Pumpkin Carving

We found a GREAT cider mill near us and had a blast picking out our pumpkins from the approx. 4 acre pumpkin patch!! (sorry, the pictures are loaded in opposite order)


Lilly showing off the first of two pumpkins. This one has a bat carved in it.

Baby George's face after holding and then tasting some of the insides of the pumpkin!

Brother laughing at sister who is encouraging him to hold but not eat the pumpkin insides (she really looks out for him:)

Lilly beginning to scoop out the pumpkin. This is a far improvement from last year when she wouldn't even touch the pumpkin at all. This year she would not touch the insides of the large pumpkin, but dove right into the small one!

Lilly carefully watching daddy do the big pumpkin, not so sure about joining in.

Settling In

We are all beginning to settle into temporary apartment living for the time being.
Our closing on hour Belleville house got delayed and we are shooting for Oct 9th. We have moved into our apartment and the kids transitioned flawlessly. They LOVE the new daycare and I am loving the staff that I am working with at Sylvan!

George loves being able to sit for longer periods of time now as he can choose his own toys from his toybox!

Paper is the most exciting toy right now which makes it easy to take him to a restaurant because he will spend the entire time tearing up napkins (and trying to sneak some for a snack).

George just began eating puffs yesterday and loves this new chewing idea. We knew he was ready when he began "chewing" with us when we were eating.

End of Summer Fun

We have so many updates to share. We are closing on our house here in Belleville on the 30th of September. We will be moving into an apartment for a few months in Grand Ledge while our house is being built in Dewitt. The builders are estimating a mid-December closing for the house in Dewitt. I just got a job offer this week with the Sylvan in Lansing, so I will be starting on the 28th there! Many exciting changes to come in the next few weeks..including brother and sister sharing a room for a few months!


This week we got to visit Sandi, Jeff, and Miles in Chicago. Lilly and George both loved seeing the zoo and spending time with their friend Miles.

Miles got to take Lilly on her first carousel ride. She loved it and told daddy that she liked that it went up and down.

Holding brother on the sea turtle (yes, mommy is crazy and let her hold him all by herself, but Sandi was waiting in the wings to swoop him up as soon as we were done with the pictures).

Lilly and Miles pretending to be animals. They have a whole wall of these cut outs...how fun!

We all loved our visit so much and for the first time EVER Lilly slept until 9 this morning..now if only she could convice her brother not to get up at 5:30 still!

Camping

Lilly LOVED camping! Here she is "fishing" with daddy. I'm not sure it can properly be called fishing as she would throw her line into the water and immediately reel it in, but had a blast doing it.

The best part of camping for Lilly was definately the fire, sticks, and frogs. She loved being able to sit in her own chair.

Daddy was told some great campfire stories in the process.

Lilly also got to play with glow sticks and even brought a couple of them home with her (not glowing anymore of course).

All in all the "rustic" camping went well. All three nights Lilly asked to go to bed around 9pm, so both kids were asleep in the tent which was great. They even slept in two of the mornings until 7:)

Bubby

Our little "bubs" is growing up so fast. Today he got his first biter biscuit. He LOVED it and would get very mad when he would drop it.


Just like he does with his fingers, he tried to stick it as far as he could down his throat. Here he is shoving it as far as it would go.

I finally got one baby highchair sleeping picture, but not while eating. After a long day I put him in here to do the dishes and this is what I found minutes later.

We have been working very hard with George on sitting up. He likes to use the boppy for support still, but is getting better!

Last Tuesday I was brave and took the kids to the zoo by myself. It wasn't so bad as George is big enough to sit in the wagon now. I did learn that we need the pull behind cart though because the cooler and diaper bag had to go between their feet on the floor and things were pretty tight for Lilly's legs.

Lilly is such a good big sister. We are having some jealosy issues when she doesn't have something to do (pushing or hitting brother is more fun than finding something on her own). I"m trying to be very consious of making time just the 2 of us when he is sleeping.

CLOSING!!!

Yes, that's right I said CLOSING!!! We have a closing date on the house of September 30th!!! Thanks to everyone for your prayers and support. It's easy to see looking back how God's timing came into play with sending us the right buyers.
That means that we have just 5 short weeks to figure out where we are going to live. We are hoping to go through the pre-approval process next week to see if/what we will be able to afford since right now I do not have a job. We really like the Dewitt/St. Johns areas so we will probably be staying somewhere around there.

The kids really enjoyed our first week "home" together.
On Thursday we came to Lowell to see Sandi and Miles and the kids had a blast seeing the animals!


George was quite the ladies man flirting with Sandi's friend Amanda and giggling:)

Lilly got to ride the ponies and kept telling us all weekend that her horse was small and Miles' horse was bigger. I still can't believe I let her ride by herself without walking next to her..big step for mommy.

She wasn't so sure about the petting tent. She mainly stuck to the animals behinds as she was afraid they would bat at her like the cat does:)

On friday we went to Grand Haven State Park. Lilly absolutely LOVED playing in the sand...if you can't tell from the bathing suit.

I think she played in the sand for almost 2 hours straight. She played down by the water making mud, but would NOT get in the water. Funny because two days earlier I had to drag her out of the wading pool at the waterpark after 3 hours and she was running in the water until it was up to her chest. I guess clear waterpark pools are much less scary than Lake Michigan water!

On Saturday we visited with family and finally got some pictures of the 4 generations of George Gordon Rollins'. We also snapped some of the entire namesake clan as Lilly's middle name is after her great grandmother Janet.

Exciting Day

Last friday was mommy's last day of work. To celebrate our first day home together, we all played outside most of the day! It was a beautiful day.

George is taking teething much better than his sister did! He is rolling over now from front to back (a task he accomplished a few weeks ago), and is talking up a storm. He is very expressive when he is talking and laughs during most of our "conversations".

He is also beginning to LOVE his cereal! He is going through a growth spurt now and is eating much quicker than he used to (it used to take almost an hour sometimes!!!).

On the house front, at least we have progress. They came out and did the appraisal last Thursday, so the next step is for the bank to look at that and then we have more paperwork. We could be as little as a month away, or as far as years away (nice timeline huh?!?). For now, I'm staying home with the kids to help as especially Lilly has been taking the stress hard lately.