To celebrate Grammy's 60th birthday, we spent the night downtown. The girls went to The American Girl Doll Store and the boys went to the Museum of Science and Industry. For dinner we went to the Signature Room and had a beautiful view of the city. It was a great weekend.

Fall Cookies

Both kids love to bake with me, so today we made sugar cookies. We cut out pumpkins, ghosts, and fall leaves. The mixing, cutting, and baking took about half an hour. I'm pretty sure the clean up took twice as long!

Today we went to the Morton Arboretum with Kris and Seth. It was so fun to see all of the fall decorations. Luke and Seth loved climbing on everything. Tessa really liked looking at the scarcrows around the lake.

Tessa's Glasses

Well we just found out our two year old needs glasses.

She woke up last weekend with "googly" eyes. After a scary trip to the ER, it turns out that Tessa is farsighted and her eyes are having a hard time working together to form an image. We're hoping glasses will solve the problem. Here she is in her new glasses.

Our New Tree

Since we bought this house, we have wanted to plant a tree in the yard and we finally did it! We bought an Autumn Blaze Maple and John and Luke set to work digging the hole. After a lot of dirt was dug, the tree made it into the ground - surrounded by new dirt and cow poop (Luke was not very happy about this). Luke wanted to eat lunch outside so he could watch the tree grow. Although it is a fast growing tree, I hope he is not disappointed in how long it will take the tree to grow taller than our house.

"I Can!"

Tessa is into the "I can!" phase. She insists on doing everything herself. She has learned to dress herself, feed herself yogurt, and has now mastered putting on her own sandals. The other day she even wanted to change her dirty diaper by herself. She insists on doing her own buckles in the carseat. She can't, of course, so after 3 minutes of frustration for both of us, I finish for her and she becomes hysterical, screaming, "I can, I can, I can." The "terrible twos" have begun!

First Day of School!!!

Luke had his first day of preschool today. He was very excited to see his classroom and to meet his teachers. Without hesitation, he started playing with the building blocks and created a fort which later turned into a spaceship. He can't wait for Friday!