Lents Thanksgiving

You finally started not fighting me on pictures again! 

We realized we hadn't taken a family picture in a really long time. 

Despite the blank stare, you enjoy all the toys at Ginny's house. 

Aunt Cathy braved the cold to play with the kiddos outside. 

Addison & Remson in the sandbox. Kitchen spoons in the sandbox were a genius idea!

This picture cracks me up - Kenny was playing "Casey's" in the little house. 

Kenny was watching Paw Patrol - Addison heard the theme song and ran over with her shopping cart and climbed on up next to Kenny. ha! 

Addison liked playing outside with the boys, but she also liked being inside with girls. Alli and Veronica played dolls with Addison, she thought that was super fun. 

Addison had fun playing with Travis, Veronica, and Alli - we couldn't tear Kenny away from Paw Patrol for a group photo. Ha! 

Wine Tasting

I had a Groupon to a winery we like in Adel, so we invited the Thraen's to join us one Saturday. Lauren was smart and brought a movie for the kids to watch while we did some wine tasting :) My kid of course wouldn't look at the camera. 

We got our free bottle of wine and moved into the tasting room. At one point, Jason had both kids on his lap watching the movie. We were so proud of Addison for sitting on Jason's lap. She may have realized that was the best view for the movie though, ha! 

I realize now that we didn't get a picture of the adult, but we got an adorable one of the kids! Caleb and Addison embraced when we said goodbye, it was so cute! 

We had to run some errands after the wine tasting, and it included going to a shoe store to look for running shoes. Addison actually "hid" from us. We were actually proud of her, usually not the reaction parents would have. She is usually so clingy, she won't let us set her down. But in this shoe store she walked around and held Ryan's hand then eventually went off on her own. We laughed at her "hiding" spot though. Very creative. ha! 

Grand Slam

We told Addison go to put jammies on. This is what we got. She found those boots, she has never worn them before. ha! 

Her new Cy hat from Parker. She thought it was pretty cool. 

We love to play baseball, Addison can get a hold of the ball pretty good. We think she's working on the grand slam. Eventually she will get there..... ha! 

We love the warm up in this video. She's saying "wham". She does this a lot, it's amazing how well she can hit the ball after spinning! 

Our first impulse buy

We were shopping at Target one night and Addison has gotten to the age where she needs to be entertained while shopping. So we walked through the toy aisle and I saw some little Cabbage Patch Kids. Of course that's what I thought she should play with :) And in true Addy-fashion, she needed not just one but TWO dolls. These dolls entertained her the whole time we were in Target.

Then it came time to checkout. She didn't want to put the dolls down. And I of course loved seeing her so excited about a cabbage patch kid. Normally I'm pretty strict about toys, we have plenty and as we have discussed, she loves to play with rocks. Ha! I told Addison to tell Dad please and see if we could get him to cave - ha! I was SHOCKED, he actually told her that she could pick one to buy. Granted they were pretty cheap, but I was still shocked. So encouraged her to pick the Santa one - figured it might make her like Santa more and not be scared of him :) 

The Skjevelands sent us a video one night. Addison probably wanted it 20 times. It's a pretty good one......

Go See Cy!

We took Addison to a basketball game earlier this season. She was so excited to see Cy. Although you realize how little Cy is actually out and about during pre-season games. We spent more time looking for him than we did actually watching him!

When Addison got restless, we brought out some treats. We brought her a bag of popcorn and she was super excited about that. So was Ryan. ha! 

This was towards the end of the game so she was pretty restless, but I tried to get a picture of her with Grandpa Ron. She had just been walking around the stadium with Grandma Rita and didn't want to come back to our seats! 

Girl loves her hat and gloves! I changed her into jammies before we left the game and she insisted on putting on her hat and gloves when she saw them in the bag. ha! 

After that game, she always asks to go see Cy. When we get in the car and leave the driveway, she will often times say "Go see Cy?!?" 

Trick or treating

It is now January 15 and I'm just posting about trick or treating! We weren't real sure how Addison would do, since she isn't real fond of strangers. She likes the idea of getting candy but doesn't really know what it is. That's okay :)

She really really didn't want to walk, she wanted to be carried. In the pictures above, we told her she had to walk if she wanted to keep trick or treating. So she tried.... but then it ended up with her crying in the photo on the right.

But the crying the didn't last long. She did really well saying "thank you" to people but she was pretty shy about saying "trick or treat". She did really good when we practiced but then she got shy. Lots of our neighbors were sitting outside so we didn't have to walk up and ring the doorbell, which was good in our situation.

She was pretty proud of her loot!

What a scary lion we have! Halloween may have been months ago, but just tonight she was running around "roaring" at us and trying to scare us! 

Daycare Halloween Party

Shannon had a little Halloween party for the kids at daycare. They had Mummey Bowling and Addison had a good time. 

They painted some masks - It's Crozby on the left and Addison on the right.

 Here is Addison's best little buddy Weston. She loves "the baby" and apparently is a little mama bear. She makes sure he has toys at all times and makes sure everyone is nice to him.

 Then come the costumes! Crozby was an elephant (I think), Addison of course as the lion, Drake as the firefighter and Weston as the monkey. Emmy was sick that day and missed the party :(

Shannon's adorable little Halloween lunch she made the kiddos. 

Addison loved running around the house with her pumpkin mask. Her pumpkin roared. Ha! 

Silly Pictures

Kelly found these photos on her phone after our weekend together. We didn't know these two were even doing this - ha! I saved them to my phone and Addison laughs every time she comes across the photos.

Just a lion riding a bunny - ha! 

We went to the trick or treating event at Homemakers this year. I had to work late so we met at Casey's in Ankeny, I grabbed us some pizza and took off for Homemakers. We knew it would be busy, but we weren't expecting cops to be directing traffic. It was insane! We parked in some other companies parking lot and walked a decent ways to Homemakers. Then the line was halfway around the building (outside). We were so far back there was barely any light! But it did move fairly quick. It was a great time for Addison to be scared of people because she stuck to me like glue :)

It was a great Halloween event for Addison. We walked through the store in a line and staff were placed throughout the store to hand out goodies. We got Doritoes, juice box, animal crackers, Fun Dip (that one made us laugh), and a variety of other treats. And most of the people were not dressed scary so that was good. There was a blow up dinosaur that Addison LOVED from afar, but she did not enjoy getting close. This was during her "I don't want to take a picture" phase, so these were the best I got. She also wanted to climb on the furniture in the store. The picture above is actually in a sleigh filled with pillows. It was a good event, we were there towards the end. Not sure what I would do differently next time, I might still go towards the end. I bet it's insane right when it opens! 

Apple Orchard Part III

One of the many activities at the Apple Orchard was these inflatable horse things. It's a little hard to bounce on them with two people, but it was Ryan's job so I could take pictures :)

The corn pit was a popular one again. What's not to love? This corn pit was HUGE compared to the other one we went to. 

And then they had two giant jumping pillows - one for little kids and one for big kids. We didn't get on it, but Addison had a good time. This was the last thing we did, so she was running out of steam. But she still fought us when it was time to go! She kept catching other kids' bounce and then she would fall. She was by far one of the littlest ones out there though. That didn't stop her!

We didn't get great pictures here, she was mad at us because we took her off the jumping pillow.

Yup, still mad at us. Ha! It didn't help that she was in a phase where she was resisting all photos anyways!