Red River Revel- October 11th, 2012

Each year, Shreveport has this great fesitval called the Red River Revel. It's an arts and music festival and includes great food, activities for everyone in the family and amazing musical peformances. Last year we went to celebrate Sydney's birthday and happened to be there for an amazing performance by The Hunt Family Fiddlers. We bought their cd that night and when I saw they were back this year, we made sure to go on the night they were performing. They had all new music and I was so thrilled! Ever hear of Mumford & Sons? Their stuff is like that. So amazing!

Tessa enjoying some turkey leg!

Brian dancing with Sydney

The kids having fun with a pretend shopping center.

Some face-painting. So funny, Jonas wanted a bat, and this girl's "bat" looks more like a flying squirrel

A sand pit dig. The kids didn't care about finding anything, they just wanted to play in the sand!

And this is that Hunt Family fiddler group I was talking about. 5 brothers and 2 sisters, all musically talented with amazing voices and know how to play SEVERAL instruments each! Amazing!

Sydney's Birthday-10/3

We celebrated Sydney's birthday with just our family on her actual birthday. Sydney picked out a strawberry cake mix and blue vanilla frosting. Interesting combo!

Sydney and Jonas helping decorate:

of course you got to sample the goods sometimes:

Five candles, one to grow on!

Sydney making a wish and getting ready to blow!

Some of the presents from Mom and Dad. She got the rest at her birthday party. She got a Read-Along book and cd of "Tangled Ever After" and then some fun Disney Princess wall decals to decorate her bedroom!

She says I am four!

A couple days later, we got Aunt Nicole on the phone and Sydney opened the present from her of this fairy which she absolutely adored!

Rockband- 10/1

Here are some fun photos I got of the kids playing Rock Band with Aunt Tessa. (the instruments were disconnected but the kids didn't notice....)

Thought my rocker babies were pretty cute:

Sydney asleep on the potty

Just one cute, random photo. showing how goofy Sydney is. I am so grateful that she doesn't wet the bed. This one night though, it was a little tough to get up and go to the bathroom:

Rest of September's Adventures

So kind of out of order from the last post, as it came before those pictures at the park but it took a little while to get our family portraits back. We were so excited about these pictures! The photographer really did a great job and the kids were pretty good for a couple of shots. We plan on using these pictures for Christmas cards this year. I had lots of fun planning everyone's outfits and shopping for the kids! And they loved getting new special outfits that they didn't get to wear until the day of the shooting!

When we got to the photo shoot location, we had to wait a bit for the photographer to finish with the family he was working on and Sydney said, "I'm ready to do some picturing!" Thought that was pretty cute! Here are some of my faves:

Park Play, Sister visiting

At the end of September, my little sister Tessa flew in for a visit! She's graduated high school early and is staying for about a month and a half. Sydney is loving it and playing with Aunt Tessa any chance she gets. She gets really upset if Tessa goes somewhere and she can't.

We try to get out of the house a few times a week and go do something fun. One day we went to the Water park in Bossier, one of the last days the water was running!

I got some goofy pictures of Sydney in some of the equipment:

Jonas on the potty

So...Jonas has gone a few times on the potty so he definitely has interest in it. He especially loves this Potty book we have and is starting to say his favorite parts! Like "What's that?" "Hooray!" It's really cute! He will sit there for about 10 minutes but his timing is just off. When I ask him if he wants to sit on the potty, he usually says no, unless it's right after I changed his diaper, yeah not good timing for anything to really happen. But one time this past week, he said he needed to go potty while he was in the bath tub and he got out and he did go! So maybe he's ready! We'll just take it slow.

There's the potty he loves so much...

He's also doing great with naming his body parts: ear, nose, eye and teeth and he knows where his tongue, elbow,  toes, and other parts are.

And then of course, a favorite pastime of his.

Sydney's Fun new toys

Sydney got invited to a princess birthday party and since Sydney really wants to be a princess this year for Halloween, we went ahead and bought her a Rapunzel play dress. Needless to say, she loves it :)

Jonas even thought he would try on the braid. (September 8th)

Something we have been working on with Sydney is for her to be able to write her name. She started learning how to spell it out loud a couple months ago. The Y was proving a little tricky for her. To encourage her we told her she could get a Toy Story Jessie Doll if she could write it well on her own once. And here she is! One fine day, she did it! (September 11th)

We are so proud of her!!!