Our community had a pumpkin fest on Saturday. Free pumpkins for all residents, hayrides, rock climbing walls, bake sales, crafts, kettlecorn, barbeques, HawkQuest's eagles and owls, boutiques for pets, games for adults and kids, and lots of treats.

While Paul attended a party with his dad in Colorado Springs, Abby and I spent a couple of hours at the festival.

She wanted to wear her Halloween costume - a fairy. However, she was frightened of the costume's huge wings, so we did without.


Abby testing out pumpkins at the pumpkin patch, choosing her pumpkin based on how "sit-on-able" it was.


This was the pumpkin she finally chose; Hugging the chosen squash for a picture in front of a haystack.


HawkQuest brought several birds to educate the audience; Sage and Belle were the horses who took us on a bumpy ride through our neighborhood, to Abby's great delight.


After we ventured through all the booths and activity centers, Abby wanted to hit the playground and grab a drink.

At the end of the day, the one thing Abby remembered the most fondly about the pumpkin fest was the BIG puddle in the pumpkin patch where she got to "splash, splash, splash and got ALLLLL wet!"

In our household very, very friendly, clingy cats reside. Below are examples of what you may experience if you were to, say, come over for dinner.

Just kidding!

We would never subject any of our welcomed house guests to this sort of behavior from our kitties. They are cats after all and tend to be shy around visitors. I only thought it would be fun to share the sort of inconvenience Paul has to endure every now and then at the dinner table.

When I learned the nursery rhyme/song many, many years ago, it was "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

Today, I am hearing my 2-year old sing, "Mary Had a Little Man..."

This morning, after arriving at daycare, I told Abigail to say goodbye to her Hello Kitty and that she'll see her later. She gave the doll a big hug, kissed her on the top of her head, and said, "I love you! I'll be coming back, ok?"

I thought, "Awww, she's mimicking us when we drop her off at daycare!"

Every night when we put Abigail to bed, we say, "Goodnight, I love you." Sometimes she'll respond with, "Night-night," but usually we don't get any response. She gives me a kiss and a hug-squeeze then does the same with Paul before we tuck her in.

Tonight, though, we got an extra special surprise at bedtime. When I picked her up, she whispered, "I love you!" right before she gave me the kiss/hug-squeeze combo. Jumping into Paul's arms, she said, "I love you too!"

I have a giant grin on my face right now and it won't be going away anytime soon...

On Friday, we took our eldest cat, Tigger, to the vet for a check-up. He recently had a urinary tract infection that did not clear up immediately after a round of antibiotics.

Last week, we started having incidents where he would urinate in front of us, almost as a message to us. He was still using the litter boxes and it wasn't as if he couldn't make it to the litter box - he was deliberately doing his business in front of us.

When we told the vet, he immediately said he was keeping Tigger for x-rays, MRIs, and other tests. We got a call later that morning to say that they found a BOULDER in his bladder and that because he was already sedated, they wanted to go in and get it out.

By mid-afternoon, they had extracted an almost 1/2-inch wide stone!

Tigger came home on Saturday and has been recovering well. He has been super affectionate and appears to be suffering no pain.

It feels awful to think that he had been suffering with the stone for months, possibly years, but it wasn't until recently that he actually showed any urinary symptoms that pointed to the real issue. Poor little guy, but he is feeling so much better now.