Where the wild things are

Parent teacher conferences were on Thursday evening for Cecelia. She is doing great and is mastering all of the kindergarten goals set for her. They have a scholastic book fair running in the library during the conferences, so after we were finished meeting with her teacher we let Cecelia pick out a few books. $26.00 for 2 paper back books and one hard back...Ouch! Totally worth it though, Cecelia loves, loves, loves to be read to. On Friday I took Cecelia and her best friend to see Where the wild things are. This was Cecelia's first out of school activity with a friend from her class. Very exciting!!! I took the girls to Village Inn for pancakes for dinner before the movie. I loved seeing the excitement on Cecelia's face when they brought out the pancakes and they were in the shape of a face...just like daddy makes for her at home. The movie was awesome. I'm not so sure the girls understood the underlying moral to the story but they enjoyed it anyways. The girls really like playing with my camera too. The close up of them was taken by Cecelia herself. Too cute!!!

Elmwood Park

With the weather cooperating over the weekend I decided to take Cecelia to Elmwood park to get some new pictures of her. The park is absolutely gorgeous this time of year. All of the leaves are changing colors and are falling to create a perfect backdrop. Plus the playground itself is fun for the kiddos. Apparently other people had the same idea too. We saw at least a 1/2 dozen other families taking photos, some even had what looked like professional photographers with them. I totally felt like an amateur out there. My mom is a professional photographer, so having her there would have really been helpful. I rely on my mom to take pictures of Cecelia far too often and I really should do some myself to get good practice. I still think I got some great photos though. Cecelia is so beautiful its hard to take a bad photo of her.

Vala's

We made it to Vala's Pumpkin Patch!!! We went on Saturday (one of the warmest days forcasted) but by the time we made it back to the car at the end of the evening, we were freezing! We love going back to the pumpkin patch year after year. It really is a family tradition for us. Unfortunately, this year Aaron couldn't join us because he had to work so we forged on with out him. He was genuinely disappointed, at least until I brought him home a turkey leg...they are sooo good! I think Cecelia's favorite part was the haunted house. She "had" to lead the group, but after getting about halfway through she decided she didn't want to lead anymore, so she made me. Great! Luckily it wasn't really scary at all :0 We skipped the hay rack ride to pick a pumpkin this year because of the cold weather, and since we already had a few pumpkins from my sister's, Cecelia didn't get too upset.

Silly Stanley

Stanley really is a good dog. He literally tore the stuffing out of his monkey that he has had since he was just a little peanut. So we had to throw the monkey away. We need to go find him a new stuffy soon. He doesn't go around the house chewing on everything, but anytime he gets a hold of his toys, toilet paper, paper towels...well basically anything made of paper he makes a huge mess! He is just too cute, I can't stay mad at him. The neighbors don't feel that way. Since we live in a condo, we do have a backyard but there aren't fences to divide our yards and Stanley likes to go 2 houses down into an elderly woman's yard and smell her flowers and pee on them. The other day we saw the woman hitting a spoon against a bowl trying to get Stanley to go away. It was seriously so funny! Of course we called him into the house and just laughed. He is the cutest, most harmless dog ever. I mean come on, he weighs less than 10 lbs. and stands maybe 12 inches tall.

Cheerleading/Pom

Cecelia started cheerleading and pom this semester. We were going to go back to gymnastics but then we got information about cheerleading and decided to try it. She goes once a week to the Jr. High for about an hour. Luckily the ratio between instructor and child is about 5 girls to each instructor, so the girls are getting lots of individualized attention.

Picking Pumpkins

My mom talked my older sister Nikki into letting her plant a garden in her backyard for her. My mom and sister thought pumpkins would be fun. I don't think they realized how much pumpkins take over everything. Needless to say, my sister had a ton of freshly grown pumpkins in her backyard. We joked about how she should advertise her backyard as a pumpkin patch and charge admission and sell the pumpkins! Well, she did let Cecelia go and pick out a couple to take home with us. Stanley even had fun playing in the "pumpkin patch". Cecelia thinks she is such a big girl and said she could carry one of the pumpkins she picked from the yard into the house. After carrying it for about 3 feet she set it down on the ground and rolled it the rest of the way back to the house. It was a pretty smart idea! After we got home we drew faces on the pumpkins with permanent marker. We went online to google images to find ideas for different faces and she picked out a few and then we narrowed it down to the 2 you see in the pictures. She loved it. Every year we go to Valas pumpkin patch and are looking forward to going there this year again too, but we always try to wait until a little closer to Halloween to go. Although this year since it's been so cold out were going to have to plan ahead more if we don't want to freeze...Cecelia never has any fun if she's cold!

Henry Doorly Zoo

This year we decided to get a zoo pass and I'm so glad we did. My work offers to pay for a generous portion of it, and for a family of four it virtually paid for itself the first time we went. What a great deal! Two weeks ago we decided that it might be the last opportunity to enjoy the zoo in warm fall weather, and sure enough it was. It has been freezing here the last few weeks! It seems like we barely had a summer and now we hardly got any actual descent fall weather before it got cold out. Anyways, we were so excited to go to the zoo this time because there was a brand new baby gorilla. It can't be in the same area with its mom for safety reasons, so they have zoo keepers taking care of it. In the picture you can see it's being rocked in a rocking chair by the zoo keeper and its even wearing a little pampers diaper...adorable. Cecelia loved it. She absolutely adores babies and can't wait to be a big sister. So of course after she saw the newborn gorilla she started asking about when were going to have a baby. She's so cute!

My life at a glance

So much for blogging every week! This semester so far has been very busy. I'm in lecture 2 days a week and at the hospital for clinical 2 days as well! All that in addition to working 1 day a week and every other weekend... Thankfully its mid-term and next week I am off for fall break for a full week! Then my clinical rotation goes from oncology(where I'm at now) to pediatrics. I will be at Children's Hospital and doing a few things around town at area schools the remainder of the semester. I'm excited to work at Children's but I'm also really apprehensive too. It's hard for me to see little ones being affected by illness or injury, especially since I'm a mom myself. Who knows, since I'm still undecided as to what specific area I want to work in, maybe I'll end up loving it and deciding to pursue a career in pediatrics when I'm done next fall. I'm already excited for this semester to be over and to be out of school for an entire month over Christmas break. Cecelia's breaks from pre-school and now in Kindergarten mostly fall at the same times I am on break from Methodist, so it works out really great because we get lots of quality time together during school breaks which we both love!