Whew!

It was quite a whirlwind weekend we had last weekend! The Niehaus side of the family came to visit from Iowa to celebrate Jordan's and Lucas's birthday. Jordan's is in late September and Lucas's is in mid-November, so they split it down the middle and just made one trip in October to have a little birthday "party" for the boys since they couldn't all make both trips to celebrate both birthdays!

Crystal decorated them each a little cake - she's so creative!

We had a fun time, albeit VERY busy! My mom now has 6 grandchildren, and Meggan is the oldest one at 5 years and about 3 months old and Jackson is now about 4 1/2 months old!!! It's quite busy and very entertaining, but it can leave you pretty exhausted. By the time you get the dishes and kitchen cleaned up from one meal (with a few kid-related interruptions in the middle of it all, I'm sure), it seems as though it's time to start preparing for the next meal...

We just hung out all day on Saturday at Dawn & Jer's house, and then Sunday we headed out to Eagle Creek and enjoyed the beautiful fall afternoon weather! It was really nice out there, and the kids really seemed to enjoy it (after Jordan's pretty rough start, that is). We got there right at about 1:30 after Jordan fell asleep in the car for about a 30-minute nap, so it was just kind of bad timing for him. But he ended up coming out of it and enjoying the playground a lot and ready and raring to go! In fact, we're going to head down to Brown County to enjoy the outdoors there this coming Saturday because we enjoyed it so much! Meggan was truly thrilled and loved every minute of it with her hiking stick that my brother, Matt, gave her and Lily!

The fam on the trail!

Jump to Daddy, Jordan (one of his favorite things to do)!

WAY up high!!!

Family self-portrait (thank goodness Jason has nice long arms)!

It really was a lot of fun, and I'm glad they could all come out at the same time and enjoy all the cousins together (I'm just now thinking I don't think we even got a picture of them all together, and that's a big bummer)! Looking forward to the busyness of Christmastime already! :)

It's been a busy week so far as well. Meggan had gymnastics on Monday, as usual, but no choir practice this week because of fall break. She had her first parent-teacher conference on Tuesday, and she's doing GREAT in kindergarten! She has adjusted really well to school and the bus, etc. I'm so happy that she just seems so happy! She gets up in the mornings, puts her clothes on, eats a little for breakfast, and jumps on the bus... It warms my heart to see the grown-up little girl she's becoming! :)

Jordan was home with Jason on Monday and with me on Tuesday and Wednesday, as Nancy, our baby-sitter, was off on a little vacation with her family. I ended up taking him to the doctor on Tuesday afternoon, and we're back on the albuterol inhaler breathing treatments and 5 days of oral steroids and also an antibiotic. Poor little guy! He just can't catch a break when it comes to that darn tight cough. At least we had a nice break from all that junk in the spring/summer (since back in March or so right after he got his ear tubes). Unfortunately, I guess it wasn't meant to last ... 'tis the season; right?!?!

Hope it's been a great week for all!