Happy Halloween to our little cheeseburger!

It's Paul's second Halloween weekend home with us - although I doubt he remembers much from last year. As I recall, he didn't get to eat much of the candy last year and while he won't eat a ton this year, at least he gets to have SOME of it. We have a house full - GranJo and Gram and Pa came up to spend the weekend with us and enjoy some fun Paul time.

We went out for lunch today and grabbed some cheeseburgers (a little foreshadowing of what was yet to come). Check out Paul's ghost sticker/tattoo!
Check out his belly laugh!

Our little man was a CHEESEBURGER this year for Halloween...it was such a cute costume and given his love of cheeseburgers, it was quite fitting. He's got his monogrammed pumpkin for his loot (thanks again Mimi) and his pumpkin flashlight....he's ready to rock!

And because it's a family affair around here - mommy and daddy dressed up too.....gotta have some condiments to go with the cheeseburger, right?!? Paul though we were a riot. And I must say, we were the hit of the neighborhood as we were walking around. We even had our picture taken from some random dude.

Paul with the grandparents....they were nice enough to stay at the house and hand out treats.

Ringing the bell at the very first house. He had his spiel all worked out - he knew to say Trick or Treat and then thank you...it took a few houses to get in his groove, but he did a nice job overall.

Here's some video from the very first house - he was pretty quiet on this one but the man was very nice. I think it's funny that Paul about walks right into this random guy's house.



Here's daddy and Paul walking to get more loot!

We spent about an hour walking around and then headed home to check out the loot. His obsession was the suckers - I think because he never gets suckers at home which makes them pretty special.

Is there anything else in my pumpkin?

Eating sucker #1....

And here's sucker #2......

We stopped eating the loot and moved on to the fabulous pumpkin pie that GranJo brought....the little man loves his whipped cream!

We wiped the little man down from head to toe and threw him into his pjs. He was totally cracking himself up by pulling the pumpkin face off of his pumpkin flashlight. This just makes me laugh too - we were ALL cracking up.



We have the happiest boy ever! I love my kid!

Hope you all had a spooktacular Halloween!

Paul's first football game...Go Panthers!

It was a weekend of birthdays....mine on Saturday and Jason's coming on Monday. We treated ourselves to a fun weekend full of celebration! Before Paul came home, we used to make the annual trek to Cedar Falls for University of Northern Iowa homecoming. We missed it last year, but decided to take an opportunity to let Paul experience his first college football game. The weather turned out to be fine - we were a little worried about rain - but luckily the Panthers play their football in a dome so it was only going to dampen our tailgating if the weather was bad. It was overcast, but it didn't rain on us and we had a blast!


The Marchik's in their Panther gear before the game......
Our little Panther fan....clutching Percy the choo-choo most of the day.

Someone had a blast kicking and throwing the football.....and I had some killer cool video to prove it, but it seems to be having trouble uploading - not sure why. So, imagine my cute kid kicking and throwing a UNI football.

Taking a break for chocolate cookie....

Getting ready to head into the game.....

In our seats - the little man spent the entire first quarter in awe of the game, the noise, the UNIdome, the players....you name it. He was having a ball.

Standing up to cheer with the crowd....he really got into the fun of the game.

And the video to prove it.....he learned quickly what to do at the game based on what others (including us) were doing.

We HAD to teach him the YMCA, right? Check out the over the head clapping - the kid's got form!

We stayed the night at our good friend Jessica's house - after Paul went to bed, we hired a sitter to watch the house for fire, flood or disaster and we headed out for some adult beverages. It was nice to get out with friends but I must say that I felt pretty old surrounded by college students in the bar! We had a nice time and headed home before midnight so we didn't turn into pumpkins. Unfortunately, no matter how late you stay out, the little man is still up and raring to go in the morning!

We spent the morning in our pj's....Paul decided to be a little artist while sporting his Cars pjs. In a take-off from Handy Manny, he had to put his pen behind his ear.

Pens, crayons and stickers....the trifecta!

We got cleaned up and started to build towers and tunnels for Percy. Check out the height of this boy's tower!

What a wonderful weekend for all of us......we all had a great time. We are looking forward to a fun Halloween weekend coming up.......

Wordless Wednesday - A recycled gift from a coworker!

Paul is in HEAVEN!

Noodles, cupcakes and fun!

What a glorious and laid back kind of day......Jason let me sleep WAY late today which was a nice treat. And then we all stayed in our pj's all morning long....it was wonderful. We played and watched movies and just had fun spending time together. We had spaghetti for lunch - Paul just loves his noodles!


This is the way to chomp a noodle!
Slurp, slurp, slurp......

Someone decided to make choo choo tracks out of his noodles. While I don't normally condone playing with food, this was cute so I let it happen.

One of Paul's friends at school handed out popcorn balls this week - we let him eat a little each day.

I never have the time to bake anymore so I decided to make some Halloween cupcakes. I haven't had a cupcake in ages! So, I made these cupcakes while making dinner today. They turned out really cute and let me just tell you that they tasted even better.

Here's some cute video of Paul eating his cupcake.

When Jason went into to get Paul this morning, this is what he found. Paul had taken every single book out of his bookcase and lined them up in a grid pattern. How funny is that! Even better is that after his nap today, he had lined them up again only this time in a single line across the room (no picture of that one).

We were sad to miss the annual Korean adoption event that our adoption agency holds outside of Chicago. After being out of town last weekend, it was just too far to drive. Can't wait to hear how much fun everyone had and hopefully we can make it next year!

Here's hoping that tomorrow is just as much fun as today turned out to be.

Paul's weekend away.....

