Fall Festival, Pumpkin Patch, and Maple Leaf Festival ...

Last week we had the Fall Festival at Riley's elementary school and it was such a good time! Nothing too fancy, just some silly games, fun little prizes, and lots and lots of pie - what more could you ask for? Not much if you're a Huber boy, that's for sure!

Here's Gage winding up for some Fall-themed putt-putt while Riley supervises.

This was one of the boys' favorites and got played a couple of times. They were really good at it!

Here's Corey helping set up the pins for the Pumpkin Bowling. All the kiddos thought it was hilarious to use a small pumpkin as a bowling ball! Just had to make sure to change out the pumpkins before things got too messy = O

Riley with one of his prizes - a beloved "bouncy ball." It never matters to the kiddos how small or cheap these little balls are, they are always a fun treat!

Oh Happy Happy, Joy Joy! Gager won some vampire teeth! You know this just made our little supernatural creature lover sooooooo happy : )=

Just a small glimpse of all of the pie that was donated by PTO volunteers for the event. You should have seen how excited our little sugarbaby was when he saw this display!

The row of toppings for the kiddos to make their slice extra special.

It hurts my teeth to even look at this, but the kiddos sure thought they had created some masterpieces!

For more Fall Fun we headed out for our annual Pumpkin Patch excursion. We were thankful for the most perfect October weather one could imagine. No jackets required! Here, Gage is ready to get the action started, "C'mon Dad, let's GO already!"

Riley found his first winner. He is like his momma and likes the different colored pumpkins = )

Gager loves his li'l "punkin"

The boys with a silly pose in the patch.

Hmmm, the sun was definitely shining - should've had the boys bring their sunglasses!

Gage was pretending to be a pumpkin patch crime fighter while waiting for the hayrack ride to come our way - he would growl at all the bad guys that came near - I'm sure people thought he was a little strange, but he didn't mind a bit = )

Riley's favorite picture pose - always #1!

My cutie pie. Love the way the sun gleams off that red hair!

The boys really get into the ride = )

Our final pumpkin booty. Lots of carving to do!

First round of decorating with more to follow!

On Sunday we headed to the Maple Leaf Festival in Baldwin with some friends. The boys loved it because they got to spend some time with their ol' pre-school buddy, Kohen. Plus, there were carnival rides. Woohoo! Unfortunately, I was too busy gabbing to get any good pics, but a we all had a great time which is the most important thing of all = )

Have I mentioned how much I love this time of year? So much fun!

Land and Sea ...

What a fantastic weekend! There's not many opportunites in October to go for hike through the fall foliage then go cool off by splashing in the lake! With the exception of a few required duties, we declared this weekend to be two days of play - and play we did!

While Corey helped out some of our elderly neighbors by trimming their tree limbs, the boys and I had our own tree adventure by doing some hiking through the trees. We found this "backwoods trail" and it was just perfect for our adventure!

There were two trails that split in different directions, since we got a little late start I decided we should take the shorter one as it was supposed to take approximately 25-30 minutes to hike. Well, the boys were so excited we ended up running most of this trail and were done in 8 minutes!

Pausing to take a breath and a photo = )

This was my favorite snapshot of the day!



Since we finished the first trail so quickly, we went ahead and ventured onto the second trail as well. This one was supposed to take 40-45 minutes ... it took us 18. We were definitely getting our exercise! In this pic the boys were searching for the sneaky ninjas there were sure were hiding in the trees = )

After the hike, the boys were ready to see some water, so we found our way to the shoreline. Gage claimed this area as his own "Gager Ocean" where he was the king! Such an imagination = )

Here the boys really enjoyed finding interesting rocks and seashells. With the water being so low, we even found several fully intact clam shells with their inhabitants still inside!

Just imagining the possibilities!

A little brotherly love at the lake = )

Here the boys invented the game, "SharkWave" where they tried to jump all of the incoming waves. So much energy!

An opening in the clouds - just thought it was pretty = )

So the boys and I had so much fun at the lake, we decided we needed to bring daddy back the next day to enjoy the nature with us! So, after church that is just what we did! Here's the boys heading out to where the sand meets the sea ...

More "SharkWave"

I tried their game, too ... but we won't share that silly picture, so here's a pose instead = )

Corey and I - I love how this includes the boys frolicking in the background. Perfect!

That group of trees in the distance is a little island that Corey and I used to visit with friends via boat - way back before the kiddos. Now the lake is down so much you can walk to the used-to-be-island via this sandbar. Crazy.

