Outdoor adventures and a big boy bed!

The weather this month has been so extraordinarily beautiful that we've been outside almost every day enjoying it! We spent last weekend at my dad's cabin, beginning the process of closing it up for the winter and putting away the pontoon and dock. Dave's been pretty prompt in picking up the leaves from the yard here at the house, but Ellie was able to get her fill of playing in the leaves up at the cabin - something she's been looking forward to for weeks!

Maddie, Zoe and Aidan weren't too thrilled with playing in the leaves this year, but Aidan found his calling sitting on the ATV with Grandma (and was very upset when it was time to get off):

Zoe enjoying a snack:

Maddie too:

Dave came home from work early one afternoon to watch the Twins in a post-season game (let's not talk about how that ended, shall we?) and also got to play with the kids outside. Here's Ellie:

Not to be outdone, Zoe goes for a flight too:

And Maddie gets a little airtime.

Zoe out for a walk:

And an attempt at a family picture ends as it usually does:

In other news, Aidan got his "big boy" bed a few weeks ago, and despite being really excited about it initially...

...it's been a hard adjustment for him.

After the first few nights ended up with him sleeping on the floor next to his bed, we compromised with replacing the twin mattress with his old crib mattress. For the most part, that's been working OK. I'm not sure how we're going to handle swapping it back but I guess we'll deal with that when the time comes - but hopefully sooner rather than later. And hopefully things will go better with the girls' switch to regular beds, but as they've made no moves towards trying to escape their cribs, we're in no hurry for that!

Zoe weighed in last week at 17 lbs, 5 oz.! She's creeping ever so slowly to the milestone of 20 lbs, when we can finally turn her car seat around to face forward. I can't wait!

Our well-used washing machine finally cried "Uncle!" this past Friday afternoon and almost literally exploded, spewing water all over our laundry room. Dave and I still can't figure out how a huge hole could suddenly appear in the outer plastic drum? Sorry I don't have any photos of that. ;) We had the joy of purchasing a new one on Saturday, after I spent 2 hours early that morning at the laundromat doing 8 loads of sopping wet laundry and reading copies of People magazine from 2003. I'm sure the kids will be quite entertained on Tuesday when the new one is delivered and the old one is hauled away. Never a dull moment at the Karnowski household!