Faulkner's

This weekend we went to Faulkner's Pumpkin Farm in Kansas City.  I looked online for a pumpkin patch that also had lots of fun kids activities and this is where we decided to go!  First of all, I cant remember a time ever picking out my pumpkin and sweating!  I thought we were in AZ again!  It was a hot afternoon in October for once.  Good thing they had fresh lemonade for us to enjoy.

The kids had lots of fun.  They fed animals in a petting zoo, jumped in a bouncy house, went on a train ride, and a hayride, went through a corn maze, milked a pretend cow, had duck water races, climbed through a caterpillar, played on a playground, and did other activities.  We didnt even get to do everything because after a few hours we were all hot and tired.  Everyone fell asleep in the car on the way home except for the driver!

Then for family night last night, we carved our pumpkins.  The girls drew their jack-o-lantern faces on and we helped them cut them out.  Brylie, my wild, not afraid of anything kid, really did not like touching the "pumpkin guts"  she would not use her hands, she would only use a spoon, and she ended up having everyone help her with hers.  Kaden on the other hand liked helping everyone clean out their pumpkins.

I think the kids are getting excited about Halloween.  Kaden is going to be a "cute witch" this year and Brylie is going to be Princess Tiana from The Princess and the Frog.  She has been waiting since last year to be Tiana!

 Our finished projects:

We took our 3 little monkeys to the...

ZOO!

We went to the Kansas City Zoo this weekend.  I havent been since I was pregnant with Brylie!  We had the perfect weather for it.  We brought the wagon, so two kids could always have a ride.  Here is a collage of some of the animals that we saw.  I think Jaren liked it the best.  We would show him the animals and he would say, "pet, pet, pet".  He just wanted to get in there and pet all the animals.  Brylie really wanted to see the Sea Lion show.  So we did that, and now the Sea Lion is Brylie and Kaden's favorite animal! 

On Sunday, Kaden gave her first talk in Primary.  She told the story of Daniel and the Lions Den.  She says she "felt weird inside" when she was done.  She read her whole talk with little help from mommy, and we just wrote it the night before!  She has a new BFF that lives down the street and is in her primary class.  Life couldnt get much better for her!

Also, I started volunteering in the Library at Brylie's school.  I got to see her in the hall the first day.  She is so excited to have me there and I really miss working at the library in Maryville, so I am happy to come and help out for a while.

My one hard class at school is starting to get busy.  I have a huge research paper and two presentations that I have to be busy working on.  I am nervous about all 3 of these tasks....but hey I just need a C in the class to graduate, so that shouldnt be too hard!!  My other classes are really easy and I just have busy work to do, but its all stuff that I have already learned in my other classes.

We are halfway through our pregnancy now.  We just have the belly-growing part left now!  Thank you everyone for your prayers for our baby.  We did get told that she might have a heart defect, but today we did a higher level ultrasound and found out that her heart is completely healthy!  It was a long 5 days, waiting to know for sure.  We are so thankful that Heavenly Father has blessed our little baby to be healthy.....so far :)

This week we have a schedule full of girl scouts, gymnastics, friends coming over to play after school, and spirit week at school. It should be a great one!

Baby Girl Dombek

It seems like I am just getting bigger and bigger these days.  We have made it half way since I am 20 weeks!  I will have to take another picture soon.

Our Baby has become very active and I can feel her moving around in there now.  I feel her the most at night when I finally get to lay down and relax.  Greg has gotten to feel her move already too!  She is a strong kicker!  Greg is finally excited to be having a daughter.  He has been so involved and supportive in my pregnancy every step of the way.  This is his first time getting to experience every little pregnancy detail, as circumstances didnt allow him to be that involved with his sons birth.  I am so greatful to have a partner that has been there for me (I didnt really have that my last two pregnancies either). 

We have our "boppy" pillow still out from Jaren and the girls use it for their baby dolls.  I was telling Greg that we are going to need a new cover for it since its blue, and we need pink!  I told him we will have to put that on our wish list and let people know.

