Fall!

Charlie has continued to grow and change this fall! He now has four teeth, he's crawling EVERYWHERE, and two nights ago he climbed the entire staircase on his own. (Well, I mean we didn't help him - he was supervised!) What a big boy! He already has a slight ornery streak - we are working on "No" and so far he's done pretty well. He stops and cries most of the time, but he isn't very obedient when it comes to not touching the laptop. For some reason, he just really wants that one!
Several weeks ago GiGi and Grandpa took us to Gary's Berries. Charlie had a blast! He played in the pumpkin patch and even on a tractor!

We also had our first experience on an airplane this fall! We flew to Colorado where we met up with GiGi, Grandpa, Uncle Alex, and Aunt Molly. Charlie did okay on the flight - he was a little fussy, and he had a huge diaper (which I had to change in the little tiny airplane bathroom - the changing panel was half Charlie's size, AND I dropped the dirty diaper, which smeared all over the wall on its way down...great.) Once we got there, though, we had a great time relaxing with the family. I just realized we got lots of good pictures of wildlife, but no pics of Charlie while we were there!
We did do lots of special things for Charlie's first Halloween! We went to Matt and Kristie's in Lawrence where the adults carved pumpkins and the kids all looked cute in their costumes: from the left, Lion (Charlie), Micky Mouse, Toad (from Mario), Cupcake, and Tree Frog.
Our neighborhood association puts on a parade in the park across the street from our house, so Charlie invited his cousins to go through the parade with him!
They were very cute. They also got their pictures taken on the back of a firetruck!
Papa, Nana, GiGi, Grandpa, Aunt Alicia, Uncle Jim, and Uncle Steven also came!
Finally, on Halloween day, we went to the church's fall festival. We we didn't stay long, but we did get to play in the back of cousin Shane's pick-up, which was full of pumpkins!

You can veiw more October pictures here.

We are so blessed to live in the same town as our families. All three of us have been sick the past few weeks, and I have no idea how we would have handled it without our loving parents here to help! We are settling into the new house, and progress is slow, but good. We hung Charlie's door last week, so his room is almost done. The only thing it really needs is light. The ceiling is so low that we had to install a ceiling fan with no light so that Rick could still stand up straight. That means there is no overhead lighting. In the summer that wasn't a problem because there are windows on three of the four walls and it was daylight for pretty much the entire time Charlie was awake. Now that it gets dark at 5PM, we find it's very dark in his room. We have some lamps, but Rick wants to install some canned lighting, which will have to wait until winter break. We also hung several pictures and raked our yard (which is a far more pleasant experience here than it was with our yard in Lawrence!) And if you live out of town or haven't had a chance to swing by, here's a picture of our new home: