Wausau Weekend - Leigh Yawkey Woodson Visit with Brian and Amelia

We went to Wausau in October to meet up with Brian and Amelia who were in town for a wedding weekend. We decided to rendezvous at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art museum. We lucked out with a beautiful Saturday and we spent some time in the sculpture garden, 

Lucy had a wonderful time running from sculpture to sculpture. :)

We saw hippos...

…frogs 

…and lounged on mountain lion tails! I love this picture. :)

After our time in the gardens we headed indoors to check out their birds in Art exhibit.

Roman viewed the art from Auntie Amelia's arms.

The museum had a great children's area! If you are ever in Wausau with young kids, you should definitely check it out!

Adults had fun there too! :)

The kids were even able to dress up like baby birds and sit in a nest. Love these two!

After our time at Leigh Yawkey Woodson, we headed out to the big town of Wausau to do some shopping. Always good to get to Target and Barnes and Noble. :)

Here are the kids enjoying the lego table while we shopped. 

Post shopping, we headed to the Great Dane for dinner. Ah yes, a little taste of Madison! :) Probably appropriate that all of our pictures from the Great Dane came out a little blurry! Haha.

Brian and Amelia spent the night at our place after the wedding. We had a delicious breakfast and did some hiking the next morning.

Roman sported his new fox hat with Auntie.

Lucy loves a good walk in the woods! :) 

Thanks for visiting us, Amelia and Brian! We love you! 

Lucy @ 35 months

Here is our bright and spunky girl @ 35 months! Lucy loves to play outside, she enjoys swinging and going on hikes. She is a huge fan of crafting, Lucy loves to cut, glue, color, and decorate. She loves her little brother and calls him her 'little bubby' as a pet name. She is learning to identify her letters and she knows that L is for Lucy, S is for Scout, D is for Daddy, M is for Mama, R is for Roman, and T is for Teagan - there is a little friend named Teagan at her day care and she is always excited to yell his name when she sees a T.

Sure signs of fall...

Just a couple of sure signs of fall around the Storm household - first, the end of our weekly Community Supported Agriculture share in October! :( We miss getting our usual box of veggies each week. We were very happy with our farm this year and we'll definitely be purchasing a CSA share next spring!

Look at this nice produce!

Second sign of autumn - sick kid alert!! This is a picture of Roman from a day spent with Mama. We could tell that Romeo was a little bit off one week - not super fussy but just not himself. This guy was not running a temperature, he wasn't tugging on his ears but he ended up sleeping 20 out of 24 hours in one day so we took him into the doctor. Sure enough - he was diagnosed with a double ear infection! After some antibiotics he was feeling much better! 

A much happier little man!

Pumpkin Patch / Apple Orchard

We headed to Helene's Apple Orchard and Pumpkin Patch in Merrill for fall fun this year. The kids had a blast! We arrived early afternoon on a Sunday and the parking lot was crowded but the place was not too crazy! 

Here is the barn that greeted us.

Shortly after we arrived Lucy announced that she needed to use the bathroom. Classic! The only options available were porta-potties. We went inside and Lucy was clearly not a fan. (Can't say that I blame her!) She said that she could hold it for the rest of our stay. And she did!  

After purchasing all inclusive bracelets for the family, the first thing that we did was ride the cow train around the perimeter of Helene's! Lucy loved it! She waved to everyone and pointed out all of the corn/pumpkins/apples/activities with great excitement. 

Next we hung out in the play yard - pretending to ride the horse/bull!

Posing as a pumpkin

We cruised around in a wagon - we are excited for next year when Roman will be able to run after his big sister! :)

We spent lots of time on the swings - as usual for the Storm kids! Lucy and Roman could swing for hours.

We had to have a few snacks along the way! :)

We checked out goats...

…with some skepticism! 

We bought a half bushel bag for apples and we were very excited to fill it up with produce. Lucy was happy to pick. She was also eager to pick up some half rotten apples from the ground so we needed to do some quality review before she put the fruit in the bag. :)

Daniel picked from the higher parts of the tree.

Mama picked too while Roman supervised!

Overall, it was a beautiful and successful Sunday at the orchard! 

We can't wait to continue this family tradition. :)

See you next year, Helene's! 

Jack O Lantern Season

Okay - so do you remember how I went on and on in my previous posts about how the beautiful summer weather lasted until the very end of September? Well, it abruptly ended! :) Here is a picture that I snapped the day after we spent our last Sunday afternoon on the beach! Snow! Oh well, that is life in the north woods! And we love fall - nothing better than a crisp autumn day, right? We were excited to start our first fall up north.

Our playgroup took a hiatus during the summer and for various reasons - mostly a very busy work schedule for me - we didn't make it to our Friday morning sessions for most of September! We were happy to get back on track and return to playgroup this October. Lucy and Roman love going to play with their buddies at Nicolet!

Roman is becoming quite the talker! His vocabulary is growing every day - he is able to say simple things like bye bye, daddy, mama, hello, and all done! Here is a sweet little video of him saying Hi!

We spent one weekend carving pumpkins at the MacFarland's house! Lucy donned her vintage Wicked Cute kitty sweatshirt - haha! 

Roman just observed pumpkin carving this year. :)

Daddy carved a pumpkin, Lucy helped choose the face and she pulled out some of the insides!

We had a full basement of carvers.

Here are the kiddos with their finished works! Love it! 

As a side note - Of the 4 families that participated in the carving event, one had a professional set of carving tools from Williams and Sonoma. I am not sure how much money the tools cost but they were incredible!! W-a-y better than the garbage carving sets that you can buy at the grocery store or target for a few dollars. Long story short, Dan and I ended up buying a special pumpkin carving tool off of amazon after seeing that professional set in action! Next year we are going to kick butt at pumpin carving! Watch out!! :)