Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  There's been great excitement all week in our house - Lilly's been asking since Monday if she could "go to" Halloween.  We took her out trick or treating on the early shift in our neighborhood and now we're handing out candy at our house!

Some friends of ours had a family-friendly Halloween rager last weekend.  Mike and I were Brad and Angelina with all six of our children attached to us.  Isn't the resemblance shocking??? :)

The Today Show

Tory's friend Jess came to visit her and they headed up to The Today Show this morning.  Tory has on a white coat and Jess has on a black coat.  I'm sure they impressed all of America with their strange dance moves.  If you're further west, she's on the segment from 9:15 to 9:20.

There they are, off to the right

And a close up

Catching up...

Sorry I've been gone so long, it's been a crazy month!  Please see all of our (backdated) activities below!

NYC!

Tory has moved to NYC!  We shipped her off on the train last Friday morning, then headed down to join her and bring some more of her stuff on Saturday.  Her apartment is great, we LOVE New York and everyone had a great time.  We're hoping to spend a lot more time there.  Some highlights...

A grouchy girl and a giant pretzel!

Sunday morning.  After church.  Central Park.  Live jazz.  Hot dogs and pretzels.  Awesome!  

Tory's apartment is what you might euphemistically call "cozy."  She hadn't finished unpacking, so we basically filled every square inch of the 375 square feet.

Lilly's "quarters" in the entryway.  I tried to ignore my overly-claustrophobic fear of a fire and the need for escape in the middle of the night.

Tor's INCREDIBLE view

Tory and Lil, taking in the city.  Actually I think they're looking at Hoboken, but close enough.

Action Jackson loved all the excitement

Finally getting to see my college suitemate Anne (Pants).  Ignore the fact that I look just a bit odd and focus on Anne and the Statue of Liberty!  Please!

Mike and Lilly and the Statue of Liberty

Saturday brunch at "Mad Dog and Beans."  Funny name, fantastic Mexican food!

For those of you who have known me for a long time - our old house in Bronxville (we lived there when I was four and five).  It looks quite a bit fancier than it used to, but it was so much fun to get to see it again.

Tory getting on the train to NYC in New Haven.  She always seems so thrilled that I'm taking her picture!

Big Girl Bed!

Given that I didn't want to throw too many things at Lilly at once (I thought we would have moved by now), we've held off moving her out of her crib.  But it just got silly.  She looked like a giant antelope sleeping in the crib and it was killing me to lift her in and out.  So we finally got her a toddler bed.  I had no idea how excited she would be about it!  She couldn't contain her glee as Tory and I put it together.  The first few nights were rough, but she's been great since then.  We have implemented a hard and fast "do-not-get-out-of-your-bed-unless-mom-or-dad-is-here" rule and it seems to be working pretty well.  So well that she woke up from her nap yesterday and, rather than getting out of bed, she tried to stretch to reach a book on the floor and fell out of bed.  She's so dramatic that she happily re-created it for me :)

The last night in her crib.  I'm so overly nostalgic that I was sad.  But doesn't she look huge? (And, yes, I also realize that we still had her baby mobile in there, but she liked it!)

Like a caged animal...

Even the box is exciting!

Testing it out

The finished product (though we ended up moving it perpendicular to the wall)

More Miscellaneous pictures

Doing some light reading :)

Sweet Addie, snoozing in the sun in the kitchen

We went to a little local parade, which Lilly loved.  She associates parades with flags and candy and there's nothing better than flags and candy.

Waiting for the action

So pleased with her loot.  The lollipops were intriguing her to the point of distraction, so we had to just let her hold one at a time.  She had to hem and haw over which ones to give up :)

One crazy Cubs fan! (before they lost - boo!)

Go Cubbies!

Nannie and Dodo came for a quick visit and Lilly, of course, roped them into a lot of book-reading

Miscellaneous pictures

To skip over the really gory parts, let's just say that Lilly got sick, very sick, one afternoon during nap time.  I mean, she got sick all over herself and all over her crib and all over everything.  And we had a showing scheduled for that afternoon.  And I hadn't cleaned the house yet.  And our realtor arrived just as Lilly was getting sick again.  And then they called to see if they could move the showing up by an hour (which meant they'd arrive in 30 minutes).  Then Lilly threw up again.  It was a crazy afternoon.  Thank goodness Tory was here to help me.  When I finally got Lilly in the tub and cleaned up and dressed, she was crying again, so I told her that I'd make a little bed for her on the couch and that she could watch TV.  I took her downstairs and she laid down on the rug in the center of our living room and immediately fell asleep.  I've never seen anything like it.  I tried to move her to the couch and she ran back to the rug and fell asleep again.  We had to take her out to the car when it was time for our showing and she laid down in the grass next to the car :(  So sad.  She was still sleeping on the rug the next day so I took her to the doctor, where she promptly fell asleep on the exam table.  Turns out she had strep and it can cause vomiting in children.  I did not know that.  She was so sick, but it was so good to see her get better (and to be in awe at the power of penicillin).

Slowly recovering the next day

All better and ready for some Cubs baseball!  Go Cubbies!  We had a baseball-themed dinner with sausage and peppers, peanuts, chips and guac and root beer floats for dessert.

A few days later Lilly and I went to check out a new park.  We were the only ones at the park and she loved that the two of us could do whatever we wanted (including driving the "cars" for a long time).  It was fun.

What a kook!

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon we went to pick apples and pumpkins in Glastonbury with our friends the Layows.  I think Lilly was shocked that fruit actually grows on trees.  She kept picking up the rotting apples from the ground (we didn't take those home with us).

Mike, Lilly, Ethan, Melissa, Isaac and Luke on the hayride to the orchards

Tory and Lil and me

She truly did have bushels of fun

Telling Dada something incredibly important

Look what I found in the pumpkin patch :)

It was "SO heavy"

A pretty day for pumpkins (or as Mike, a grown, 30 year old man calls them, "punkins")

Searching for just the right ones

Yet another rotting apple from the ground, given to us in love

Tory and I headed down to NYC on a Saturday to look at lots of apartments.  We walked around the city with different brokers for about five hours.  Never again will I choose my "cute" shoes over my nerdy sneakers.  I am still dealing with the blisters weeks later.  But we had a really fun and busy day.  We were so busy that I didn't get to take any pictures until we were driving home at about midnight.  Tory was so happy that I was capturing the occasion!