Great-Grandparents

We were in Frankenmuth last weekend to celebrate my Grandpa O's 80th birthday. It's hard to believe, but we hadn't been over to visit since June! I have missed all of my grandparents so much! As you can imagine, they were happy to see us as well.





Our first stop was to see my Grandma Cramer who lives in a nursing home in town.

I dressed the kids in their Halloween costumes, and boy was that a hit with all of the residents!


Getting a picture of all of them was quite a challenge. This was the best I got. Grandma looked nice in her cardigan, and Hannah was particularly fond of her bingo beads!



Next we paid a visit to my Grandma and Grandpa Oberholtzer. They didn't know that we were coming, so they were super excited to see us at the door.

The last time Grandpa held Jack, neither of them was too comfortable with the other, but this time they were good buddies.

On Saturday morning, my Grandpa Cramer stopped at my mom and dad's house since we missed him the day before. Two of a kind!

I am extremely grateful to have all 4 of my grandparents still with us for our kids to know and love!

5 months old

Jack is now 5 months old! Here's what he's been up to:

*He continues to be a happy, smiley baby. Just talk to him or give him kisses, and he lights up!

*He is teething. He's found that sucking on hid index and middle fingers backward bring him lots of comfort.

*He rolls over from his tummy to his back regularly. I've finally seen it myself!

*He tried his first taste of real food this week. I was going to hold off until 6 months, but he showed all of the signs of being ready - sitting up (assisted) really well, great head control, showed interest, gets things to his mouth without a problem. He tried avacado and banana and loved them both.

*His eyes seem to be settling into a hazel color.

*He's sleeping through the night pretty regularly. He goes down about 7:30, with a dream feed around 10, and sleeps until 7 or 8. He eats about every 3 1/2 - 4 hours and takes a morning and afternoon nap. Now we just need to work on dropping his late night feeding.

*He's started to notice faces and often tries to grab our nose or cheeks. He also loves to grab hair. (Thankfully, Hannah puts up with it very well.)

We are so grateful for such a fun, happy little guy. He is such a blessing!

Pumpkin Pickin

After visiting the giant pumpkins at Frederik Meijer Gardens, we decided it was time to pick out our own pumpkins to take home.

We thought Hannah would be so excited to pick out her own pumpkin, but before we made it to the pumpkin patch, we stopped and got donuts at an orchard. All she could think about was eating her chocolate donut(s). As you can see, she firmly held her donut bag in hand.


She couldn't get her hands on one fast enough (donut, that is!)


This girl is all business when it comes to donuts, thanks to Papa Cramer.

Picking out her pumpkin, donut still in hand!

Ok, so who really needs to pick out a pumpkin when you can just sit among them and eat donuts. I believe this is donut #2.

I think Jack was a little upset that he couldn't partake in the deep fried, sugary goodness.

We did finally settle on pumpkin, 4 in fact, one for each of us :-)

Color Fall at FMG

Fall is one of our favorite times of year to visit Frederik Meijer Gardens. The gardens are stunning, full of beautiful mums, and the trees are brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow. We decided to wait until ArtPrize was over to visit, to enjoy it all with fewer crowds.


We steered Hannah away from the Children's Garden upon entry b/c we knew once we went there she wouldn't want to leave. Instead, we told her we were on the hunt for the giant pumpkins, one of our fall favorites there.

We made a stop by one of the scarecrows on the farm. Last year she was a little unsure of the scarecrows. This year, she practically climbed onto his lap!


We finally found the giant pumpkins. Hannah had a blast climbing and running around.

Jack found a pretty nice seat.

The kids and I.

We took the boardwalk back around and spotted quite a few animals in the wetlands. Thank goodness Jason had a tight hold!

Since Hannah was so good for our walk, we let her check out the Children's Garden. However, we steered her clear of the water and sand! For some reason, she found this circle display quite fascinating. She sat for quite awhile just staring. A love for art, perhaps?

We couldn't leave without paying a visit to the giant "neigh neigh". This wide open space is great for wearing her out! She can just run and run, and I can see her from nearly every spot.

She always tries to roll down the hill like the big kids, but always seems to go sideways instead.

Of course, she had to walk the "balance beam", too.

It's always hard to get her to leave, but I've learned if I tell her the neigh neigh is going to go to the barn for the night, she seems satisfied and leaves with relatively little struggle.

31 (and 1/2) months

We have been so busy lately that I never got a chance to post Hannah's monthly progress report. Better late than never! Here's what she's been up to:

*She's referring to herself in first person more and more. Quite often she will proudly tell us "I did it!" When she has a big (or small) accomplishment.

