Lovely October

When mom was here back in Sept, she went landscaping shopping with me to give me some advice, and we came back with this beautiful hydrangea bush and butterfly bush. The butterfly bush is called "Miss Ruby," so it caught my eye right away ;)

Seth pruning the rocks or something like that =) 

making a fashion statement 

He loves to put these earphones on and hold the toilet plunger rod, which he likes to pretend is an instrument, as he puts it in his mouth and makes "music." Don't worry, we've never had to plunge our toilets with it yet! 

Kyle working on his big water rocket launcher shipment to the Netherlands. He had to make 500 of each part so it would make 167 triple launchers. Needless to say, he would come home from work and then work several hours in the evening on his "home business." =)  

He would sit out in the garage w/ the door open when he was gluing the PVC cement... such a toxic odor, I didn't want it in the house! (He really should have been outside with a crosswind, but the weather wasn't always best for that.) 

He got them all shipped out before the end of October, which was his goal. The funny thing is the guy that bought all of these was questioned in customs (in the Netherlands) b/c they thought he was ordering a shipment of rockets to plan a terrorist attack! haha


On Oct 20th, Kyle and I celebrated our 5th year anniversary a little early by going down to Newport on the Levee (right on the border of OH and KY) for one night, while Brent, Lori, and Elli watched Seth for us. I wanted to go somewhere in Oct rather than Nov, b/c it tends to be a lot prettier =)  We stayed in a hotel near the Ohio River and went to Don Pablos for dinner (the restaurant where we had our first date our soph yr of college), and then walked all around Newport and downtown Cincinnati... we did a LOT of walking! (might have burned off a few tortilla chips!) Oh, I can't forget the best part of the night was the pumpkin spice latte for dessert... haha   The next day we went to Caesar Creek to do some hiking. It was such a gorgeous day!

I realize this pales in comparison to New England's autumn scenery,  but it was still pretty and enjoyable to be out in God's nature. I love this time of year!!

I've been thoroughly enjoying (probably too much) all of the pumpkin goodies this time of year... pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bars w/ cream cheese icing, pumpkin flavored drinks, and I still want to make pumpkin soup like I did last year... just haven't gotten around to it yet. Let's hope I'm not growing a 10 lb baby from all these sweets! ;)  Here's the 23 week belly pic.. I'm 24.5 weeks now, so this isn't quite up to date... but I'm not so good at taking frequent belly pics. (at least I've got Heather beat... I don't think she took a single belly shot until we made her when she was already quite far along! ;))

Much love to you all!