We stayed and soaked up the October sun for hours, the kiddos did not want to leave - and neither did we! There is just something so refreshing and peaceful about listening to the sounds of the beach - the crashing waves, the light breeze, the chattering birds.  After all of the rush-rush of our schedules lately, this little nature break over the last two days was exactly what we needed to relax and recharge. So thankful for this peaceful weekend!

Hello Again ...

Wow. So it's been a whole month + since my last post. September was just plain crazy busy, but we like it that way = ) The boys have been growing like crazy and are both really enjoying school. There have been a few struggles along the way, but what is life without challenges? We just keep trying to use these times as opportunities to learn and better ourselves. One example is that Riley recently had his first official "fight" at school. Ugh. It started out that he was doing flips on the monkey bars. On one of his rotations he accidentally kicked another boy that was standing nearby. The boy wanted to Riley to apologize, but Riley just kept telling him that it was an accident. The boy and a friend of his tried to bully Riley into apologizing to which Riley responded, "It was an accident, quit being girls and acting like crybabies!" (ugh, again. seriously buddy?) Anyhow, this stoked the fire more and the boys proceeded to chase Riley across the playground, up the steps, then down the slide. At the bottom, one kid held him down while the other punched him. Good grief. Luckily a teacher was there quickly and no one was hurt. But, this gave us another opportunity to discuss why it is the right thing to do to apologize even when something is an accident so things don't escalate. Yep, gonna be a lot of lessons learned the hard way with this one - I had hoped we would break that pattern or skip a generation, but no such luck = )

Anyhow here is a pic of our little Rocky - er, I mean Rock Star = )

This is one of his favorite things to do right now, rock out on the guitar that Aunt Tracy gave him. He loves to make noise - music, I meant music!

Here's our funny boy, Gage pretending to be a cowboy. He just loves this horse that my Grandma and Grandpa gave us before he was even born. Love that!

Speaking of rock stars, Corey and I had a date night this last month and went to the Heart/Def Leppard concert. Good music, good company, good beer, and good times!

Gage at his friend's bowling birthday party. I wish I had a picture of him actually bowling. We took to calling him the "psycho bolwer" because he is just crazy. He takes off running like a wild man and hurls the ball down the alley. It's nuts to watch, but he sure has fun and does a pretty good job, too!

Guess who had some sugar at the party?

Daddy and Riley cheesing it up during snack time!

We also got to spend some time in Pratt with the Huber side, which is always a good time. Riley just adores his big cousin, Hunter. And this crazy little dog they have, Coco, was a riot. She had just as much energy as the kiddos so that worked out well = )

Our beautiful niece, Paige, turned 13. Hard to believe she's a teenager now! Here she is with the cake I made for her. She kinda liked it = )

Gage is still obsessed with all things creepy and supernatural, so he was super stoked to play with Hunter's werewolf mask from a couple of Halloween's ago. Pretty scary stuff! Grrrrrr....

I also headed to Colorado to spend some much needed sister time with Tracy. We had such a good time! I had so much fun and she spoiled me so much - it was hard to come back! Here we are at a neighborhood bbq where there just happened to be this beautiful, bright double rainbow. Double blessing!

He we were being silly taking a pic in front of this amazing barbecue place. BBQ seemed to be a theme apparently. Anyhow, we liked the bear statue = )

Masses of delicious, down home barbecue. Had to take a photo!

We also had a sock hop at Gage's pre-school. This was so much fun! The kiddos enjoyed being at the school after hours and running around like crazy people in the gym. Aren't they cute little greasers?

This was also the month for our Cooper's Cause 5K. I really enjoy being a part of something so amazing. This is one of my favorite pics of the day.

Here's another favorite of me and Jamie. She did great a great job on the run!

These next couple are just silly. Riley has started taking tons of random pictures with his hand in the photo acting like it's grabbing at or pointing to stuff. Silly, but an interesting perspective!

Another silly hand photo.

And finally, we now officially have 2 boys that can ride bikes without training wheels! Woohoo, go Gage! These boys sure love their bikes.

I know this picture is blurry, but I thought it was fitting. The boys are growing so fast and learning so many things that sometimes I feel like everything is just a blur. I guess that's why I need to keep taking pictures and updating this blog so I can remember it all = )

Yep, I wasn't kidding about the busy part. It looks like October is shaping up the same. Good times!