Thanksgiving

This year since we are living on the other side of the country we decided that we would stay here in Bloomington for Thanksgiving, if we had more time and money we definitely would have made the trip to see family but this year just didn't allow for that. Jake didn't have classes the week of Thanksgiving but had lots of networking and GA work to do. So we decided to have a little Thanksgiving dinner with a few people that were sticking around here in B-Town with us.

We had a great time and great food, we broke away from the traditional turkey and ate ham. We were all bigger ham fans anyway so it worked out good =) Thanks to Deepti and the Busby's we enjoyed the company!

Its a......

GIRL!!!! We will be seeing more pink! Sadie has been right all along. She has been talking about her baby sister since we told her she was going to have sibling. I really thought it was going to be a boy because the pregnancy has been so different from Sadie's but, we are going to be blessed with another princess.

Indianapolis Children's Museum

The children's museum here in Indiana is spectacular. It is know to be the best children's museum in the Nation! Sadie and I have had the opportunity of going twice now since we have moved here. This museum is so big, we have still not seen the whole thing! Maybe if we are able to go every couple of months we will be able to see the whole thing by the time we leave =) Here are some of the pictures we have taken during the two times in which we were there. Enjoy!

 Riding the carousel. We went on this 3 times that day, it was Sadie's favorite.

 Digging for dinosaur bones.

 Hanging out on a car in the Egypt area.

 Playing in the kid room. This room is field with tons of activities for kids 5 and under to participate in.

 Playing in the water. What kid doesn't love water!

Playing in the dinosaur exhibit. 

Trunk-or-Treat and Halloween

Can you tell how busy we were this year with Halloween celebrations?!? (notice the three previous posts) Makes me wonder what Thanksgiving and Christmas are like around here... We already have 3 event invites for Thanksgiving (each invite is for a different night too, looks like we will be nice and plump)! =0)

So our final halloween event was our ward Trunk-or-Treat and Chili cook off. I was amazed at the turn out, every seat was taken and people were standing everywhere trying to eat. I was worried that they might run out of food, but at the end there was still food left over. Anyway, we ate a nice chili dinner and then took the kids out to get their treats. Sadie had so much candy from the trunk-or-treat and other 2 events I wasn't sure we would take her out for Halloween, but, guess what... we took her out with to a few houses here in the neighborhood. We met up with our neighbors who have a girl her age, her and her friend ran from house to house squealing and screaming with delight. They thought that getting lots of candy was fun. This years Halloween was a blast, next years halloween has a lot to live up to.

Oh and guess what, I get mom of the year award for laziness, I didn't get any picture of the trunk-or-treat or halloween night =( I will try to do better next time.

Pumpins

This year we decided that we would pass up the fun carving that we normally do and, decorate our pumpkins by paining them! This was much easier than a ooey gooey mess that we would have encountered with having a 2 year old around. Sadie loved painting hers all different colors, and then camouflaging all the pretty colors with black paint and sparkles.

 Mom's Pumpkin

 Jake's pumpkin

Sadie's finished pumpkin

While we were painting we were jamming out to music, Sadie was having a blast and I actually caught a good little clip of her on video... take a look =)

{having trouble getting the video to load I will try it again later}

Halloween Events

Here the Kelly School of Business has a few "clubs" that they encourage all students and families to get involved with, and participate in the fun events they put on. We have been spoiled with how busy they keep us and how much they feed us. They have the MBAA (Masters of Business Administration Association), Partners Club (for spouses, partners of the MBA students), and Partners Kids Club (for spouses, or partners of the MBA students with kids). All of these groups put on their own parties for holidays, or just for fun and keep us constantly on the run with something fun to fill our free time. {mine and Sadie's free time, Jake doesn't know what free time is anymore}

This year they ran a couple of the events back to back so they wouldn't take up too many of our nights before Halloween. The MBAA put on a great Trick-or-Treat, followed by a yummy dinner and carnival put on by KKPC.

 

 Sadie and her friend, she lives in our culdesac and they play together all the time.

Group of our friends kids. Aren't they all so cute!

Greek Trick-orTreat Street

Here at IU the Greek community puts on a fun trick-or-treating event for everyone. Sadie was so excited to dress up in her pirate costume and go get CANDY!

 I loved watching her face as she saw all of these kids dressed up. At first she didn't care about the trick-or-treating, she was captivated by all the kids in costumes. "Mommy, look there is Buzz, Mommy Woody.... a PRINCESS!!!!" It was so much fun to see her reaction to all of the kids and their characters. 

 Here she is running after Buzz, she wanted to say hi to him =) {I love this little girl and her enthusiasm}

Time to call it a night!

Nashville

Nashville, Indiana... not Nashville, Tennessee, I know you were all thinking of Nashville Tennessee! About 20 minutes east of Bloomington is this cute little tourist town, the drive there is so pretty in the fall. Artists from around the world travel to this cozy little town, snuggled into the hazy hills of Southern Indiana, to paint the gorgeous views and take amazing pictures. The locals here recommend that everyone make the at least once while they live here. So a few friends and I loaded our kids up in our van and journeyed out to experience the breathtaking views {yes, our husbands are too busy to make even a quick afternoon trip}.

