Its the most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Cyclones won this year!

Wow, so I am really behind keeping people updated on the blog!  School is going well for both kids.  McKayla continues to excel.  Her teacher is Mr. Wells this year and amazingly half her class from last year are in the same class with her.  McKayla couldn't do gymnastics this year b/c of her needing to wear her glasses.  Shawn and I thought that she is just too young for contacts at this time, so instead she went for the volleyball clinic.  She does not know what to think of it yet.  Crossing my fingers that she loves it as much as I do.  Caleb loves pre-K!  This is his second year. He goes all day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  He also has a much bigger class.  He has gone on several field trips and shares his adventure with literally everyone.  Caleb's teachers loves his spirit and adventure and often share how wonderful he is in school...can't wait to see what he is like in high school.  Then there is Avery!  Where to begin?  She finally broke in 2 bottom teeth in October. However, Avery is as adventurous as her brother.  She runs around, sings, climbs everything her little legs can allow her.  She definately has her own personality which we love and adore.  She also has her mother and father's temper...should be interesting.

Fall 2011

Shawn and Avery at the Pumpkin Patch!

Caleb sporting a great smile!

McKayla smiling pretty for the camera!

For Halloween, the kids got to go with Grandma Connie to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, NE for Trick-or-Treating.  It was fun, but they really wanted to see more animals. That following Monday, the kids did there usual Trick-or-Treating in Fairmont, MN on the same street they have gone for 4 years.  They got a lot of candy.  McKayla was a student from Hogwarts, particularly from Gryffindor.  Caleb had two costumes.  At the zoo he was Transformers Bumblebee and then on Halloween, he was Darth Vador.  Then Little Miss Avery was....a skunk!  It was not the same costume as Caleb, but our little stinker enjoyed herself watching everyone.  Also for Halloween, the family was able to carve pumpkins together and we went to a pumpkin farm. 

Every year we take a picture on the porch!

Henry Doorly Zoo with Grandma Connie

McKayla finished reading the whole Harry Potter series!

Each kid showing their different personalities!

Caleb, Avery, and McKayla



Carving with Dad!



Carving with Mom!

Our Little Stinker Avery!

Now Thanksgiving is two days away.  We will be staying at home and cooking together all day.  We will be spending time with the Rosales Clan the following weekend.  We cannot wait to see everyone!  It is hard to believe that Christmas is around the corner. The nice thing is that we are officially done shopping.  Thank goodness!!!

School has begun!

Wow, I think that the summer came a bit too fast!  Although we did a lot of things over the summer, it still was just not enough.  Caleb is into his second year in pre-k at Guardian Angel Preschool.  He will be going all day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Last year he only attended on Tuesdays and Thursdays for half days, so he is beyond excited. McKayla is going to be in 4th grade this year.  Good lord, where has time gone.  It is hard to believe that she is in Intermediate.  This year she has Mr. Wells as her teacher, who is right next door to her 3rd grade teacher, Mr Rosener.  Here are pics of the kids on their first day of school.  Amazingly Caleb had his on a Wednesday and Mac was on a Thursday.

Summer is almost over!

Good grief how times flies!  I just realized that the last time I posted anything was the end of June.  The Chambers family has tried to do a lot of things this summer for the kids.  We have gone to parades, gone to the zoo, went to Adventureland, ect.  The list goes on and on.  So here is a recap of pics for friends and family to see...

This was from the Fourth of July!  The kids had a ton of fun.  They started out with watching the parade in Armstrong, IA with friends.  They then went to the Fairmont Aquatic park with their best bud Ellie. 

After getting some sun, they headed to the park for a picnic.  Here the kids are showing off their Fourth of July cookies they got to eat before playing...again!

At the end of the day, we ended up having front seats to the fireworks.  Although we had to wait for several hours, the kids got to play with snap its and sparklers with the Plumhoff family.

Caleb and McKayla got to spend the week with Grandma Connie, but before they headed over to Shenendoah, Iowa, they spent some time with their Nana.  Here is the after affect of Nana purchasing some waterguns for the kids.  They had a blast chasing each other and getting wet. It was a really hot day, so they did not mind getting soaked!

Avery finally was baptised!!!  Our friends Kevin Mortensen and Angie Collett were chosen as the godparents...good grief...makes you wonder what on earth those two will teach Avery!  It was great to see them because Kevin flew in from Florida and Angie came from Ames.  The family has not seen them both since the wedding.  That was four years ago!

We went down to the Des Moines area for Avery's birthday!  Here is a picture of Avery with her cousins Jasmine and Kherington.  They had a ton of fun running around in Paul and Bridget's basement.  They look like they are trying to run out of the house.  I am pretty sure they will do that as they get older.

Aunt Bridget was very excited to make Avery's birthday cake!  It was chocolate with chocolate frosting....mmmmm!!!!  Avery enjoyed it so much that she made sure to save some in her hair and all over her face.  The older siblings had fun helping her blow out the candles.  In the end, Avery was eventually able to fall asleep once all the sugar got out of her system.

We took the kids to Adventureland.  Boy was it hot that day!  It was so hot that we started of at the waterpark where all the kids (Ken, Paul, me, Bridget, Mac, Caleb, Avery, Kherington, and Jasmine) took the opportunity to stay cool in the water.  Shawn on the otherhand had the opportunity to sit in the shade while sipping water...at least that is what I remember.  Afterwards, we headed to the rides.  Here is a picture of the kids in the air.  McKayla went on her first ever rollercoaster ride.  She only wanted to go once, but to make sure that we would remember, Shawn bought a picture of her sitting next to her Uncle Paul going down the steep end of the ride...I wish I scanned it for all to see.

