A Fabtakulous Weekend!

Oh my gosh! We had a great weekend! Everything we did seemed very spontaneous (as in, only planned a day in advance, or not planned at all) and everything was super fun.
Saturday morning, Martin woke up early and went hunting out at Uncle Johnny's. (Lazy Q Farm!) The girls and I woke up around 6 and spent a long time playing on the bed with Theodore (not pictured--he was probably trying to eat the camera.) It was a funny, cozy way to start the day, long before the sun came up. The girls love to just roll and bounce around on our big bed now, and Anja is now allowed to play upstairs, since she's so good at getting up and down our [ridiculously steep] stairs now. She loves to go upstairs and tuck in her toys and tell me that they are sleeping. It's VERY adorable.

No squirrels for Martin that morning, but when he got home we jumped in the car with him and met his folks and his sister out at Wolf Park for their first annual "Walk with the Wolves" fundraiser. This was a great deal because you just paid a fee to have a "pack" (ours was "Anja's Pack") and they had their own big sponsers who would give them a certain amount of money per lap walked. We walked a whole two laps. You might think we weren't there very long to have only walked two laps around a pretty small park, but you'd be wrong! Anja walked the whole second lap by herself. We were out there until lunch time. I love Wolf Park. And Anja loved it too!! We spent about 15 minutes at one point sitting on a bench by the fences so I could nurse Greta, and a wolf came right up and stood there for most of the time. Anja was so excited! I think she got it that they weren't exactly dogs, because she never said "woof." She knew they were special. Also, they have the bison, and I thought that was cool, though Anja didn't really care about them. The weather was absolutely perfect--cool and drizzly. VERY fallish. It was actually the weather that made TusaRebecca and me REALLY want to do this. She wanted to invite my family, but I told her they were in Florida. I didn't realize they'd gotten back the night before! Whoops! Hopefully they'll forgive me and mark their calendars for next year. I don't think Anja would've looked this unhappy in her carseat after the walk, if she had known we were going to TC's for lunch! On the way home from there both girls fell asleep, so we picked up some coffee and went for a country drive. We saw a lot of covetable farms.... *sigh*

We did our weekend grocery run, then my parents came by to tell us all about their trip to Disney World. Sounds like they had a great time and they brought back cute freezy mugs for the girls! Anja LOVES hers, and insists that Greta drink from hers even though Greta doesn't know how to use a straw....

That night we went out to the Linden Conservation Club for Martin to shoot his guns a little bit. I didn't take any pictures while we were there, but Anja had a wonderful time gathering flowers and leaves and rocks and sticks and arranging them very artfully on an old dried-out tree stump. It was adorable!

This morning it was time to leave for church, and this is how we found Anja.

She was sitting on the stairs "nursing" her doll!!!!!! Does it just KILL YOU, how cute she is?! (For the record, Martin was the one who found her on the stairs. He's only in the picture because Anja's really into this thing where she loves us to sit down with her, so she pats the floor beside her and says our name, and that means "daddy, please sit down." She even asks the cat and dog!)

After mass Greta napped and Martin and I made these funny baked spiced apples. They turned out okay, though a little undercooked. We packed them up and took them with us back out to Uncle Johnny's farm where we had a lovely afternoon with my aunt and uncle and cousin, Hope. It was so much fun to just hang out with them! Martin has really enjoyed being able to hunt out there, and he was thrilled to be able to go out today and help them clean up for their Fall Party that is next weekend. I didn't do anything. Hope and I just sat around and talked while everyone else worked. But we all had a good time! Afterward, we went to McDonald's in Attica for a little bit of dinner. Anja loves french fries. I mean, LOVES. We realized we couldn't go home then because Anja hadn't had a nap so she would fall asleep, and it was 5:00, that terrible in-between time when a nap means doom. So we went back to the farm. Everyone else had left, but Martin had his gun in the car so he went down to the woods...

And shot a squirrel. Anja and Greta and I had gone down to play in the field and we were lucky enough to see (and get pretty close to) a deer, followed by two more. It was very exciting! Anja loves being outside and she loves rocks. She likes sticks too, but she LOVES rocks. She collected a lot and put them all on the stroller, which ended up being a bad idea to take down the hill.... but Martin got it back to the car for us, and he gave me this opportunity to photograph the ultimate family man:

Oh, I guess it's really dark. Oh well, it was cute. GREAT WEEKEND!