You would think that the little man would miss us when we leave for an adult weekend away.....but I guess the trick is to have him spend the weekend with all 3 grandparents and then keep him very busy and he won't even notice that we were gone!

The LeClaire Fire Department had an open house and given the little man's love of all things firetruck, it was a no-brainer that they should go.


Hey firefighter dude....can I drive?!?

All buckled in for his ride in a shiny red firetruck! He charmed the pants off the firefighters when he jumped out of the truck and said THANK YOU!

Hey, check out the K9 unit......cool!

Our little cookie eating fireman!

Another day brought a trip to the zoo - this is a hit every time! And of course they fed the goats which is a favorite as well. Looks like that goat was a bit anxious to get the food.

A ride on the carousel with Pa and GranJo. Everyone looks so serious, but I was assured that they all had a great time.

He clearly wasn't having a great time or anything.

ROAR!

One more smile to round out the weekend!

Thanks to Gram, Pa and GranJo for taking such great care of Paul this weekend. He had a blast for sure!

Our weekend away....

To celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary, we decided to take a few days to ourselves and head on our annual getaway to Galena. We headed back to the QC on Wednesday evening and then left Paul and Maya with the Gram and Pa to head to Galena on Thursday. The weather was beautiful and we had a great time away. Several mornings of sleeping in and lots of great food and wine....just what we needed!

One evening we went out for a nice dinner and then on the way to a movie, we stopped at a touristy-thing in Dubuque. It's this cool old cable car that heads up a very STEEP hillside. It was rickety and a little scary, but pretty cool.

There are 2 cars that are on alternate pulleys and are operated by a dude sitting at the top of the steep hill.

A view from the top of the hillside.

View from the cable car while we were headed down.

View back up the hillside after we passed the other cable car.

We did lots of shopping, lots of eating and had plenty of quiet time......but by the end of our couple of days away we were ready to head back to the QC to see Paul! One more stop on the way out of town for a little more touristy fun. The local ski resort has a little something called the Alpine Slide during the non-ski months of the year. You ride a toboggan down a fiberglass chute to the bottom of the hill and then back up on the chair lift. We've done it before and it's fun, so we thought we would try it again.

Our chariots await......

Here's what the track looks like.....

Riding back up on the chair lift.

Here's a video of our race down the hill - Jason wins every time! But isn't he nice to stand there and wait for me at the bottom and haul my toboggan to the dude?!? Chivalry baby.

Some fall foliage. Gotta love fall in the Midwest!

To top off a fun weekend, one of our friends got married on Saturday so we were able to attend his wedding. It was lovely and we had a nice time visiting with friends.

Oh, and the house is finally under contract. We received an offer last week and played a little negotiation game and got to a middle ground that we could live with. At this point we are clearly anxious to get out of there since we have been trying to sell the house for a year now. Inspections to come and closing to occur in a few weeks - fingers crossed that everything comes together!

While we were having lots of fun, Paul was having a blast with all 3 of his grandparents.

The Great Pumpkin is COMING!

We are such fall-lovers in this family....so many great things happen to us in October and we are so grateful. It's a month of celebration and this weekend was the beginning. We went to a party at my boss' house last night - it was very nice to get out for an adults only evening. Paul stayed home with our babysitter Ashley and they had lots of fun......after 15 minutes of screaming when we left.

This morning brought a crisp fall day with wonderful sunshine. We headed to a pumpkin patch to have a little fun and pick some pumpkins. This was really a great pumpkin patch - we met the owners and they were just lovely people. "Uncle Nick" and I were chatting and he mentioned that he has 2 teenage children that were adopted from Korea. I just can't say enough wonderful things about this family and their farm. If you want to check them out, their website is http://www.patchspumpkins.com/.

The petting zoo was great - the chickens and roosters made Paul giggle.....
One of the owners was telling Paul all about the baby cow.

We actually were able to go into the goat pen - we all LOVE the goats so this was quite a treat!

After the petting zoo, we headed over to the kids play area. They have several bounce houses but Paul has never been terribly excited about the bouncies so we had to skip that part. The cow train however was a different story....it was a MUST DO! I didn't completely trust that Paul would stay seated during the whole ride....so I took one for the team and rode in the car behind him. It was small and bumpy but he loved it. He was such a big boy and stayed sitting the whole time!

Hey daddy, I'm riding a COW TRAIN!

And just to prove that I actually fit into one of these cow train cars......

We hopped on the trailer (pulled by a John Deere tractor of course) which took us out to the pumpkin patch. We had a ball trekking through the patch to find the perfect pumpkins! We got muddy and Paul fell down a few times, but in the end we found the perfect 4! Mommy and daddy each got one and Paul had to have 2.

Riding on the trailer on the way to the pumpkin patch......

Check out that pumpkin patch....with a bona fide scarecrow in the background too.

Here's one!

This one is a little heavy for the little man.....

Paul clutching one of his pumpkins.

We got back from the pumpkin patch and took a ride on a horse. Paul decided he didn't want to ride a pony on his own, so Mommy and Paul rode together on a big horse. He really seemed to enjoy it and it certainly brought back memories of our camel ride at the zoo this summer.



Waving at Daddy!

We spent several hours at the farm in the crisp air and wind....it was time to cleanup and get some lunch! We hit Red Robin for some burgers and fries.

Paul decided to share his milk with Daddy.

BIG bite of burger!

And the best part of eating like a big boy....the balloon on the way out!

Earlier in the week, we decided to let Paul take a bath in the big jetted tub in our bathroom - this was a first for him. I threw on my swim suit and we had a fun bath. He started blowing bubbles in the water which was pretty cute.