Well Greg went to Babies R Us and picked out a pink cover with flowers on it.  It was the cutest thing ever.  That was our first purchase for the new baby, and he went and did it without me expecting him to.  He also got us a new diaper bag!  Why is that the cutest thing ever, to see your husband baby shopping, or holding a baby?

Next week we are going for our ultrasound here in KC at our new doctors office.  I am hoping that they have the 3D ultrasound!  We will get to check on all of babies body parts :)

We think we have her name picked out, but its not 100% sure yet, so I wont post it until we have finalized that decision.

Weekend Activities

Today, it is estimated that one in every 110 children is diagnosed with autism, making it more common than childhood cancer, juvenile diabetes and pediatric AIDS combined.

On Saturday morning we joined the family in St Joe to support Autism Awareness/Research. We walked to support the Autism Alliance of Northwest Missouri. (To donate to this great cause you can go to their web site: http://www.nwmoautismalliance.org/)

It was a great event, some of the highlights were:
* the weather was perfect
* the kids had a blast in the bouncy house and ride
* the hot dogs were yummy
* we looked awesome in our TEAM KALE shirts
* we won prizes in the raffle
* and we were all there together

Kaden said, "It was fun.  I had a blast.  I loved jumping in the jumpy house!  When we were walking, I saw balloons in the sky."

Brylie said, "I liked jumping in the jumpy house and going down the slide.  And I liked riding on the train.  I like 'Party in the USA' and they played that song!"

TEAM KALE did a fabulous job at showing support.  We love Kale and want to help him and his family out in any way that we can.  Kale is such a sweet little guy that always makes me smile!  (Love you Day-day)

After the walk we went home and enjoyed playing outside because the weather was so nice.  We then got dressed up to get a family picture taken!  Since I am only getting bigger....I wanted to get our holiday picture done early :)  Then we went out to a fancy dinner.  It was fun!

Labor Day Weekend

For the weekend, Greg and I went to

Nauvoo!

We have been trying to make it there all summer. We had a great time seeing the sites, doing all the tours and watching the shows. It was peaceful and quiet there without all the summer tourists. The weather was perfect (I dont recall ever going to Navuoo and not sweating ALL day!)

We saw a lot and learned a lot. Nauvoo is a very special place to visit. The spirit is there continually. The early Saints went through a lot in that town and I am thankful for what they did for me.

We hope to go back again with the children sometime. (Kaden and Brylie went this summer with Gma and Gpa)

Here is a slideshow of some of our pics:

Click the X on that Pet Pop-up and you can read my captions!

Gymnastics

The girls started their gymnastics class last week. They went to one class during the summer before we started to make sure they wanted to do it. They both had a fun time and really seemed to enjoy it. I didnt get any good action shots yet, but I will try again this week!

Here they are right before we left for class.

Last weekend

We had a great weekend. We had a garage sale on friday and saturday. It was SOO busy on Friday and we had almost everything gone before Saturday. Greg and I had two of everything when we moved in. So, as we unpacked we have went through everything on got rid of TONS of stuff. We had a whole garage stall full of stuff! We made lots of money, have our garage back and closed early because we had nothing left to sell. Platte City is a popular town to have a garage sale in I guess!

We only had Jaren this weekend. It doent happen often that we only have one kid. So, we like to take those opportunities for lots of one on one fun time!
We went to Toys R Us to buy Kale a B-day present and Jaren got a new bike! He helped his daddy put it together and rode it around the kitchen and had a blast. Now all the kids have a bike we can ride at the park just up our street.

Jaren loves Elmo and when I was going through stuff for the garage sale, I found Kadens old Halloween costume. We put it on Jaren and he LOVED IT! We showed him himself in the mirror. It was so cute! Look at his smile in this picture, haha he was so happy!

Then we ended the weekend celebrating Kale's birthday. Jaren had a good time meeting some new cousins he had never seen. He was really buddies with Jake, and was walking around saying "Jake, Jake" before the party was over.

We love our time with Jaren. He is a total Daddy's-Boy. They call each other "Buddy". He is such a fun and good kid!