My Heros!

Just a few fun pictures from Halloween! Jackson's costume got lots of use pre and post Halloween. Here's Batman and Todd mowing the lawn.

And our little Superman...

Not exactly leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but man is he cute! Jackson was a really good helper. He would hold both buckets and make sure he got one piece of candy for him and one for Deacon. Such a good big brother!

And my third hero! I love all my boys!

October so far...

It's been a busy month so far! I wish I could say it was because I was diligently getting ready for the arrival of Baby Girl, but it's not. Haven't started that yet...I'll let you know if I ever actually am "ready", but we are excited to meet her! But with Jackson in school two days out of the week, it seems to go by so quickly. So here's the quick run-down in pictures of what we've been keeping busy doing...
Deacon LOVES taking baths. As soon as he hears the water turn on, he runs for the bathroom. The other day, Todd made the mistake of starting the tub and then going to get a cup from the kitchen and when he came back, Deacon had already made himself comfortable in the tub. Fully clothed.
We've been making frequent visits to Pumpkinland. Always fun to get some fun pictures of the kiddos. This one just made me laugh.

And it's so hard to get Jackson to actually look at the camera and smile so had to get this one in here since it doesn't happen very often.

All my boys in the corn maze.

The other day, this is how I found Deacon in the bathroom. He'd gotten up on the stool all by himself and started brushing his teeth. He was very proud of himself!

And, of course, we've been playing in the leaves! Jackson loves raking them into piles to jump into and throw around. Deacon mostly just likes to watch and throw an occasional leaf or two.

Can't believe that Fall has been so beautiful so far this year. I'm hopeful it means we'll have a milder winter than we've had the last couple of years, but who knows?! We'll just keep enjoying being able to play outside for as long as we can!

Chuck E. Cheese!! AKA Jackson's BD-Round 2

As promised, here are a few pictures from our jaunt to Chuck E. Cheese last week for J's big 4th BD bash with his cousins! The last time Jackson was at Chuck E. Cheese was way back when we visited my friend Allison in Michigan when Jackson was not even 2 years old. I didn't even think that he would be interested in going, or even really know what it was, but out of the blue on his birthday he said, "Mom, I've got a great idea! We should go to that birthday place that we always walk by at the mall!" I kinda played dumb for a minute or two, and then when he wouldn't give up on it, we decided to try to make it happen. And it's always more fun with cousins, so Ella and Max and Aunt Ally and Uncle Randy all joined us for the fun times! Jackson found the air hockey table to be quite a draw. I think he made sure he played just about everyone in a game. Given the kid-sized nature of the table, Todd was at quite a disadvantage when he played him!

It never ceases to amaze me when I see these three in a picture together how much they look related!

Partners in crime....I'm having visions of a birthday about 12 years into the future and it makes me scared!

Jackson turns 4!

We sort of had a week-long birthday celebration for Jackson since it was hard to get family together, so his birthday started with a little celebration at home with just us. He had been asking for AGES about his birthday and when he would turn 4 and he would say, "Can't we just say I'm 4 now, Mom?" So now that he can officially say he's 4, it's quite exciting! He has been dying for some light sabers (or light savers as he calls them), so that was one of his gifts.

And he was so excited to get this package in the mail from Uncle Jeremy! He couldn't believe how big the box was and as you can tell from his face, he was pretty pumped about the construction worker outfit!

Thanks, Uncle Jeremy!! The next day, Todd's Uncle was here working on the garage again, so Jackson suited up and went out to help for a little while. It was quite amusing watching him get all dressed up for action, and he was very proud to show Uncle Marwin what he had gotten for his birthday!

More pictures to come of our fun time at Chuck E. Cheese!

This Week at our house...

We made our first trip out to Pumpkinland to pet the puppies... ...and feed the goats and llamas. We'll be making lots more trips as the weather continues to feel more and more Fall-like, I'm sure! I'm a little sad that Baby Girl won't be born in time for a newborn pumpkin picture at Pumpkinland like we have for Jackson and Deacon.

