Kickapoo State Park

Since it was such a beautiful Sunday we decided to take advantage and hit the trails. Austin shares his love of hiking with his Mom and has been hounding us to take him into a "forest". Unfortunately there are not that many forests in Central Illinois. So we went to Kickapoo State Park (before the governor tries to close it down) and found us some trails! We even saw a deer.

Hagen and the cat fiasco

I decided to take the boys to Curtis Apple Orchard because I had heard that my favorite Honey Crisp Apples were in and hey a donut apple didn't sound bad either! When we got there Austin was so excited because he realized that they had characters from the Wizard of Oz around the play area. He saw Dorothy, the Lion, Scarecrow, and then started freaking out because he couldn't find the Tin Man. Luckily we spotted him a few minutes later. It's amazing that last fall, he never even noticed them and this fall he couldn't contain himself.

After exclaiming over all of the characters the boys went into the play area and Hagen ran straight for the kittens. He had a blast just picking them, holding them, walking around with them, putting them down, and picking them up again. He was so gentle with them. I was very happy to see him petting and holding the kittens so nicely. When he put them down and they ran away he would yell, "Come back kitty". It was so cute! He even carried one of the kittens through the maze.

Of course, we couldn't leave the orchard without some sort of incident. After carrying them around so nicely, he decided one of the kittens needed a bath. On Saturdays they have this sluicing station where kids can "mine" for rocks and water flows through a trough into a bucket and then get recycled. Well, Hagen thought it would be a nifty idea to put one of the kittens into the bucket filled with water. Luckily, one of the employees got the kitten out in time. The poor kitten was sopping wet but otherwise okay. I figured it was time to go after that.

Garren also thought it was pretty neat to chase the kittens. Here he was just learning how to stand by himself.

Changing of the guard

It seems that Hagen will not be the only one pushing that damn yellow cart around the neighborhood. Garren has decided that he wants to push it around too. I just had to get a video of it. I have a feeling Hagen is not going to let Garren usurp his yellow cart so easily!

Go Illini!

Aunt Kara made these shirts out of one of her old Illini shirts. I got so many compliments when the boys wore these on the first Illlini home game day. You can see how proud they were when I asked them to point to the letters. Go Illini!

Two runners?

It is official....Garren is walking!! I finally got some video. It is amazing how much improvement he made even in a day. We went to the indoor playground (boy I wish I had video of that) and he just went to town. He was walking all over the place in this scarecrow/frankenstein/drunken sailor type of walk. It was so cute. I actually had tears in my eyes when I saw him just take off walking. My baby is growing up!

Here is video of Garren two days later!

The audio you hear is Hagen crying because he tripped on something. I can never take a video without one of the boys yelling or screaming about something. It's just like the phone. The house can be quiet and calm and the minute you get on the phone it turns into a zoo!