Checkers

During Ben's last week here in AZ, we went to Cracker Barrel with my grandparents and Uncle Kelly. While Ben got to relax and enjoy talking. I was outside chasing two very busy kids. Kelly came outside too, I got this cute picture of the three of them at the checkers table that I wanted to post.

Bowling Fun

We had fun bowling with our friends, The Vans, twice this month. The first time we were lucky enough to have Ben come with us.

Ben was doing a bowling league with my dad, brother, and uncle. He had to make up for a night he missed, so he came bowling with us. Payton wanted to bowl with him.

Connor, Baylee, and Trey had so much fun acting goofy!

Payton was a little sad he couldn't bowl too.

Sometimes bowling was more of a group thing. It was cute to watch them all lay on their tummys waiting for the ball to get to the end.

Payton was a little happier when Ben picked him up and let him "help".

The second time we went bowling, we went for a great after school deal they were having. For $7 you got up to 2 hours of bowling, shoe rental, a drink and fries, and a $5 card for the arcade area. No pictures of bowling this time, but here's some from the games.

Payton wanted to ride this motorcycle so bad, but once we paid for it, he decided he didn't want on after all.

Baylee was excited for skee ball, but it was a little hard because it had an edge that made it hard to get the ball up there.

This was Payton's solution to the skee ball challenge.

Baylee and Trey loved this roller coaster simulator. They had so much fun on it!

We loved our bowling outings with The Vans! We also hit Happy Hour in the arcade so those cards lasted forever.

Catching Up Starting With Cupcakes

I am so behind on this blog, so to start off my catching up, here's my October cupcake. I made caramel apple cupcakes with caramel cream cheese frosting for my sister's birthday. They were pretty tasty!

Quick Trip To So Cal

Last weekend we took a quick trip to Southern California. Quick as in we left Friday morning and came back Sunday night. We had a lot of fun visiting with some of Ben's family, I just wished it lasted longer. I didn't get too many pictures since it was a quick trip, but here's more than a few that I did get:

Payton loved Jenny and Andre's dogs. Mike wouldn't have too much to do with him, but Lucky was a great sport. AS you can see in this picture, they got pretty close.

Payton even read to him. He would also feed Lucky any food I gave him to eat, and even tried to share his pacifier.

We hit the beach on Saturday, and Baylee was in heaven. She spent most of her time playing in the sand.

Payton loved the ocean. He would go out up to his chest in it, and at times he didn't even want me to hold his hand (don't worry, I kept a good grip on him). Ben took both kids out on seperate turns, and later ditched them for boogie boarding.

As soon as soon as we got Payton back on the sand, he would head right back for the water. He eventually played in the sand a bit, but definitely preferred the ocean.

Baylee, Christian, and Jessica had a lot of fun covering Andre's surfboard in sand.

In our church, when a baby is a couple months old it is given a blessing. It's just like a prayer espcially for the baby to bless the baby and it's life ahead. The reason we came down was because Missy and Brant were blessing their daughter, Amelia, at church on Sunday. This was our first time meeting her (she was born a couple weeks after our last visit to Southern California). She is such a cute, sweet little girl. Don't you just love her bug-eyed look?

My plan was to not give Payton a nap so he would sleep on the way home. It didn't work. He fell asleep about an hour before we left to come home.

Baylee loved being around Amelia. She loves babies. From the way Amelia was looking at her, I'd say the feeling was mutual.

Baylee was nice enough to pose with Grandma and Grandpa Hall before we took off, although she was a bit of a challenge. Sorry the pictures a little blurry.

We didn't do a lot, mostly just hung out with family, but we loved it. Thank you everyone for a great weekend and to Jenny and Andre for letting us stay there!

Birthday Bracelets

Just for fun: My mom's birthday was at the end of the month. We were headed out of town on kinda short notice, but I wanted to give her a present before we left. We are a little low on money, so I whipped up a couple of bracelets for her:

They were fun to make. They would have been easy if I didn't have a hard time using the sewing machine Ben's parents got me for my birthday. I think I might need some lessons on how to sew velcro onto felt. Insetad I ended up hand sewing. My mom loved them (or so she said), so that's what matters to me!