The next day we took the kids to the Blank Park Zoo.  Nana was able to come with us, but boy this day was even hotter.  All of us were sweating like crazy, but we made the best of it.  I was able to visit one of my friends from high school, Keiko, who works at the zoo.  She talked to McKayla a little bit and got her interested with her occupation...who knows, we may have a vet in the future!  The kids had a great time also feeding the giraffes.  I think they enjoyed this part a lot. Think about, how often can you say you fed a giraffe!  They also had a dinosaur display...hmmm...I wonder who would have enjoyed that?!?  Caleb loved how they were animated, but soon made sure to tell us how they were not real, but that it was okay!

Avery and Jasmine shopping at Sam's Club!  This was cute to see the cousins hanging out.  See that bottle cap?  That was bounced back and forth between the two.  They fought over it like it was the best toy in the world!

The cousins got to spend a little bit of time together before we had to go back to Ceylon, MN.  I wish I would have made a video of the girls in their bouncers...they were maniacs.  Avery didn't care as long as she had her bottle of milk.  I am sure it would have been a treat to see what it would havve been like if they all were in bouncers!

My baby doll is a year old!

Payton, Caleb, and McKayla on the Tilt O Whirl

The kids got to go to Arnolds Park in Okoboji, IA.  That is definately a benefit living in 45 minutes away from a tourist attraction.  We originally started the day attending the Emmet Co. fair, but it did not have all the fun stuff for kids like they normally did.  So, I packed up the kids and we headed off to a fun filled day at another amusement park.  Caleb and Mac had fun as they were able to go on a ton of rides.  Helps that they had wristbands so they could go on any ride multiple times.  By the end of the day we were tuckered out and by the time we got home, Caleb, Avery, and myself took a 2 hour nap...Mac of course did not want to rest so she read instead.  I love this last picture.  I bought blue raspberry snow cones for the kids...definately left a mark.  They enjoyed the bumper cars, roller coaster, log ride, etc.

So now what is the family up to now?  Well, I will be posting pictures of the children.  We had pictures taken by a really sweet and awesome photographer.  She did a wonderful job.  We did this for Avery's 1 year pics as well as including her siblings since we always take pictures of the kids together.  We attended the St. Mary's NICU reunion.  We had a lot of fun visiting the Willaerts and Seitzers before heading down to the courtyard.  There we were able to see some of our favorite nurses as well as friends we made along the way.  We will be going down to Des Moines one more time as my aunt from my father's side will be visiting us soon.  This week we registered McKayla for school, so you can imagine the rest of our summer will soon be over, but until then, we will enjoy what time we will have.  We have several county fairs to still attend, so the fun will not be over just yet!



Summer Lovin...too bad the weather is preventing us from enjoying the great outdoors!

So far the Chambers family has gone on a few trips.  We have been to Minneapolis twice now.  We recently went to see the Twins play the Padres for Girl Scouts, which was an interesting experience since 1.) the weather (it was raining off and on) and 2.) we took Avery along.  Amazingly we had a great time at the game.  The first three innings we had to stay under shelter because of the rain, but the rest of the evening was wonderful.  We also tried out a baby carrier so that we did not have to deal with a wiggle worm throughout the game.

Here is Avery and I at the game.  She was literaly attached to me for the whole game.  No whining or complaining...unless she was hungry.

Caleb and McKayla enjoying the game and finding time to smile for camera!

Mac took this picture of her parentals!

The day after the game was father's day.  We started off by going to one of our favorite stores...IKEA!  Although we found a million and one things we "could" use in our house, we ended up just getting ideas. 

Happy Father's Day!

We then decided to head back to the MOA and surprise the kids by taking them to "Sea Life"

They did a ton of renevations since the last time we were there.  The kids had a ton of fun.  Avery even had a blast watching the fish, shark, jellyfishes, etc. 

We also spent Father's Day by going to Shawn's favorite place to eat...Buffalo Wild Wings.  On our venture home, we did not arrive until 10:30pm...yikes!  Three crabby kids easily fell asleep.  We decided to give daddy his presents the next day. Of course if anyone knows my hubby he only receives 3 kind of presents 1.) Iowa Hawkeye stuff 2.) Raiders 3.) U2.  The kids surprised Shawn with Iowa Hawkeye football figurines while I got him a signed autographed football (glad I have connections at work) that included Ricky Stanzi #12 before he got drafted.

McKayla, Shawn, Caleb, and Avery!

Of course we had anothe celebration following Father's Day and that was McKayla's 9th Birthday!  This year instead of having a bowling party, she asked if she and her friend, Emily Dunlop, could have manicure/pedicures....gosh I miss the days when toys were so easy.  So, the same weekend of the Twins game, the girls got to go to "Scoops" in the MOA and have a fun time!

After having their manicures, the girls go to go to the Banana Sundae lounge and have their feet pampered. The girls had a blast.  They were able to wear robs and of course their tiara and choose 2 nail polishes that they got to keep.  McKayla chose sparkly silver and purple, while Emily was silver and teal.

The one weekend when we had nowhere to go, we decided to take the kids to see Cars 2.  The kids had a blast, except mommy and Avery ended up hanging out in the lounge.  Avery was fighting being sleepy and we did not want to interrupt anyone.  Daddy got to hang with the kids, besides, the last kid movie outing I got to take them to Kungfu Panda 2.  So it only seems fair!  Following the movie we went to the tourist site of Okoboji, IA.  Funny how a lot of friends make it a big deal to go there, but when you live close by, it is just a day trip.  Here are pics of us on the dock with the kids. Like I said, Mother Nature is very confused about the weather. It was cloudy, but cool enough to be in sandals or jeans.  Hopefully we will be able to take the kids to the waterpark someday.  July will be verybusy as it will be Fourth of July weekend, Avery's Baptism, Avery's 1st Birthday, and vacation to Des Moines, IA (we wanted to do stuff close to family).