And Jackson started pre-school this week! He seems to really like it a lot and I can honestly say I've been enjoying a couple quiet mornings a week with only a sleeping Deacon at home. I think Jackson's favorite thing at pre-school so far is the fun train table. Whenever I drop him off, he immediately heads there and basically only looks up long enough to say "bye, Mom".

Can't wait to get to school!

This kid does his best to foil any and all attempts to take his picture these days, hence the evil/mischievous grin. But it's still kinda cute!

Spring Fun in the OC

We've had some decent spring weather interspersed with some not-so-nice spring weather, so we've been trying to take advantage of the good stuff whenever we can. Deacon enjoys the swings a ton at the park. Mom's kinda boring and won't let him sit on the ground and eat wood chips, so the swing it is. Last week was the annual Tulip Festival in Orange City so we did lots of walking around downtown, watching parades, and riding rides. This is Jackson's friend, Julia. They've played together since they were babies and they still have a good time together. We did some walking around at the Tulip Festival with Julia and her family one evening and caught those two in a few cute moments...

While Jackson and Julia rode on a few rides, the rest of the baby gang stayed on the sides watching longingly. Maybe next year kiddos. And yes, only one of those babies is mine. The other three are Julia's sisters and brother (one year old triplets)!!!

And last, just a little brother love. Jackson wanted to help me put Deacon to bed one night so I let him give Deacon his bottle. It was quite sweet watching Deacon watch Jackson and Jackson was trying so hard to be so grown up. Love these moments!

Visit from the Perkins fam- minus Uncle John

My sister, Lindsay, and kiddos Eva and Sheperd came for a visit this past week and a good time was had by all. The kids had tons of fun playing with each other and Lindsay and I got to have some good sister time too. Here's the quick run-down of our time together:
Move night for the kids- Jackson calls it a "dark movie" since we turn all the lights off to make it more theater like. Snow White was on TV so we popped some popcorn and made an evening of it. We had a couple of decent days, so we headed to the park. It was a little wet and sloppy, but the kids didn't care at all. Deacon thoroughly enjoyed his first ride on the swing...

Our church had our annual Pinewood Derby, so the kids all got to race a car. Some of the races went better than others, but Jackson got third place in the open division!

Linds and the kids left this morning so this next couple of days could be lonely at our house. Thanks for braving the drive on your own, Linds! Love you all!

Last week at the Vogels...

Most mornings, this is the picture that greets me when I go into Deacon's room. Jackson used to come right into our room to wake me up when he woke up, but now if he hears Deacon, he makes a detour and decides to go play with him. I can hear them through the monitor and it's quite entertaining. Jackson gets all the toys in Deacon's room and puts them in the crib and then climbs in to play. I promise Deacon enjoys it a lot more than it looks in these pictures. This was actually the first morning I found them like this and when I walked in they were playing sweetly. Then, of course, I had to run and get the camera and he didn't like it that I left. And you may notice that Deacon is wearing the same clothes in both pictures which shows that he didn't get his clothes changed for at least 36 hours (probably longer honestly). My theory is if it doesn't have poop on it, it's clean. There you have it.

And the excitement of the week was Todd's birthday on the 3rd! The kids and I had a fun day getting things ready to surprise Daddy with a cake and balloons and his birthday presents. Jackson really got into the whole thing, which was fun and nice to see that he enjoyed it even though he wasn't the one getting the presents. He did have a little trouble with wanting to eat the cake that we made before Todd woke up, but I explained that we had to wait until we could sing Happy Birthday to Daddy. And then I left the cake on the table and went to go put Deacon to bed. When I came back I noticed that I should have been more specific and told him that he couldn't LICK the cake either. Nice. Live and learn, I guess.

Happy Birthday Babe! I love you this much <----------->! Enjoy your guilt-free golf!

Loving my boys...

Part of the reason I started a blog was so that I had a place to put down some things that I hope to remember forever. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it seems that I forget to remember these little moments of sheer entertainment that my boys provide me with...

