HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

all things pumpkin

Halloween has never really been that exciting to me but Fall is my absolute favorite season and pumpkins especially fascinate me for some reason.

Some of our neighbor kids have worked their way into our hearts and lives over the last year that we've lived here in the West End of Atlanta. Even though this one particular family has now moved to a different nearby neighborhood, Dallasia (on the left in the picture below) is at our house nearly every weekend. Sometimes her sisters are able to come too and they all LOVE Lucas and are always excited to come to church with us too. On halloween we decided to take them on a special trip to Stone Mountain for the pumpkin festival. We did LOTS that day including a scanvenger hunt which rewarded them with entirely too much candy, we enjoyed the various pumpkin decorations, watched a show and a pumpkin parade, watched a lady make a glass bowl and the glass blowing factory, and much more... All in all it was a fun day and satisfied my request to do something "Fall-ish" this season.

our sweet little friends Dallasia, D'Asia and Rodneca

Lucas manages to find something interesting to stare down at for most family pictures...

some of the pumpkin puppets waiting to be paraded around

Lucas was the most excited to see the pumpkin parade!

the girls got to "paint" pumpkins

and experience putt putt golf for the first time

No one seemed to get their fill of pumpkins so we came home and painted pumpkins...

and as if ALL of that wasn't enough excitement for one day, we all got dressed up and headed to our friends' house for a Halloween party...

as you can see, those were last minute "costumes" that we threw together from a bunch of random funky clothes we had tucked away in our closets, except for D'Asia's little indian outfit and Lucas of course dressed as a cowboy!

After none of us could handle any more excitement and activity and after everyone was tucked comfortably into bed, Derek and I agreed we're not ready for 4 children just yet. And we vowed to never complain of being tired to Abby and Benji....who have 4 children!

Howdy ya'll!!

Derek is in the midst of basketball season now so some days he has to stay pretty late at school and doesn't get a whole lot of quality time with Lucas those days. As often as I can I try and take Lucas into school to see his daddy for a minute. He's certainly a star as the students and staff love to see Lucas and he certainly is learning to love the attention too. Of course we had to go in the day before Halloween to show of his costume (thanks to his Aunt Abby for sharing this cute cowboy outfit from her boys!)

Ms. Lee has been a special friend to Derek while they've taught together and she especially adores Lucas.

Fall in Indiana

The only drawback to living in the south is that we are miles away from lots of family and friends. Therefore we frequently find ourselves travelling back up for family gatherings or different events (the family times aren't the drawback....the travelling is). A couple weekends ago we made our 4th trip this year up to Indiana (the 5th one coming at Christmastime). I'm thankful that Lucas is an amazing traveler since this time I drove with him by myself and we stopped for a few days in Louisville to visit Nick, then we met up with Derek in Marion on Friday night after he flew up. I guess I failed to take any pictures with Nick while we were with him in his new place but here's some shots from the rest of the weekend....

our smiley little guy sporting his Bolivian hat that was made in Peru!

Cameron and Cass give Lucas a tour of the horse farm while dad keeps watch on his trusty steed.

The last time Derek and I had been spotted riding in this little cart behind this little pony was on this particularly memorable 26th of May two and a half years ago!

The main reason we went up to Indiana was to attend the Janet Hooley Gospel Sing that is held at the Hooley farm every October. I didn't really get many pictures of the concert but managed to get several of Lucas enjoying some of his relatives inside.

Grandma Sutton enjoying time with great-grandchild #4
Aunt Julie
Aunt Bev Hiatt (and Lucas still intensely focused on gnawing at his fingers)
oh but somehow for this picture with GG he could afford to smile big while he gnawed!Aunt Bev Hooley had the special touch that day to put Lucas to sleep even out in that crazy cold!

It was Nick's 25th birthday!
Then Sunday afternoon it was off to the zoo for their Halloween extravanga. Lucas was less than thrilled with the cold Indiana weather, enduring his stroller ride around the zoo while we collected candy with his cousins.

brothers: Derek and Cory

kodak moments with the nikon

When we were in Indiana the weekend of the 17th (more pictures from that weekend to come) Derek's sister Abby brought her amazing Nikon camera so we enjoyed a little photo shoot Sunday afternoon after church. Unfortunately Lucas was asleep so we weren't able to capture him and his 9-month cuteness this day but I'm sure there will be other times!

Myles Jackson Knox posing quite nicely

Abby and her 4 (Cole, Sadie, Cameron, and Myles)

a new ride

Lucas loves the pony rides he gets almost every time we go visit Grandpa Hooley and Nellie....

But now he just might have found a bigger, better, faster ride...

(Uncle Larry's big bad Harley!!)

Its just me, a crawling baby, a running rat, a wasp and some mosquitos

Each day Lucas discovers more and more just how fun and increasingly easy his new mode of transportation (crawling) is becoming. Today I left the room quick to go find a phone number and came back to find Lucas had crawled across the room in order to dump the snack baggie, surrounding himself with cheerios. He was so proud and excited! Just yesterday Lucas wasn't very good at grabbing the little cheerios and successfully getting them to his mouth, but today he is close to mastering the art. Its amazing how addicting such a small, tasteless treat can be!


This was a good distraction from the fact that Derek and I saw a rat dart across our kitchen floor this morning. Is he after the baby food that gets flung and not always cleaned up as well as it should be? Whatever his reason for showing his ugly self today, I shudder to think how long he has been lurking in our home and where he might pop up again.

Not long after that I was swatting at a giant wasp and mosquitos who just love that sweet smelling baby skin. Its been cool in the mornings here so we put a fan at the front door to suck the nice fresh air in. Our windows are painted or sealed shut and so the front is our only hope for getting fresh air, apart from going outside. However, we don't have a screen door its just a gate type of door with lots of places for our flying "friends" to sneak in. So much for sucking in the nice cool morning air, we need to go on more walks!