Thanksgiving!

Well, I would say that Thanksgiving was definitely a success! The turkey turned out great (or so I thought), all of the food was great and it was great to see the family! The Fashingauer clan is always good for laughs!

Connor and Ashlyn had coordinating gopher outfits (it was impossible to find matching 'cute' fall colored outfits...so this was all we could find!) and were probably the hit of the party :)

Connor was not cooperating.

water bottle fun

Saturday night when it should have been bedtime, Connor and Bryan were having some fun with a water bottle.

wedding in la crosse

Instead of going back and starting from a week ago or so, I'm going to start with the most recent. This weekend we went to Bryan's second cousin's wedding in La Crosse. Aaron made the trek with us. La Crosse is an amazingly beautiful city and I can understand how some people love being there! I would love to spend a weekend there, looks like a ton of neat shops, beautiful river, and then I'm sure the boys could golf :)

Anyways, we decided to stay at the Best Western (VERY fond memories there as my good friend Sarah was married there 2 years ago) which has a mini water park inside. We were excited to take Connor to the pool!

As you can see, he was not so excited. Quite scared actually. However, as soon as we took him out of the pool he was obsessed about watching the park area. I think he could have sat and watched all the kids playing, sliding, swiming for hours.

My friend Sarah also came and had lunch with us after the pool. Was SO good to see her, miss her, but she's coming down for a scrap book weekend in a few weeks. I'm in need!

Then we got cleaned up from the pool and headed to the wedding. Connor did great, slept thru 90% of the ceremony, and then was pretty good at the reception. We found a little high chair which was key.

Someone at the next table had a cow bell (yes, a cow bell) and he was not sure what to think of it when the guy rang it.

"what, mom?"

We left the reception fairly early, Bryan wasn't feeling well (tail end hopefully of his fever/sickness) and it was getting close to Connor's bed time (ha, funny). On the way down my cousin Laura had said it was too bad that we would miss the Rotary lights. Ok, sure, bummer. Then my friend Sarah text me later at the reception that the lights were indeed up already and that we should go see them (right up there with what Laura had said, a 'must-see'). So, we got directions, and soon found out that it was the place to be in La Crosse at night. We had to find the end of the line a few blocks away. Riverside park is beautiful in itself, but add over 2.4 MILLION Christmas lights and a live nativity and it's pretty amazing. It was definitely worth waiting for. So, they make you turn your headlights off and you take a lap through the park. Truly amazing all of the lights! I attempted to take pictures...but they turned out terrible of course. The website doesn't really do it justice either, but at least there is a picture to give you an idea of the lights.

http://www.rotarylights.org/index.html

I have a video to post, but will do that in a separate post since they take awhile to load.

All in all, a great weekend! The driving was crappy on the way home, but the guys still managed to get us home in 3 hours.

whew

quite the week.

Recap:

Monday: Bryan had the DU Banquet, new TV arrives
Tuesday: Bryan and I put a bunch of shelving together for the basement and I attempted to clean house
Wednesday: Mary and Al came down, more cleaning, etc. Connor up at 11, 12, 1, 2, 3:20 and 6:20
Thursday AM: Grant arrives to install the entertainment center
Thursday mid AM: Start cooking the turkey
Thursday afternoon: Eat! All the food turned out amazing and it was so great to have everyone here!
Thursday night: Say goodbye and go to sleep. Connor only up 3 times.
Friday AM: Bryan takes Connor on venture, I treadmill, take a bath and relax.
Friday afternoon: Kacie comes over, we put up our tree, shopped, ate and decorated the house. Love it!
Friday PM: Got Connor down around 8:20, I've been up there three times since. HELP!

Plans for the rest of the weekend:
Leave tomorrow at 8am for La Crosse for a wedding, we're bringing Connor to a water park!!
Rest of Saturday wedding.
Sunday, drive home to watch Vikings lose, along with our fantasy football team.

Will work on posting lots of pictures the next few days.

Hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings!!

speedy

Connor has crawling down, and is getting pretty fast! Sometimes you still have to lure him with something like the cord on the camera to get him going...

Also, his latest trick is climbing up on stuff. He can get to a kneeling position and tries crawling up the bar stools, receiver/dvd/satellite boxes, etc. Have I mentioned I need to baby proof?

driving and standing

just some fun pictures from tonight. And they're not even that good, but it's cute how Connor is getting stronger and able to stand hile holding onto things. I will admit...he did fall once while I was getting these pictures. He laughed.

random update.

