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Halloween

Something weird here in Iowa, we don't trick or treat on Halloween. I have no idea why, or when it all started but they do a Beggar's Night before Halloween and it involves everyone having to tell jokes for their candy. Painful. I hated having to do that kind of thing as a kid. I also hated having to hound all my neighbors for fundraisers. But that's another topic...
As weird as it is, they do some fun things for the kids around here. We had trick-or-read at the library with stories, treats (no candy) and three showings of The Great Pumpkin on Tuesday. Thursday night was Beggars Night and Lili got so much loot she was able to get enough cash to trade for a new train! She's super excited about it. We also had a great time at Howells Tree Farm today. We got some yummy pie pumkins and Lili and I made a pie. Yum!

Justin Roberts

So, Justin Roberts. Super fun songs for kids, that aren't annoying for parents to listen to (over and over and over and over...) and great for dancing around like crazy. One of our local API leaders, Laurie, introduced us to him and told us about a free concert he was holding at one of the local malls. Lili was a bit apprehensive about sitting on the floor (aka toddler moshpit) with the other kids but had a blast dancing around in the back with me. She also didn't want to pose for pictures with Justin or Liam, but begged that we listen to her new CD on the ride home. We were definitely surprised to have brought the littlest super fan, though- Jax was IN LOVE when Justin was singing Pop Fly! No joke, he was cracking up, dancing all around and trying to leap out of my arms during that song. We had a great time and love his music, check out his fun videos on youtube. :)

Itty Bitty Wedding Clothes

When we started looking for clothes for Jax and Lili for Jen's wedding over the summer we had a difficult time finding anything that was both dressy enough and cool enough for Arizona in November. All the dressy stuff that we knew would be coming out around this time of year would be too Christmas-y and layered, and we apparently missed the boat on any of the spring/Easter markdowns. So I made a little dress for Lili and a bow tie and vest for Jax- his shirt and cargo pants we got on clearance at Children's Place. I thought it would be easy but really struggled finding a pattern for boy dress clothes- Burda was on the only decent one we found (and those never go on the $.99 sale), but the sizing is completely screwed up, and even though they had translated instructions they might as well have left those out. I ended up customizing Lili's dress to a size 2T on top and a 4T length. Jax got a completely made up bow tie (the one in the pattern was really weird and skinny) and a 6 month length for the vest but almost cut in half width wise to make it fit. I have no idea why the sizes were so screwed up- oh well. Now I'm off to finish a few more nappies (I don't want to have to do laundry more than once at the hotel), a dress for me, add a sleeping hood to the tall Mei Tai and then I think I can actually clean up the sitting room. Woop Di Do!

Trees...

Trees. I miss my trees. One of the hardest things for me about moving to the middle of the country is losing my trees. Yes, we do have trees here. But, no, it's just not the same. We're landscaping today (aka giving away our plants via craigslist) and it's seriously making me miss our lack of landscaping issues growing up. We had to deal with alot of sandy soil, but our yard was mostly moss, we had thousands of trees and it felt as if our house was nestled into a cozy little nook of trees. Thick trees in front of the house and even thicker trees in back. And we backed up to preserved land, so it was miles of hills for exploring, sledding, digging, climbing...
*Side note- OMG, Jen I think my favorite thing about your house was that cleared out area in the woods where we used to play house! Do you remember that?? It was just raked out dirt, trees and sticks and things but it totally transformed into a playhouse. I don't know why I've been thinking about that so much lately, maybe because I'm sad that Lili doesn't have that and she is just at that awesome age! Out here everyone plops those Step Two plastic playhouses in the middle of their flat, naked backyards. So not the same...*


Scott accepted a transfer from his Philadelphia office to the midwest for alot of reasons- change of pace, try somewhere new, but the biggest of all was the cost of living. We knew it was important for our family that I stay at home when we decided to have children. So we up and moved into a brand new house in a state Scott had been to for about 5 hours and that I'd never stepped foot in. (And in those five hours that Scott was here, he had an interview at a local brewery and saw a woman walking around downtown in a velour blue cowprint pantsuit. That was the extent of his experience in the state.) We had just under 48 hours to find a house and had no idea where anything was, which town was what or how we were going to go through closing, inspections and all that jazz from over 1000 miles away. So after looking at about 50 homes we decided to go with the "young" neighborhood suggested to us, that offered a new build because we thought that would have the least amount of bumps in the road since we had so much to do from a distance. We've been here for 4 years now, and I still feel the same way that I did when we first moved into our first house- like I'm in a hospital gown with my bare bottom hanging out. The back of our house just feels so NAKED. I can see our neighbors, they can see us. Our yard is just a big, open, flat space- perfect for a pool (though in a state that spends more than half of the year freezing it's bottom off it's not a great selling point)or swingset or...growing corn. We have trees, but they still seem so far away from me. Driving down the streets in our old neighborhood it felt as though you could reach out of the car and touch the trees- even on 295 or driving down to the shore the trees are right off of the highway. Here they are mostly in clumps off of the highway, in older neighbors, or planted akwardly in new yards. I actually heard one person complaining about having trees in his yard because of having to rake leaves- he had ONE tree in his 1/4 acre lot! Are you kidding me? I don't think I'll ever get to a point (nor do I want to) where I'll really feel like I'm at home without my trees. driving home in NJ
the street where I grew up
driving home in NJ
my nursery school!
Lili playing in our old backyard with her Uncle (Christmas 2006)
Our first neighborhood in Iowa

Photo 1: Medford Lakes- taken from the road while my mom was driving home.
Photo 2: Iowa Map- credit: http://o.aolcdn.com/art/ch_travel/iowa
Photo 3: Google Maps- satellite view our street in Iowa
Photo 4: Google Maps- satellite view our street in NJ

All the other pictures (including photo 1) were video stills, thus horrible quality. Sorry.

Pumpkin Patch

Normally we have to drive 45 minutes to get to the cool pick your own places- Wills Family Orchard, Berry Patch Farms, Howell's Nursery- to get apples and pumpkins and all that good stuff. I was browsing around and found this fabulous pick your own pumpkin patch right in our little town! Less than 5 miles away, in fact. Score! They had a huge pumpkin patch, corn pit, animals, mazes, and all that fun stuff. It was a Pumpkin Paradise! Okay, that's not original. That's their name. Williamson Pumpkin Paradise. Fun, fun, fun!

Happy Babies

Man, it is so fun to be around happy babies. Easy going, always smiling, giggling, laughing, drooling full of fun babies. Jax in particular, not that I'm biased. But geez, he is such a happy baby! It's a good thing he doesn't sleep or else I'd be way to tempted to make lots more already...