December 2018

The year may be coming to an end, but our fun times just keep rolling :)

The last few years we have completed a Lego Advent Calendar, this year we did one, but our little Lego builder would wake up early and build them herself!

We also started a new family tradition (thanks to the kids at school) and Elizabeth the Elf filled our home with silly pranks during December...Rose is hoping she returns next year!

Rose and I also made it out to Glick's Greenhouse for their Poinsettia Show

And we always find fun Christmas crafts to make...we made some gift tags and new snowmen ornaments for the tree :)

Justin and Rose also made her annual Christmas Tree ornament. 

We also made our annual Christmas cut-outs and they were so yummy! We meant to share them, but ate most of them up ourselves.

We usually put together a gingerbread house, but this year headed to Frecon Farms to their workshop and made a fresh gingerbread house with ALL the candies!

We made it out to see some more Christmas lights.

And Rose dressed festive throughout the month!

We also had lots of fun between Christmas activities. 

Justin and Rose went on a daddy-daughter date with her Book-It Reading to Pizza Hut...also notice the awesome new sweatshirt :)

And we moved the swing inside...because why not?!?!

Rose has turned into a great reader and loves reading to her pets :)

Our year wouldn't be complete without another trip to an urgent care...this time it was just for pink eye, but Rose had to miss the last two days of school before Christmas break...she was pretty bummed :(

We did some extra fun things to still have a good time.

We made it out to another movie and Rose loves popcorn...and being silly :)

 She also loves cake...and being silly :)

Christmas Day was lots of fun with family. 

Rose was super excited and appreciative about all her gifts. 

Rose got to see great-grandma Bechtel at our extended family Christmas :)

We love this time of year and all the decorations and fun!

Even the pets enjoy the festiveness :)

We ended December with another painting...now we need some snow in 2019 to make a real snowman :) 

Good-bye Fall, Hello Winter :)

We said good-bye to fall with lots of fun activities to enjoy our time together.

Rose started swim lessons again and was very happy to be back in the water!

Justin and I indulged our inner child, since our actual child does not like cereal, and snapped up the last of the Halloween cereals. (they are all gone as of the posting of this...till next year!)

 We found a new, never been played on by us park, in Berks County and it may be the best one yet! Who doesn't want a merry-go-round with a spider web?

 And flying saucers? Rose, however, refused to push her mom...

We also did the annual family picture thing with all the fall colors :)

Rose tackled her fears and made it to the top of the rock wall....8 times! This is becoming a new favorite family activity :)

We also made a trip to Virginia to visit the cousins :) 

A new children's museum opened in Roanoke and it was a hit for little and big kids!

I can definitely see the family resemblance with these two :)

Aunt Laura has all the cool craft stuff and taught Rose how to make chalk signs.

Not to be outdone with cool playgrounds we found a zip line in Virginia that will be a new favorite place to stretch our legs and have some fun on the trip home :) 

Then out of nowhere winter decided to remind us she was coming! That's ok because we had fun with our first snow and Rose is looking forward to many more snow days :)

We made a family trip to the movies and saw the new Grinch. It was pretty good and Rose said she liked how the Grinch's heart grew and now he loves Christmas :)...we all wore PJ's, because we can! 

We enjoyed our Thanksgiving and this little cutie enjoyed her food...or at least playing with it ;)

I took off all the same days Rose was off school for some extra fun times. So instead of shopping on Black Friday we went painting! I did a pretty good job letting Rose do her own thing and her picture turned out awesome :)

We also saw some Christmas lights to get all the Christmas feels started :)

We had a Saturday morning off of swim lessons so we headed roller skating! Rose quickly made some friends and was off and rolling :)

After roller skating we quickly headed out to get our tree before the rain...

Rose found the perfect tree and didn't let daddy stand in her way ;)

We ended the month with a surprise trip to Great Wolf! We were supposed to go this past spring, but due to several broken bones in our family we had to postpone the trip. It worked out great to have one last family trip before the holidays and whatever adventures 2019 brings our way :)

Not only did we enjoy full days at the water park, but story time complete with snow! Bring on WINTER :)

October 2018

I may be a bit biased, but October is my favorite month! I love cool mornings and pumpkin everything :) 

We started the month with another camping trip, we took the bus for an annual gathering of buses and it just worked out that was also the same weekend the campground was having fall festivities! 

I had a coupon and there was a great deal, so Rose got upgraded to a brand new sleeping bag...she didn't want to get out :)

When Rose did finally get up she made us breakfast!

October is my birthday month and we had a great family weekend with breakfast at Shady Maple, and then we tried Rose's first ropes course...which lasted about 15 minutes when she remembered she was afraid of heights...{sigh}.

We braved a bit of chilly weather to pick and paint pumpkins. Everyone said how the pumpkins didn't grow well this year due to the crazy summer weather, but we still found some good ones :)

Here's a sneak peak of who Rose decided to be for Halloween, can you guess?

And enjoyed some outside activities before we packed it in and warmed up!

And we ended the day at my favorite brewery Troegs. Go, you'll thank me!

Rose made Mommy a awesome birthday cake.

Rose lost her 2nd tooth and got quite the loot from the tooth fairy.

After several costume discussions Rose fell in love with wearing a wig and decided to be Ariel :) Justin and I got in on the fun and enjoyed several parties and trick-or-treating, we have enough candy to get us through to Easter :)

 We also did lots of things with pumpkins including making center pieces, Rose is pro with a hot glue gun in case anyone needs some help! My original plan was to make one together, but Rose was not sharing and made her own :)

and carving

When we weren't engaging in fall related activities we engaged in some other favorite activities like roller skating

And we adopted another cat...my great aunt needed to move into a nursing home and so her cat got a new home with us, what's one more :)