The other night when I was putting Jackson to bed, he asked me to read him a book. I had already turned off the lights in his room and was laying on the bed with him and in my laziness, I really didn't want to get up so I decided to just tell him a story. So I proceeded to make up a story all about how a bunch of firemen pulled up in a firetruck in front of our house and called out to Jackson that they needed his help putting a fire out. The story ended with Jackson saving the day and everyone cheering and thanking him and then him coming home and getting a big cookie and some lemonade. While I was telling him the story, I could see him just swelling up with pride at the thought that everyone was cheering for him and that he had saved the day and he kept scrunching up his shoulders with a "well, that's what I do, Mom" kind of look and he just couldn't stop smiling. When the story was over, the first thing he did was ask if I could be the teacher in his Sunday school class next time so I could tell all the other kids that story about him. Then he asked me to tell it again. And it's been the request every night since then. Of course, since I made the story up, I can never remember exactly what I said the first time, but Jackson always reminds me if I miss a part.

And our little peanut, Deacon is just that....a peanut. He is seven months old today and crawling all over the place and sometimes looks like he's trying to stand up. Nuts! We had his 6 month well child check up the other day and he is only 3rd percentile for both height and weight so we're working on trying to pack the pounds onto this kiddo. He pretty much lives with his tongue sticking out, which is super cute. Even when he smiles, his tongue is out. He really is just such a happy, content, laid back baby which I am ever so thankful for! I love my boys so much!

January so far...

We spent New Years Day with the rest of the Vogel clan to celebrate the New Year, but also to celebrate Christmas since we didn't get to do that earlier. Ella is getting to be so grown up and she loves her new baby cousin. Deacon has learned how to sit on his own now...and is really trying his hardest to start crawling. I'm scared.

We also finally have had a few days that were warm enough to take advantage of all of the snow we've been getting, so we took Jackson out to the big hill at the golf course. He's still not quite old enough to really enjoy it yet. I think he thinks it's too much work for not enough pay-off since he has to walk back up the hill and that takes about 3 times as long as the trip down. Plus he doesn't like getting snow in his face. He does like just playing in the snow though.

I'm sorry for the lameness of the posting lately. I make no promises about how much I'll get posted in the future either. These days it seems I'm happy to just get kids fed and brush my teeth. But I'll try! Happy New Year!

2009 Wrap-up

We spent Christmas in St. Louis with both sides of the fam. Christmas Eve we celebrated with Tim, Lizzie, and Lilly in their new house and then Christmas Day was spent at John and Lindsay's house with my bro and Mom and John. This is the mini version, but basically it was kid-chaos, opening presents, spending time with family, and wii bowling tournaments. Oh, and cheesy smiles (see following pictures). And Lindsay and John officially announced the impending arrival of baby Perkins #3- due in July! Shep and Jackson became BFF's and loved chasing each other and wrestling.

And here comes the cheesy smiles- compliments of Lilly and Jackson...

Too Busy!

It's that time of the year, I guess. I feel like my feet haven't stopped moving since October so that's part of the reason for lack of blog updates. My guess is everyone else is so busy too that no one has time to even sit down and check blogs so you probably haven't missed much! But I just uploaded some pictures from the camera to the computer so I thought I'd post a couple while I was sitting here. These are from our trip to get our Christmas tree last week. We had our first big snow fall here last week and it looks like we will definitely have a white Christmas here- although we will be in St. Louis. Anyway, it was REALLY cold and snowy still, so I left a lot of the tree picking up to Todd while I stayed inside with Deacon. Jackson had a ball playing in all the snow while Todd did all the work. My hero! So here's a few pictures from our adventure.

This is a picture of downtown Orange City. I really love how it looks at night with all the lights lit up and all the snow really added a sweet, homey feeling to it too. We bundled Deacon up to brave the cold- maybe a little too much though. By the time we got home he was crabby and sweaty! But you can never be too careful when the windchill is like 5!I seriously had a hard time getting a picture of Jackson because he wouldn't sit still long enough for it not to just be a blur on the picture. But the element of surprise beat him this time, hence the "dear in the headlights" look.

This is the only picture we've taken of the tree so far, but Deacon is loving looking at the lights. We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. And in case you are wondering where the Christmas card is (or the birth announcement for that matter!), we're working on it! It's probably going to be a New Years card though.