1. Connor had his first visit to urgent care on Friday. Daycare called at 4 and said he had a temp of 103! So, we took him in only to wait over an hour, then spend another hour + waiting for the doctor, having everything look 'normal', get some prescriptions, and go home. He kind of had a fever all weekend, but seemed okay this morning and at daycare today, but was a little off tonight again. We'll see how he is in the morning.
2. I miss my friends. Angie is on maternity leave, I haven't seen Anne for what feels like weeks, I haven't seen Sarah in FAR too long but with recent text and facebook communication it might be soon that we are once again reunited in scrapbooking, I am due for a SAC lunch, I did just get to see Heidi, and normally I'd say I probably wouldn't see her again for a year, I will be seeing her in January for a scrapbooking weekend and I'm pumped about that, and yeah.
3. Have I mentioned I'm hosting Thanksgiving? Little nervous. And the brining solution I was going to buy for the turkey is no longer available. Crap. (and no, before 2 weeks ago I had NO idea hat brining meant)
4. I love, love, love volleyball, but 3 nights a week is a little much. I'm just a sub on Monday nights, and then our co-ed team play Wednesday and Friday. However, if you're looking for a good game of co-ed vball to come watch, we play in Nicollet in Friday and it should be a great matchup. 7 pm. See you there.
5. One of our new windows has condensation inbetween the panes. That's not good I don't think?
6. We laid off 31 people in my building and it makes me sick to think about.
7. Can someone explain to me why gas keeps going down? Obviously I'm not complaining, but I'm about ready to save milk jugs and store it in my garage. That's not hazardous I'm sure.
8. It's my big sales season at work so I have my online sales reporting up 24/7 at home and am checking it constantly. It's a small addiction.
9. The card box has a nice long vacation here until March. Now maybe I can get some scrapbooking done!
10. We bought a new TV off of Amazon last night. Sears wouldn't match their price, plus, no shipping and no tax. Can't beat that. Pretty excited! Plus our entertainment center should be done before Thanksgiving so my living room will be a little more presentable and baby proofed as all the cords will be hidden. Thanks Nathan for telling me that Amazon had TV's, I really had no idea.
11. Speaking of baby proofing. I'm in need. Connor can officially open drawers and doors. And I definitely have non-baby stuff (chemicals, glass bowls, etc.) in easily accessible places.
12. Connor took half of his shirt off in the middle of the night last night. Little bugger. Mom picked him up some new zip-up footie pjs tonight. Hopefully that keeps him warm when he does his yoga in the middle of the night and gets out from under the blankets.
13. I'm attempting to get Connor attached to a 'blankie'. It's not working very well. I talked to a fellow mom at volleyball tonight and she's trying to do the same with her daughter and it's also not working.
14. He is still addicted to the nuk. Which, we're fine with. We'll maybe think about taking it away at a year.
15. For the most part, he's sleeping thru the night. Which is awesome, but, you can count on it, 7 am give or take 3 minutes and he's up!
16. I'm stretching to make my list go to twenty for some reason. But I think I'm going to stop here. Have a good night and a great Tuesday. I promise to try and keep the blog updated more often again. How rude of me to expect others to do so, but not do it myself.

Class Photo

Along with school photos come class photos! This time, our company's photography studio came over and took them, so it was only $5. Adorable.

Connor is in the middle in the exersaucer. Too cute. Good thing the photo is small on the blog, you can't really see the drool all over his shirt :)

School Photos

School photos at daycare conveniently happened the day before Connor's 6 month birthday. Saved us a trip to a studio :) Yes, they take school photos at daycare. Love it.

And, of course, a week after the photos were taken...his little blocked tear duct FINALLY cleared up! Oh well. At least it's clear!

And, LifeTouch does a great job of suckering you into purchasing the photos. They print 8 full sheets of photos and then you pay for whatever you don't return. I think I bought 5 sheets. Oops. Oh well. I probably would have spent more going to a professional photographer!

My favorite of the two.

Classic 'school photo' gray background. He looks absolutely chubby here, I had to buy at least one of these. I can already see it hanging on his graduation board...sad.

And...if you've ever seen the scrapbook I made for Bryan for his 30th birthday, you'll see a similar looking photo in there!