*She loves to hold Jack and play with him, especially now that he's getting bigger. We do have to remind her to be gentle, but she really is pretty good with him.

*She has to do tasks from start to finish. If we start something for her, she will make us undo it so that she can start over herself from thte beginning.

*She continues to be a greart sleeper and still takes afternoon naps.

*She has more interest in reading stories and will actually sit and listen from start to finish (most of the time). She's even starting to tell us what is happening in the stories.

*We continue our adventures in potty training. That's a whole separate post of its own!

*She LOVES to sing!! She doesn't get all of the words right and often times combines songs. Last weekend when we were at my parents' house, my mom taught Hannah This Little Light of Mine. One of the verses says "Hide it under a bushel - NO! I'm gonna let it shine." Hannah has since taken the "no" part of the song and combined it with other songs, including Jesus Loves the Little Children - NO!

*She's big into watching Mary Poppins clips on YouTube. She sings "Spoonful of sugar, medicine go down" , "It's Supacal", and "Fy da kite".

*She does very well at dressing herself. She still needs a little help getting shirts and socks on, but she knows that the tag goes in the back and can get her pants and shoes on fairly consistently.

*She tries to tell JJ what to do. The problem is that he doesn't do a very good job of listening, which is quite frustrating for her. She does a good job of filling his bowl with food (with our supervision).

She's growing up so quickly. We're trying to savor every moment b/c we know that they will be gone too soon. We just couldn't be happier to have such an amazing little girl.

Color Tour

We are having an amazing fall this year. Right now the colors are just spectacular! With temps in the mid to upper-70's this past weekend, we packed up a lunch and headed north for a color tour.

We took M-37 north through the Manistee National Forest and stopped at the cabin of a co-worker of mine at Wolf Lake, just north of Baldwin.

Unfortunately, they weren't there, but we took a walk around and enjoyed the beautiful view.

Hannah got along particularly well with the little black bear on their porch.

We then headed west toward the lakeshore and made a stop in Ludington. We found a park right on the water where we could eat lunch anf let Hannah play.

Jack hates the sun in his face (who doesn't?), so we've found that these sunglasses he got as a baby gift really help. Plus, they're just so darn cute!

Hannah is such a monkey. I could stand for her to have a little more fear of climbing.

Hannah loved this roller slide.

We then packed up and headed south along the shoreline to Pentwater. Hannah got on a kick of wanting to have her picture taken everywhere around town. Plus, she picked up a walking stick, so we have lots of Hannah pics, with her stick in every one of them.

Here she is crouching like Mama to get the picture, even though it looks like she's busy doing something else :-)

Another Hannah pic, with stick in tow...

and another...

...and another.

After all of that, we got some ice cream and headed home. Needless to say, it was a very quiet ride from the backseat!

ArtPrize Top 10

After church a couple of Sundays ago, we once again headed downtown to check out more of ArtPrize.


Hannah started out insisting on wearing her hat, but it made for a lousy view.


Our goal was to see as many of the top 10 pieces as was practical with 2 little ones, and by the time all was said and done we did get around to seeing 6 of the 10. Not too bad. Some we really liked. Others, not so much.


Hannah really liked the elephants outside of the Children's Museum. You could move the heads on them, which totally fascinated her.


This giant penny was made of, you guessed it, all pennies. I wonder how much it was worth??


Jason and I really liked this piece outside of the Public Museum. It seemed the longer you looked at it, the more animals you saw. Very impressive.

This mermaid wasn't actually in the top 10, but we were captivated nonetheless. It's made up of 85,000 toothpicks!!

One of the really nice features of ArtPrize was that the Public Museum hosted a large number of the pieces, so it was open to the public for free! Hannah LOVED riding the carousel and couldn't get enough of their display of a horse pulling a wagon.

When all was said and done, Cavalry, a 28' long pencil drawing on display at the Art Museum, ended up winning the top prize. The line to get into the Art Museum wrapped around the block, so we decided against trying to see it with the kids. Fortunately, it will be on display through December, so we'll try to get to before it's down. Overall, though, we have loved taking in ArtPrize. There was so much to see and do. We didn't even see a fraction of the 1700 total entries. It's just amazing, the magnitude of it all. It was such a great event for Grand Rapids. I hope that they will host it for many years to come.

Soaking up the weather

The weather has been so beautiful lately!! We've been spending lots of time outside, as we know that the snow will be flying before we know it.

Cue ball :-)

Loving her mama's old lawn chair!

And of course, what better to do on a beautiful fall day than get in a nice round of golf? Thanks Papa!