Homework Time

I found Katie working her homework...all the while, Pollyanna was reading a book!

Grandma Barman's 90th Birthday

The kids & I went out to Woodhull, IL to celebrate Grandma Barman's 90th birthday! She looked wonderful - it was great to see her out of the house!

After service, the church celebrated her birthday with coffee & cake.
After this, we headed to Homestead restaurant.

Teri, Deb & Becki with their dad (Ron) and Grandma Bev
Becki's parents Ron & Rose with Grandma Bev
Grandma with her 4 boys - Denny, Ron, Randy & Doug

Our Picture Won!

One of our vacation photos was chosen for the AtlasQuest calendar! What a nice honor! Check out the calendar - we are the month of October!

Continuing to Look for Lincoln...and Letterboxing!

We were blessed with very mild weather this fall - warm temps almost every weekend! We used these weekends to our advantage. One Saturday we headed down towards Macomb, Carthege and Nauvoo, IL to look for Lincoln. We were successful in finding what we were looking for!

The day started out with rain, but we were armed with umbrellas and paper towels (to wipe off the water on the medallions). The rain did let up as the day went on. Here are Becki & Will working on one of the rubbings in Carthege, IL.
Becki & Maddie in Nauvoo, IL

The kids right along the Mississippi River in Dallas City, IL - it was unbelievable how low the river was!The next day, we headed to the Amana Colonies to grab a few letterboxes...

The kids at a rest stop on the way - aren't those sculptures neat!

There's a letterbox somewhere around here!!

We ended November with a trip to Iowa City to find a new series based on Veggie Tales - on of our favs!! It was a great hike and wonderful stamps!! The special thing about this letterboxing trip - it was our 5th year anniversary of letterboxing!!!

Chick-fil-A Family Nights and Date Nights

We LOVE Chick-fil-A! Great food, great service, family friendly - it is a wonderful place to eat! Our local Chick-fil-A (the one that I work for) has family nights every Thursday night. This works out great with our small group schedule. A few families from our small group eat together and then head over to church (less than a mile away) for group. Some of the family nights include an option for the kids to dress up and receive a free kids meal.

Here they are dressed up as turkeys (thanks to my sister Debbie for the VERY last minute idea!!) -

A few weeks later, they dressed like pilgrims & Indians -
They also host date nights throughout the year (mother/daughter, mother/son, father/daughter, father/son). These dates are very special to us and we try not to miss them! Here I am with the girls in November.

Matt with the girls this summer...

For the mother/daughter date night, Chick-fil-A hires a horse drawn carriage. It is generally cold, but so much fun!