Nebraska City

Every year we take a trip down to Nebraska City. We love to go to the apple orchards and get some home grown stuff. This year we picked up an apple pie, and of course.... cider donuts. We also make it a point to visit the crazy lady at Pumpkin Ridge where we get some cheap pumpkins. Austin had a great time!


He got his first driving lesson at Union Orchard.


Unfortunately this year, we did not get to see the crazy lady. Instead, we were helped by the crazy lady's crazy husband! A true testament to the sanctity of marriage. Austin was able to pick up his very own pumpkin (and mom and dad got to pick theirs out as well!)


Austin adores cats, but ours won't let him touch them. At Pumpkin Ridge he found this very friendly cat who was nice enough to allow Austin to pet him. As you can see, Austin is laughing his head off.


For some reason Austin has begun to smile with his tongue out. We think this pumpkin is as big as him!

This is at the Arbor Day Lodge. Apparently we were unable to get a picture where we were both looking at the camera!

We were grateful later that evening that Austin is still so young. Unfortunately, that night our lovely neighborhood teenagers smashed all 3 of our pumpkins in the street (taking out our landscaping light with them). We are just glad that Austin didn't wake up in the morning and want to see his first pumpkin. But, nasty teenagers aside, we had a great time!

Nintendo Nerds

So, Jim is really into this Nintendo collecting now. And he's trying to involve Austin as much as possible. As you can see, Austin doesn't mind. He quite likes the controllers (especially when we are trying to play a game)


Good times for everyone.


This picture was meant to be an inventory picture on a purchase Jim made, but Austin crawled into it. I love this picture because it shows off Austin's little New England Patriots jersey and the little icons on the butt.

Vala's Pumpkin Patch

Last Wednesday, Austin and LeAnna went to Vala's pumpkin patch. Unfortunately, Jim was working so he was unable to join us. Instead, they went with Mark and his family. Austin enjoyed watching the other kids, but he became pretty tired. We discovered the next day that he was getting his first tooth!


Whenever one of the kids is being difficult, Jana says they are up for sale. So, with a teething baby, and a demanding toddler, we thought this picture was appropriate. This is Austin with his cousin Kaleb (or is it Kaden?) I can't tell.


Jana took Austin for a little ride in one of the cars. I don't know how he felt about it, but immediately after he started crying and went to sleep.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures. But, Jana got a really cute one of the three little boys, check out eisenbartthepirates blog to see if she's posted it (hint hint)

The Marathon

LeAnna got it in her head that a great way to lose some baby weight would be to train and run a half-marathon. Jim, being the excellent support that he is, decided to join her in the effort. Well, despite some very poor training, and neither of us losing much baby weight, we completed the half-marathon!

We had sort of a rocky start in that we actually arrived late for the race and still needed to pick up our packets. So, by the time we crossed the starting line, everyone else was long gone. We couldn't even tell which direction we were supposed to go! But, pretty quickly we started passing some walkers and SLOW runners. (LeAnna runs pretty slow to begin with, so it's hard to catch up to anybody when you start 15 minutes behind them).


As you can see here, Jim is looking great. This is about mile 6 or 7.


In roughly the same place, LeAnna looks pretty good too. At least we're both smiling. Little do we know that there is a killer hill just down the course from this point. But, what goes up, must come down.... and down the hill was pretty fun.


Here we are after finishing the race. 13.1 miles! We did not finish quickly by any means. In fact, the first and second place FULL marathon winners finished before us, but we still feel pretty good about getting it done!