Now that I have my scanner all hooked up and working, maybe I'll scan that in someday.

WAY over due.

I've become one of those bloggers that gets to the bottom of the blog rolls...4 days ago...5 days ago...too long. Sorry!

This past weekend my friend Heidi, her husband Jesse and adorable son, Reece came to visit! It was SO good to see Heidi and it was the first time she's met Connor, so it was great! If you read her blog, you'll learn that we were awful and barely took ANY photos. Sad. But, like she said, it might be due to the fact that we didn't really shower or make ourselves presentable, the boys were basically in their pjs all day, and yeah. Nothing real picture worthy.

The few shots I did take I took right after bringing the camera in from the cold car, so, they're a little foggy. And then I was too lazy to remove red eye tonight.

my big boy sitting at his desk :) Notice the additional padding around him...just in case.

vroom vroom


hey, this is my desk!

congrats Jeff & Aleta!

Saturday night we went to my friends Aleta and Jeff's wedding. The weather was a little crappy, but that didn't stop the fun :) We went with Jay and Ang, and it was SO good to hang out with them! I am 110% ready for her to come back to work... :) The bride was GORGEOUS...however, I unfortunately only have one picture from the weekend.

What is this you ask? Our good friend Sarah. She moved her chair the the middle of the dance floor, all by herself, when everyone else was seated around the perimeter of the floor...to watch the slideshow. Maybe you had to be there, but it was pretty comical.

snowfall

Friday marked our first 'real' snowfall, and, I know, as bad as it sounds, it was really pretty! There wasn't any wind really, it was just a nice dusting of snow :) Loved how the trees looked outside our livingroom.

7 months.

Connor is seven months old today! So sad it's going so fast, but he's SO much fun right now. Busy...but fun :) I didn't even take any pictures today, bad mom, I know. But, on an unrelated topic, I DID go to the new Walgreens today. Sad that this excites me...but it will be SO nice having it so close (2 blocks from work). North Mankato really doesn't have much, so it'll be a hit I'm sure (parking lot has been packed since it opened).

So that's about all. I'm worried because it's halftime of the Monday Night Football game already, and I need 32 more points from the two people Iwe have playing. It's not looking good.

card room in use

The card room, aka 'man cave' is seeing it's first action tonight. Crappy weather = Thursday night cards.

I kind of had to 'sneak' a quick picture. As if they willingly would have posed for me.

more crawling/swimming/pulling/etc

Some more crawling (or whatever you want to call it) action. Getting more 'graceful' by the day :)

I suppose this means I should start baby proofing.

all night?

Neither one of us got up last night to plug Connor back in...and we even had the monitor on, however, when I went and peeked this morning he is laying the short way in the crib. Normally, he doesn't move while he's 'sleeping'...so who knows what happened. Either way, I'm pretty disappointed I'm still up at 6 right now.

Tonight starts the seasons of winter volleyball. Wednesday nights in Mankato (well, even more specifically, every game will be held in North Mankato which is awesome) and then Friday nights in Nicollet. Both leagues should be pretty competitive, which is fun.

Okay, I should go shower before little man wakes up.

enough already!

Sorry for the bazillion pictures. That's what happens when Mary comes down :) I didn't take the time to edit, crop, or anything to any of them, sorry! Trying to sort thru them all and find one for a new blog header.

For now, I'll leave you with one of my favorite shots from the weekend. (again, saving the family photo for the Christmas card!)

Oh. And did I mention I quit pumping? Yep. Last Thursday, the 30th of October, was officially my last day. Today is probably the first day everything 'feels normal'. Minus the fact that my left arm hurts like crap from my flu shot. But obviously unrelated.

I just love this one.

Pictures IV

I think I'm out of gas, Mom.

Pictures III

gimme 10!

officially the end of "connor the frog"

Pictures II

in the middle of blowing bubbles or doing his impression of a motor boat

more motor boat

exiting the photo session

we're so done.

pictures I

frog vs tiger

"mom, what is he doing?"

"mom, he's coming close again"

Madelyn was NOT wanting her picture taken

Hard to tell, but her mom, Lora, is laying down because Madelyn didn't want to leave her mom's lap :)

Trying to show Madelyn that everyone was getting their photo taken :)

What you lookin at?

Cute :)

Connor 'swimming'

trying on the hat

happy boy

Grammie LOVES feeding Connor :)