GW Trunk-or-Treat 2011

Trick or Treat!!!!

My little Ladybug

Josie and Braden

Josie and Braden with Ms. Peggy

Josie and Rachel

Josie really enjoyed being my helper and handing out candy to people.
She kept saying "This one will be your favorite!"

The Infamous Widick Hayride 2011

Every October, Lane's family gets together to have a weenie roast and hayride for all the kids. We've lived too far away to be able to go....until this year. Josie got to experience her first Widick Hayride. We started out the afternoon by just letting the kids all play for a while. Josie loved raking up leaves at the bottom of the slide (or truthfully, having someone do it for her), and then sliding into them. She did that for a really long time! Granddaddy built a huge bonfire and we roasted hotdogs for dinner. Then we had s'mores for dessert....Josie wasn't a big fan of her s'more. She actually took it apart and ate everything separately. Go figure. One it got dark, we loaded up in the back of Granddaddy's truck (filled with hay, of course) and drove around for a while. (Shhh....we know it's illegal. But Granddaddy went pretty slow, and we stayed on country roads!) We sang songs and the kids all loved throwing hay out of the truck.
After living so far away, events like this mean so much more to us now. I am SO thankful to be closer to family and that Josie is making memories to share with her cousins.

My Little Bed-maker

For the past two mornings, Josie has made her bed all by herself! (Without me ever asking her to do it in the first place!) I've never said anything to her about making her own bed. I guess she sees me making our bed every morning, so she's learned by example that that's just what you're supposed to do. She does a really great job of it, too! I'm not tempted at all to go behind her and "fix" it. I just hope this spirit of "willful tidiness" will continue as she gets older! So proud of my growin' girl!!!

Fall Fest and Nashville Zoo

On Saturday, our church had "Fall Fest" as a community outreach event. We had all kinds of fun activities on the church lawn: a bouncy house, a HUMONGOUS inflatable slide (which Josie and I went down about 5 times. It took me an hour to talk her into it, then she loved it!), a car show, awesome food, face painting, a petting zoo (complete with a camel!), and pony rides. It was a lot of fun and it seemed to me that we had a TON of visitors from the neighborhood. Please be praying for our church as we follow-up with those visitors and continue to share the love of Jesus with them.

Josie's face while looking at the petting zoo from a "safe" distance.

Josie and her new friend Rachel with the goats.

Not a fan of the pony ride.

Josie's favorite event of the day (other than the slide): popcorn.

Today we met my sister-in-law, Mary Anne, and her kids (still on Fall Break) for our first trip to the Nashville Zoo. This zoo didn't have as many animals as the Houston Zoo, but it was very nicely maintained and laid out. I must say that the playground area is AWESOME, and would be worth the membership fee just to have access to that all the time. Seriously....there's a huge castle/fort with a 3-story tunnel slide. So cool!!! We had great weather and it was such a nice day to walk through the zoo. Here are some pictures:

Josie in the garden at the "farm".

We got to go inside this bird "sanctuary" and feed them nectar from little cups. I don't remember what kind of birds they were, but they were very colorful and pretty. They would land on your arm and eat from the little cups. The kids all loved it!

This picture totally makes me laugh. My niece, Faith, had just tried to pet the bird that was on her hand and it pecked at her. I just happened to get her reaction. :-)

Josie and John Derrick watching the elephant. We wanted him to stick his trunk in the water and spray, but he never did.

Josie's transformation from being deathly afraid of the goats on Saturday, to being in an open pen with them and brushing one on Monday. Go figure.

The Pumpkin Patch

My sister-in-law had asked if we could get together and do something while her kids were on Fall Break. I wanted to take Josie to a pumpkin patch, and found a great website for one in Lebanon (where they live, about 40 minutes from us). So, we all went to the pumpkin patch together and had a great time! It was really warm today (I think the high was 85), so it wasn't exactly a "crisp, fall day", but we all had a lot of fun. The place we went to was called Lannom Farms. They had all kinds of activities for the kids. We started with our picnic lunch. Then we saw some animals (chickens, donkeys and a baby cow). There was a water pump station, a corn crib, a cow-milking station, corn maze, hay bale maze, trike track, hay hill, soybean maze, hayride, and other games. Josie had to be talked into the hayride, but admitted at the end that it wasn't so bad. She really liked the cow-milking station and playing on the slides. She helped me pick out two BIG pumpkins for us to carve, a pretty veined pumpkin, and her very own little pumpkin.

This is a lot of work!

Milking the cow

Corn!

Playin' in the corn crib (we actually found some of this in her clothes when we got home!)

Hay Bale Maze

That black tunnel is a slide that goes down the other side.

Swooshing out the bottom of the slide! It was really fast!!!

Their faces certainly portray their excitement. We did this "smaller" maze, while Mary Anne and Faith did the 3.5 acre corn maze that was supposed to take 45 minutes.

Grow little pumpkin, grow!

Slam dunk!

"Look Mommy, I'm walking on the hay!" (repeat 50 times)