For Your Thursday Enjoyment!

A serious Justin Bieber sing along!

Silas Came to Visit!

Our friends the Luchts came by to visit on Friday and had lunch with us. They were going to the mountains for the weekend and they stopped by to visit for a while. It was so good to spend time with this precious family that we had the pleasure of traveling with to Ethiopia when we brought home our boys! Silas and Will were at Hannah's Hope together in ET and it is always great to re-unite these buddies. We really enjoy our time with the Luchts and look forward to watching their family grow as they wait for their Ethiopian princess to join them! Trying to get these two to smile for a picture is always a bit of a challenge.....

 Just laying around.....

 and playing with some puzzles....

Other weekend activities included Helen strapping on her new (used) roller blades that Colby Grace gave her. She was moving pretty slow, but was excited to be learning to skate!

Today was Orphan Sunday and we all wore our different adoption t-shirts to church this morning but Will doesn't have one! He wore one of his traditional Ethiopian tunics and looked so handsome. I'm sorry I didn't get a family picture! Anyway, it was a WONDERFUL Sunday as our church leadership announced that we are going to be starting an adoption fund! We talked to many people who were so excited about this news and we just can't wait to see how God is going to move in the lives of families in our church as we make orphan care a priority!! We came home from church and watched an Ethiopian man win the NYC Marathon, so we were pumped up! I dressed Will in his ET hat for the first time in a long time, and he kept it on! SO cute!

 Just loved this one of him watching our neighbor mow his grass. So enthralled.....

Backing Up to Will's Birthday

Just one year ago, our baby looked like this....

He couldn't even walk! But FAST forward one year and here is Will's 2nd birthday picture with the birthday flag.....

He has gotten so BIG! On the day before his birthday we had a party to celebrate the big number 2! Will's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins came to party with us and we had chili with all the fixin's, hot dogs, individual carrot cakes for the grown ups and cup cakes for the kiddos! Here is the "party table!"

Kathy let me borrow her cupcake stand! I need to get one of these...they make a simple cupcake look so much more special and festive!

 At least he didn't freak out when we set the cupcake down in front of him like he did LAST YEAR.

 He was happy to get to blow out the candle! (with a little help from Helen)

 Then we moved outside to open presents. He had lots of help!

Looks like Papa and Grankaki could have used some help! How many grandparents does it take to open a child-proofed package???

"Mike the Mower" was a huge hit! He has "mowed" all over our backyard and all through our house!

Another great gift that all three kiddos have had fun with is this guitar/piano. Here is a pic of Will checking it out!

Will got this purple bouncing toy from his cousins. Again, all three kiddos are loving it! As well as every kid that comes to our house! It is lots of fun!

It was a beautiful day and a wonderful time of celebration with our big boy!

A Little Trick or Treating and Fall Family Frenzy

Helen, Will and I started out the Halloween weekend with a trip to a local nursing home on Thursday night to do some trick or treating. They enjoyed visiting the residents in the re-hab center as well as the assisted living wing of NHC. This was Will's first time to trick or treat and he learned what to do very quickly! Since he hasn't had a whole lot of candy in his two years, he didn't know what he was getting~except when they offered him suckers because he IS familiar with those and he loves them! Helen dressed as Princess Jasmine and Will wore Helen's hand-me-down Bugs Bunny costume with the flopped down ear! Sweet! 

On Friday night, our church held our annual Fall Family Frenzy. Over 5,000 people attended! It is such a great event! Here are my three kiddos in their costumes. Helen didn't want to be the princess again, she wanted to be a rock star! We just winged it and came up with this costume at the last minute. Will, once again was Bugs Bunny and Beckett decided to be Brian McCann from the Atlanta Braves. I LOVE cheap and easy costumes!

 Helen ran into her pretty in pink cowgirl friend Sophie so they posed for a pic!

Not only do they have games, inflatables, rock climbing walls and live animals to pet, but families sign up to decorate their trunks and just hand out candy. This was one of our favorites....a Volkswagon Bug that is decorated to look like a big mouth!

Beckett found his buddy Matt at the beginning of the evening and we didn't see him much for the rest of the night. They had a great time! I got a little worried when I bumped in to him at one point and he didn't have his bag of candy. I asked him where it was and he replied, "Well, I'm just eating each piece as I get it, so I didn't think I needed to carry the bag anymore." I gave him a little reminder about his final football game the next morning and how it wouldn't be fun to miss it because he was sick from eating too much candy, so I think he backed off! Next time I saw him, he was eating a hot dog! At least it wasn't candy!

This is Will with his buddy Colby Grace. She is so sweet with Will and he loves her so much! She will soon have a little brother from Ethiopia and we are so excited for her family! Will kept taking candy out of his pumpkin bucket and giving it to Colby!

