Visitors from Far and Farther!

This past week, we've had the pleasure of having two sets of dear friends come to our house. Sunday-Tuesday, Chris Brede and Nick Douville came down. Chris (on the left) is a urology resident at the Cleveland Clinic and Nick is an MD-PHD in Ann Arbor. Both were great friends of ours while we were in Michigan so we were delighted that they drove down to see us and our new digs. 

Here they are accompanying us to our church's "Trunk or Treat" festival

While Dave was at work, we hit the park, took a driving tour of Nashville and ate at Nashville staple, Rotiers.

Both guys are SO good with the girls- I would love to have house-guests like these all of the time, I just got to mill around while they played with Avery & Lucy!

Here we are Monday afternoon at our My Gym Halloween party (didn't subject the guys to that one)

Lucy loved the balls!

My big bee =)

Then on Wednesday, we had another set of guests- Dave's brother Dirk and his lovely girlfriend, Crystel. Dirk & Crystel did get to meet Lucy in May when we visited San Francisco, but that was just a quick hello, and Dirk hadn't seen Avery since the Christmas before last!  Wow! Anyway, Avery & Lucy immediately bonded with both of them, and we had a great visit with them. We really enjoyed getting to know Crystel, she is wonderful. When they left last night, Avery gave Crystel the longest, most lingering, touching hug I'd ever seen. I just wish they both lived closer- California is so far away!

Here they are snuggled up to watch the Princess & the Frog. I brought in some Halloween candy for them and Avery was literally in heaven. She proclaimed it a "snack party!"



Brothers =)

A darling picture of them- I love this one!

Mimi goes to Soccer

Last weekend, Mimi came in town to see one of Avery's soccer games. It was a pretty sad performance really, but anyone who knows 3 year olds knows that crankiness is always in the cards =) 

She did manage a few good kicks, so that's better than nothing!

Next we went to the "pumpkin patch breakfast" at our club, which included a hayride that we all enjoyed on this beautiful day.

And that night, Daddy Dave went to work on his annual pumpkin carving project, subjects chosen by Miss Avery herself. This year was Hello Kitty and Strawberry Shortcake, they are awesome!

check out last year's pumpkins, Nemo & Dory as well as Simba & Pumba

the year before he did Dora for her but I didn't capture it =(

Misc Pics

Here are a few pics from the last week or so, us just hanging around! Lucy is crawling super fast these days, and she can cruise all around the furniture, even standing "no hands" every once in a while. She has 2 sweet teeth on the bottom and one now on the top!

Here are the girls last weekend at a play-date where we painted pumpkins in the park and had a picnic =)

Fall Saturday

Yesterday, we had a super busy fall Saturday! Starting with soccer pictures at 8:00, we then had a soccer game at 9. Here are a few videos- Avery does a good job, but she gets intimidated with any kind of defense when she has the ball =)

sweet Lucy the spectator

 after soccer, we went to the Halloween event at the Streets of Indian Lake. The shops all had candy for kids to trick or treat and there were bounce houses and craft booths and a Halloween parade. Here is Avery, the bee:

and she found another bee that she became friends with =)

here she is with her friends, Madelyn and Ashlynn, the dinosaurs

and her OTHER twin friends, Chloe and Madison! We saw a ton of 3yr old buddies at this event!

THEN after that, we went with our Sunday School class to the Honeysuckle Hill Farms pumpkin patch!

SO dirty waiting in line for the jumping thing... geez =)

jumping with all of our gang

Lucy and her friend Audrey

Trip to Michigan

Last weekend, we drove up to Ann Arbor, MI for a urology conference/reunion weekend for Dave and a visit old friends fun trip for me and the girls. We had such a nice time seeing everyone, Dave would go in to the hospital for his meetings and Avery, Lucy and I would go meet friends for breakfast, park dates, museum dates, lunch dates, etc. 

Here are Avery and Tommy hugging- ironically they had also gotten to see each other the weekend before at our house so they were already  big buddies! It was so sad that Avery didn't remember a thing from Ann Arbor at all. We drove by our old house and she was like, no I never remember this, why are we driving so slow, can we drive any faster? We had gone to the children's museum there once a week when we lived there, and she didn't remember it one iota. I guess she was just 2 years old but it was still sad.  

 

Our dear friends, the Hollenbecks, let us stay at their house and take over their fabulous basement, even supplying us with a pack-n-play, toddler bed, etc. Here are my girls with their girls, Kate & Olivia.

Here we are playing with Nadia and Sophia at the park. Avery is still talking about Sophia (same age as Lucy) and how cute she was. 

Here they are together =)

Here are the girls at the Hands On Museum. We met Susie with Grant and Hunter and Cecilia with Nadia and Sophia. So mad I didn't get a group picture! All the kids have grown up so much since we left =(

On Saturday, we went tailgating for the Michigan game with the urology crew. It was a beautiful day and Avery got a big kick out of it, though she did continually sing the song Rocky Top and kept saying she saw Smoky! Ha!

and then went over to Anna's house to play with her, Kate, & Tommy. We had SO much fun playing and just hanging out. I miss ALL my friends from Ann Arbor so much and I'm so lucky that they are all (mostly) still living there so I get to see them when we come back. Go Blue!