Cedar Rapids, A Lost Tooth and Pickles!

WOW I'm getting really bad at this - need to try and improve these time lapses between posts!! We have just been crazy busy the last two weeks, but at least with all good things. Last weekend we headed to Cedar Rapids, IA to see my sister Betsy and her family - LONG drive (11 hours!) but very worth it, we had the BEST time! Friday night we got a babysitter and went out to eat and then to the Newsboys concert - oh my goodness, they are my new favorite band! It was just awesome!! Mark and I have both become total Newsboys junkies now - every time we get in the car, that's what we put on. Saturday morning we headed to the MALL where we had a family picture taken for Christmas - and this was no ordinary mall - they have an ice skating rink right and full-size carousel right in the middle of it! So we took advantage of both:

It was the boys' FIRST TIME ever ice skating, and it was a challenge!! By the end, they were doing pretty good, though. Here's Jack starting out:

This is what they looked like most of the time - this is Noah: (but bless their hearts, they were NOT going to give up, and they did improve quite a bit!)
Gaining some confidence towards the end:
and Mark and I practicing our Olympic routine . . . .
Here's my sweet nephew Colby on the carousel (LOVE this picture!):
So, our family picture session was somewhat of a struggle because Noah had an upper front tooth hanging on my a thread, and he kept pushing it with his tongue during the pictures - UGGH! We did manage to get a couple decent ones - - and then wouldn't you know, an hour after the pictures were done, his tooth falls out!! Anyway, it was pretty exciting because it was his first upper tooth to come out and now he really does look different (and talks a little different too!) :)

The rest of the weekend with the Wraneks was great - we always have so much fun there with them. Jack and Noah were very sad to leave Colby - here they are the night before we left:

Back on the homefront, the boys were able to open the first jar of their pickles from the batch we made last month. They made this jar (and a few others) BY THEMSELVES - they just love doing it and they love eating them even more! True Roisums!!
And then we did another of Jack and Noah's favorite things, decorating for Halloween. I started collecting Dept. 56 Halloween stuff when they were babies, and now they have the BEST time getting it all out every Halloween. Here's our favorite piece - "Jack's Carving Studio" (says that on the sign, not sure if you can read it in the picture) . . . .

And here's Mark's favorite Halloween decoration - we got it from a Roisum family friend for our wedding. (The mouth says ROISUM).
So that's what we've been up to! The next few weekends we don't have any plans, other than to spend time at HOME and get our to-do list done! It felt so good to wake up this morning knowing we don't have one thing on the calendar for the next two days - love it!!! Have a good weekend!!