Our boy

Sorry, no pictures. I still haven't sent the camera in. Hope to get it fixed before Christmas, but I doubt it.
Anyway, I thought I'd catch you up on what Luke's been up to. And I do mean UP to. Aparently spending Thanksgiving climbing Grandpa and Grandma's stairs has made Luke yearn for higher altitude. Since we've been home his new favorite thing is to push his little chair around and stand on it. That wouldn't be huge, except that now he's discovered if you push the chair up against things, it makes a great stool. His other favorite climbing spot is the gate in the kitchen door. There's about a half an inch of "ledge" that he can get his little feet set on and with the height of the gate when he steps up his little mouth can clamp onto the top of the gate. Now, it's cute and all until....the gate slips off the wall and pins him to the floor. Now if he'd take a moment from panicking he'd realize that the gate is very light and he could move it off of himself...instead he lays under it and screams till he is rescued.
And yesterday, on a different note, Luke thought it looked like fun to be in the box that his new fisherprice manger scene came in...so out went the toys and Luke squeezed himself in...his feet didn't quite fit so after some careful squirming he managed to get his feet to stick out the top. He looked quite comfortable, until he couldn't get out. What a character!

Our trip to Dollinger Farms

I've been waiting to have a kid so I have an excuse to enjoy one of fall's greatest pastimes, going to a pumpkin farm. We took Luke when Grandma and Grandpa came up to visit two weekends ago. It was so much fun. Just a little cold, but Luke didn't seem to notice cause there were too many kids and animals to watch.

He loved the petting farm but wasn't so sure about actually touching the animals...he prefered standing at the fence "ohhing" at them.

Grandma showed him how soft the sheep was. But I think Luke was more intrigued by the baby calf.
Hmmm...pigs, they've got the right idea.

Daddy, Luke, and the Sheep.
Grandma tried to get Luke to take advantage of the all the photo ops...he wasn't having it.

He did take the pumpkin choosing part very seriously. He tried a number of times to get that pumpkin in to wagon. He did get to take a ride in the wagon with the pumpkins, but Grandma's camera ran out of battery before we could get a picture. Luke also got two little pumpkins painted on his face. They were very cute but didn't last past our lunch at Culver's afterwards. Thanks for coming with us, Grandma and Grandpa. And sorry about the giant corn stalks you had to share your seat with on the ride home, Grandma. They looked great at G.L.O.W.

G.L.O.W.

I was inspired by our years of fall festivals at Trinity in Cedar Rapids, so instead of spending our Wednesday evening dragging our one year old around a dark neighborhood, we spent our day and night running "G.L.O.W." (God lights our way). We had about 75 kids show up and as my siblings know, they came, they played games, they got prizes, and they left with big bags of candy. It was a great first try. And we have already figured out what to change for next year. Here's our "Halloween".

Our monkey
My favorite part, his tail.

We found another wild animal. Our front hall turned into a jungle!
Thanks for coming...see ya next year!

Chad Daniel, you've been served.