Fall Festival

We love the pumpkin patch near our house! We go mutliple times because it sooooo close but they have the best fall festival and the girls have so much fun!

 They felt like Princess Sofia riding Minimus.

 Gotta love the gloves. We aren't in Chicago any more sweet girl....

 They won a pink hair braid!

 Marin was so determined to get the rings on a hook. Hollis....she just walked up, put on a hook, and went and got her candy. :o)

 Little brats didn't want me to ride with them! It was so exciting to do it all by themselves.

 We are big fans of Shopkins (the weirdest toy in the universe). But a lady had the genius idea to turn them into necklaces. The girls were so thrilled. Marin got a cake Shopkin and Hollis got a taco one.

Super Friday Pictures

Marin participates in Super Friday....a special morning of activities for homeschoolers. She loves it. Hollis opted to do preschool at a different school one morning a week (and we love it just as much too). But they had a photographer come and take pictures for the super Friday "yearbook".

Here are the girls' pictures!

Owl Pellets

We studied owls and other nocturnal animals this month. As part of our unit, we dissected owl pellets! Marin LOVED it. Hollis stayed interested for a while but then went on an acorn hunt in the backyard. :o) She would come back to see what bones we had uncovered but that's about all. Marin....loved it all...the search, the bones, the predictions on what the owl had eaten. Loved it.


Owls eat their prey whole. They can't digest the bones so they vomit them back up....owl pellets.

 Very disgusting. But we are pretty sure the owl had eaten a rat. We compared skulls at the nature center and they are pretty close!

It was a gross experiment but something we will definitely do again. Marin was so excited to "see what bones look like!"

Chicago 2015

Burke was in Chicago some this month so the girls and I hopped on a plane and joined him for a few days. The girls didn't remember anything about the city so it was fun letting them see the place where they were born! They had so much fun!

My apologies for all the pictures in this post. I really should break it up but I'm not. We got to hang out with some good friends of ours while we were there. When we left Chicago, they had 2 kids. This visit they had 4....so we had a lot of catching up to do! We had breakfast together, then spent some time a new (HUGE) playground down town and then headed to the zoo for the afternoon. It was such a fun day!

Chicago is such a fun city! So glad we got to visit!