 Helen with our hippy friend Emma! They had fun walking around together for a while!

Here is Will with Anna. Isn't she adorable? I think this is their first picture together. (and of course, Will isn't smiling) He really does have a great smile, he just likes to stare you down when you are trying to get him to smile! Anyway, Anna has been home from ET with her sweet mom Julie for about 10 months and we love getting to see them each week at church!

 I think Will was trying to tell Anna about the tractor that was pulling the hayride!

 And I'll end our Halloween post with a picture of Bugs riding on his daddy's shoulders!

Still have lots of catching up to do, but thought I'd go ahead and post our most recent pictures first!



Pumpkin Patch Birthday

Is there a better place to spend your 2nd birthday than on a farm, riding a hayride and picking a pumpkin on a beautiful east TN fall day? I think not! So, after church on Sunday we took our birthday boy to the pumpkin patch! We had his birthday party on Saturday (the day before his actual birthday) and I'll post pictures of that celebration soon. But I thought I'd post the pictures of our pumpkin patch adventure first. I can't believe he is 2!

 Farmer Will at Maple Lane Farms....ready to get on the hayride.

We got to see lots of tractors....which is HUGE for our two year old! He loves them!

 Then we rode on a hayride behind one of those wonderful tractors down a path like this to the pumpkin patch.

 Saw lots of cows.....another huge hit with Will. He is all about cows!

 Enjoyed beautiful East TN scenery!

 Then we hit the ground running. Time to find the perfect pumpkin!

 Can you tell that he is running? He had a ball in the pumpkin patch! Tripping over vines and everything!

 I really LOVE this picture!

 Loaded back on the hayride for the return trip!

 Tried to get a picture of me with the kids. That doesn't happen very often and Sean isn't patient enough to keep taking pics until everyone is looking or at least has their eyes opened! Oh well!

 Small, medium and large pumpkins!

The pumpkin patch is just the best place to take pictures! I was driving them crazy asking them to pose for so many pics! Loved this one on the steps of the hayride trailer.

This year, the farm has teamed up with a local restaurant, has a corn maze, a haunted house, live music and a couple of rides for kids. As if cows, tractors and pumpkins wasn't enough, there was  a TRAIN! Another one of Will's faves!

 I imagine that Helen was asking Will if he wanted to ride.......

 And, since it was his birthday, he got to be the train engineer!

 Loved it!

After we left the pumpkin patch, we went to the park with our growth group friends from church. It was a beautiful evening and a great way for Will to finish out his birthday; playing with all of his buddies! Love these kids! What a great group!

Happy Birthday Will! We love you!

The Lord your God is with you,

He is mighty to save.

He will take great delight in you,

He will quiet you with his love,

He will rejoice over you with singing.

Zephaniah 3:17

Playing Catch Up!

So it has officially been 2 months since I've updated this blog. I never thought that I would fall this far behind. I've got some serious catching up to do! Not only have we got 40 something days of school under our belt, but we have managed to work in a mini-vacation. I thought I would start with some pictures from our trip to Wilderness at the Smokies at the end of September. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that we can be flexible in our schedule, so we left on Wednesday after Beckett's enrichment class and spent two nights and three full days playing at this indoor water park. Even though they had closed most of their outdoor water activities, they did open the lazy river and wave pool on Friday afternoon. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed our time outside! Here is a picture of all three kiddos in the pool!

 Helen and Will enjoying the slide in the toddler pool area!

 Will loved being in the wave pool!

Beckett absolutely LOVED this place. He decided that he would live at Wilderness at the Smokies if he could. There is no telling how many times he climbed the stairs to go down the water slides! Too fun!

I was amazed at how much time Will spent just snapping the buckles on his life jacket. This truly entertained him quite a bit which was good because he had to wait around a bunch while Sean and I rode the water slides with Beckett and Helen!

This is a picture of the tubes (from outside)  that we rode inside the water park. Yes, you go around and around that big mega-phone looking thing. It was not my favorite, but I rode it a couple of times with Sean and Beckett. I found it to be quite scary!

A picture taken from a balcony looking down into the indoor water park. That is a wave pool to the right and the stairs to the big tube slides is to the left. There is another pool on the left that dumps big buckets of water and also a surfing pool where crazy people can try to body surf. We saw many people wipe out and it had to hurt! That is Helen right in the middle and Beckett up in front of her. We were the first to arrive when it opened and we closed it down at night!

We went to Gatlinburg for dinner one night and ate at Bubba Gump's! It was yummy!

Cute place!

So, that is one of the many things we have done in the last two months! I'll try to update in a few days to catch up on some other goings on at the Harper Hullabaloo!