Catching Up

We got home from Texas to find that one of the trees in our backyard was loaded down with fruit! Luckily Grandad was able to identify them and we didn't have to ask Google after all. Persimmons! I'm relatively sure I've never had one before. There were eight altogether. The girls were quite excited to pick them. They were pretty yummy, we just cut them up and ate them, though we found lots of different ideas for eating them online. We'll have to experiment with them a bit more next year. 

We took a trip to our favourite farm up here and the kids were excited to see they had added some new dinosaur eggs to play in. 

I just love this picture so much.

Finn had his first horseback ride. He loved it!

Finn was pretty excited by all the animals.

Miss Teresa Muffet and a Nora Spider

Aaand the rest of the pictures from my camera for October and early November:

Nora is stylish as ever.

This little stink will climb on anything and everything.

I caught these two snuggling one day. I love their cute relationship.

This sad baby. I found him up on top of the table with the cayenne pepper shaker. He had dumped a ton of it out on the table. When he saw me coming he hurriedly grabbed a handful and shoved it in his mouth. Poor babe. I grabbed some wipes to try to get as much out as possible and then tried to nurse him to soothe his mouth. He took a few sips and then sat up, grabbed the wipes, and started wiping his mouth out himself. I remembered we had some gogurts in the freezer and that finally brought him some relief. Poor fellow, he was so, so sad, I just felt so badly for him.

We went to Texas. Here's a blog post about it.

In October we took a trip to Texas.  We drove there. It was not enjoyable. The driving part wasn't, obviously Texas itself was great. 

I did a pretty poor job of remembering to take pictures while we were there. Pretty much only took pictures of Finn and Finn related activities. Sorry T and Nora...

Anyway, here's a little picture history of our trip to Texas!

Here's Finn's first emergence into the Lone Star State. Obvs he loved it right away. Well, possibly I was a bit more excited than he was. 

We went to Gigi and Poppie's house. Finn was a fan of their rocking horse.

We took the kids to see Marc's grandmother while we were there.

Then we went to Melissa's house. The kids had a blast with all their cousins. Finn was a stinker, as usual, about letting anyone interact with him too much. He only wanted to play with his newest cousin, and, unfortunately for Finn, he didn't want too much to do with him! They were pretty cute and funny together. 

I think this picture gives a pretty good idea about how he felt about Finn.

We also got to go see my cousin Ruth and her family. The kids LOVED their big swimming pool. And loved meeting all those third cousins!

Finn and Marc looked suave together in the Texas sun.

Then we went to Boerne. We spent a fun afternoon out at Boerne lake playing disc golf. 

I love that it was still warm enough to frolic in the lake in mid-October!

My parents pulled the top of our wedding cake out of the deep recesses of their freezer, T was super impressed by it. It tasted about as good as you would expect an almost seven-year-old cake to taste.

We can't go to Texas without visiting the zoo! McFluff really loved the flamingos. 

Grandad was a good sport at the church and "goosed" all the grandkids at once during duck, duck, goose. 

Finners had his first popsicle!

This next picture is of Finn right before he took a tumble head long into the river. He followed right behind that duck tail you see disappearing behind the tree. I could see the slope was making him pick up speed faster than he could handle, and tried to grab him, but he lost his footing and slid all the way into the water before I could get a hold of him. I jumped in right after him and scooped him up right away, poor babe. He was pretty scared, of course. Twenty-one years of feeding ducks at that river and I'm pretty sure Finn was the first of us to fall in!

He got one little scratch on his cheek and got pretty muddy but that was about it.

We also went to Austin! Finn was in loooove with new baby Tadhg! He just wanted to be near him and kiss him and love on him all the time.

Playing cars with Ciaran. He looks so old here!

Turns out that first popsicle was just the gateway to a new addiction...

The drive back felt soooo much longer! Lucky Marc got to fly home because he had to go back to work before we were ready to leave. My parents were nice enough to drive back with the rest of us so I didn't have to make that trek with all three kids alone. I'll have to get the pictures from their visit up here one of these days...