pictures taken during Fall Break too.  Grandma was such a sport, because little did she know that she would get pulled into the pictures too. We don't have pictures back yet, but are looking forward to peeking at them soon!

Honestly and truly, the week flew by so quickly.  Before we knew it, we were back at the airport dropping Grandma off.  We had such an amazing week, we were sad to see her go.

Liger Mile - Sullivan

Last week, Sullivan race in her very first race. 

The school district sponsors a mile long race for K-6th graders every fall.  Quinn ran the race last year, which perhaps encouraged Sullivan to run it this year.

Before the race...

Let the race begin...

Sullivan found her friend that was also running in the race.  They did not initially have plans to run the race together, but somehow ended up running the whole thing together.

The amazing runner after the race... 

Despite Sullivan not preparing much for the race, and having never competed before, she was a ROCKSTAR.  Sullivan's time was 8:58 this year - a time to be very proud of!  She now has her sights set on beating that time next year.

Way to go, Sulla Bulla!

Nashtown...

We traveled to Nashville this past weekend to soak in the city and go to the Ed Sheeran concert. We strolled down Memory Lane a little, thanks to the patience of our sweet girls who would have rather been doing anything but drive around our old stomping grounds.

Old stomping grounds aside, we also did a little sightseeing too.  We went to the Belle Meade Plantation on Friday afternoon.  Anyone who visited us in Nashville when we lived there most likely went to the Belle Meade Plantation with us. 

We also did a little miniature golf... score one for Ryan who came out victorious!

We met up with Miss Cynthia for breakfast. It was SO great to see her and catch up on life.  It had been far too long since we saw her last...

Of course, Sullivan insisted on a little (or a lot) of swimming time.  Her sister didn't want to swim so she twisted her dad's arm to join her...

We partook in a little happy hour at the hotel.  It must have been a full moon outside because Ryan actually played a few games with the girls. He was such a good sport for someone who doesn't like games.

We walked around Vanderbilt a little bit too... where Sullivan was insistent that she be photographed doing a handstand there!

All the things we did were super fun and it made Ryan and I miss Nashville all over again.  But the main reason for our trip to Nashville was to attend the Ed Sheeran concert there.

To take in a concert in a stadium that large at night in downtown Nashville was pretty incredible.  The concert itself was very good and the girls had a great time (minus the bat that flew FAR too close to us- ask Quinn about it sometime!!).

Nashville was so much fun - so much so that it tired us all out on the way home!