our last few days

Last saturday we singed up for a diy craft project at Lowes. We were pretty certain that both kids were old enough to sit there for a while and "help" mommy and daddy make a craft. The event was completely free and as you can see the kids loved it. Yes, this is Ollie's best smile...haha.

Notice Melissa's face of determination and imagine 40 hammers hitting a table at the same time. It was a loud and busy little workshop.

Here is Ollie testing out the light up feature of the train. Check!

Our little carpenter proud of the finished product.

We even got to stop by the bengal-mobile. Turned out to be good luck as we shutout the Cleveland Browns later that day!!!

On Thursday, Charlotte has her first ever program at school. Pre school of course, but it was a blast. Each class did a couple of poem/songs and thanks to a long lens I was able to get some close up shots of her little elf face.

Look at that technique!

Here's a shot of the program. It ended with the whole school singing a few songs together, including a very hearty version of "do you want to build a snowman?" à la Frozen.

Tiki (my mom) held Ollie the whole time and he clearly wasn't entertained by all of the singing going on just behind him.

Here is a group shot. Each class had a different costume that matched the poems and songs they sang. Super cute.

Imagine, "we wish you a merry christmas" being sung during this particular choreography move.

And a nice little smirk as she walked back to her row with her class.

As you can see she did not want to be a part of this picture.

Then this morning we headed to see Santa. Bass Pro Shop has been our "go-to" for the last couple of years and this Santa did not disappoint. After the kids had their picture taken, Santa asked Melissa what she wanted for Christmas. She replied, "I want our two kids to sleep in every morning." Santa's response was, "Well, a very long time ago you asked me to give you two baby dolls" and left it at that. Touché Santa!

Here is Charlotte with Santa.

And Ollie's turn.

We grabbed a few more pictures around the store...

Had to stop and see the fish of course.

This is what awe and wonder looks like...

Cowboy Ollie

And Charlotte the bear kisser.

We hope you have a great Christmas season! As you can see, we're having a fun time so far.

holiday weekend

Happy Thanksgiving from the Hess Family to yours. We had a great weekend and wanted to share a couple pictures. Before all of our family arrived for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday we were able to snap a few pictures of the kids. Melissa made both kids shirts again. Charlotte is very much into letters these days (thanks preschool) so Melissa made an "o" shirt for Oliver and a "c" shirt for Charlotte. Pictures like those prove that even though they fight like cats and dogs sometimes, deep down they are best friends.

My parents took the kids home with them after Thanksgiving so Melissa and I got to spend the rest of the evening playing games around the table with family and sleep in (7:30am). Well I slept in, but for some reason Melissa woke up around 6am and cleaned up the house from the night before. We headed out to do some black friday shopping and picked up the last few things on our list for the kids. We had a nice breakfast together and had fun poking around a few stores.

My parents brought the kids back, they napped and when naps were over we headed out to the Christmas tree farm to pick out this year's tree. It was in the 30's so we bundled up and made our way out to the farm.

Had to get a picture on the sleigh. You can compare to last year here.

Here is the tree we landed on. It was cold and the kids still can't walk too far, so we found a tree pretty quickly and cut that sucker down.

Now it was time to drag the tree up to be tied up tightly for the car ride home.

Charlotte has been naming a lot of things lately and she picks pretty peculiar names. This year she has decided to name our tree....wait for it....Plant. How clever of her. Here she is giving Plant a nice big hug.

This is Ollie saying cheese for pictures. He never smiles when we ask him to and smiles when we don't. I guess that what an almost 2 year old does though.

No trip is complete without a treat, so they both picked out candy canes while we paid for the tree and warmed up inside for a bit.

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend. We've been back in Ohio for over a year now and it's fun to make these new traditions and memories and get to look back and see how the kids have grown over the past year. Blessings!

October was here and quickly gone...

Although the month of October is one of my favorite months of the year, it is the busiest month for our family and so it goes very quickly!  So quickly that we do not have time to put up regular blog posts.  So here was our October.  In between crazy schedules we enjoyed some fall fun. Charlotte really enjoys decorating and this years decorating day was lead by Charlotte herself.  She did a great job helping me inside and she did the outside of the house with a little help.

A couple of weekends ago we went to Shaw Farms to pick pumpkins.  We met Grandpa and Gibby and got to ride a hay ride (best deal in town), saw some animals, played at the farm and Charlotte got to take a farm train ride.  She was thrilled as you can see.

Later that evening we went to Grandpa and Gibby’s house for dinner to carve pumpkins.

On Halloween night Grandpa, Gibby and Tiki came over to partake in our block party with neighbors.  Charlotte and Oliver were Elsa and Olaf and not to be out-shined, Gibby and Tiki were scarecrows!  We had a delicious dinner and then all the kids took off for trick or treating adventures.  Charlotte knew exactly what she was doing as she had already trick or treated at preschool that morning.  Oliver just thought we were taking a walk with the whole neighborhood.  As soon as we walked up to the first house and he saw that he was getting “treaaaaaats!” he was off and didn’t slow down.

We had a very busy month and got to do some really fun things as a family.  Now it is November first, it is snowing and we have banana bread in the oven!  We welcome November and some lazier schedules!

-melissa

Apple Pickin' with the Fam

Yesterday we tried out a new apple orchard that was highly recommended to us by several of our friends here in Ohio.  We met Gibby, Aunt Rachel, John and Ben there and I think everyone had a bunch of fun!