Now being in Utah and taking the fall drives up the Canyons, I didn't think that fall could be better than that. Here there are so many more trees and varieties of colors that the experience is much different than I expected. The drive was beautiful. I don't know how I made this trip without taking any pictures, but I escaped without even a shot of Sadie or the views. Dang! I am sure that we will go again next year, heck I know we will probably go many times between this year and next year because the atmosphere is so much fun! Next fall I will have to get some pictures to show you all! If you come and visit you can experience it for yourself =0)

Freeman Family Farms

I am sure you have all been wondering where the heck I have been! I kinda blame my slacking on this blog this pregnancy, but we have also been so busy with events and parties I have not had any time to sit down and catch up on all of the posts! So over the next couple of days you will see lots of posts =0)

One of my friends and I decided that since we were not going to be taking a trip with the KKPC (Kelly Kids Partners Club) to the pumpkin patch, we would make our own little fun field trip with our kids to the local Pumpkin Patch here in Bloomington.

 They had a HUGE barn full of rocking horses, wagons, tike cars, and best of all... ANIMALS. They had bunnies, cats, dogs, goats, donkey, mini pony, horse, pigs all for the kids to pet. They even had feed that the kids could feed the animals with. It was a little kids sanctuary. {and a mom's nightmare of animal germs and slime} :)

 They made some fun balloon animals for them, Sadie got a butterfly.

 The biggest hit there was the train ride. Sadie and Caleb rode this thing more times than I can remember! I know that we will for sure have to come back next year for the fun petting zoo, pumpkins, hay ride, and fun toys to play on.

This local farm was the perfect place for our two active toddlers to run and have some fun!

Little....

Lotus Festival

This weekend we were able to attend the local Lotus Festival, Sadie and I were even able to talk Jake into coming with us and spending some time as a family outside before it gets cold. We had a great time and loved all of the fun creative crafts that they had for Sadie. She was able to color a big fish, that they attached a string and fishing rod to, as well as a woven picture and a colorful paper art project. Everyone talks about how great this festival is, honestly I guess I went with high expectations, not that is was horrible, it just was a lot smaller then we are used to seeing festivals, and not a ton of people were there. But the arts and crafts totally made the trip worth it. We had one happy child! She loves to color, paint, draw, anything that is artsy she LOVES, and this festival was full of artsy opportunities.

Coloring her fish

Finished Fishy

Art on the wall

Sadie got to pet this Parrot and she LOVED it!

Weaving paper with Mom

So proud of her finished work =)

School and life update

Jake has been busy with school, this past month they have been doing networking, academy selections, academy meetings, homework, case studies, homework, group projects, assistantship, and did I mention HOMEWORK! He has been very busy, but has been awesome about finding time to spend with Sadie and I when he can. Most days we are able to eat dinner together and then he goes down to the basement and studies and does homework while Sadie and I clean up and get ready for bed and once we are ready for bed he comes up for prayers and then quickly sneaks back downstairs for more... you guessed it... homework. 

This past week Jake was accepted into the Investment Management Academy. This is the academy that Jake was wanting and loves the line of work that it targets, so now he will network and travel within this group to help him select an internship and a great group of networks to help his secure a job before we graduate school.

Sadie and I have been busy with friends. We have quickly made lots of great friends and participate in a weekly play date with the business schools "partners club" its nice being able to get Sadie out to play with kids her age, she loves kids, and she always seems to take a great long nap after play dates, so I get a happy kid that takes a great nap, which makes for one happy mom =)

Anderson Orchard

As the Kelly Partners Club we journeyed out on a field trip, about an hour from Bloomington to Anderson Orchard. Not only did we get to hang out with our friends in the Club, but we were able to make the trip on a Saturday and travel together as a FAMILY!

 At the Anderson Orchard you are able to walk around in the trees and pick the apples you want to keep. It was fun to watch Sadie look for apples and scream and run from the "bugs" aka bees =0) a bee even landed on her apple and she was devastated, in tears, "Mommy the buggy got me apple". We got her a new apple and all was better.

Bloomington

We are really loving our new adventure and new home. We have been so very spoiled with nice people and a great school. We have had numerous people bring us treats and stop by to introduce themselves. It has been so nice and we feel so welcome here. The support here from other people is awesome, I feel like it is mostly because no one has family here, so we all get to be each others family! We are really looking forward to all that life has to bring us here.

Over the last three weeks we have been slammed busy with events, jump start, and orientation, there seems to be something for us to do every day =-) We also really love where we choose to live. Our house is at the end of a culd-e-sac and in our circle we have 3 little girls that are Sadie's age!!! She is having so much fun playing with them and getting to know them. The coolest thing about these girls is they were all born within a couple months of each other! In Sandy all of Sadie's friends were either a couple years older or a year younger than her. Now she can have playmates that are closer to her age.


Well, when I get more time I will have to post all some pictures of our house. We have had an adventure putting it all together. Our storage space was cut down to almost nothing when we moved here. To give you an idea of what we are dealing with, our upstairs where all of our bedrooms are and two bathrooms, we have NO linen closet or any STORAGE! This has been fun trying to find creative ways to store all of our items. =0)

New Adventure

So this year we had a big chance occur read more about it here and here. We decided that this opportunity that had presented itself was one that we couldn't let pass by, so at the end of June I hung up my shears and airbrush gun, sold my business and decided to be a stay at home mom and packed up our house and got us ready as we moved across the states, from Utah to Indiana. We drove over 1500 miles, over 4 days, 26 hours of driving.

Leading up to our move, we had many visitors and friends that were nice enough to help us out. My family came into town and helped with Sadie and helped pack. Jake's Mom came into town twice to help us pack and watch Sadie and many of our friends helped us out in countless ways. We feel so blessed to have such wonderful family members and awesome friends.

We began started our journey Monday August 1, Jake worked the first part of the day, and as soon as he was off we drove to Cheyenne, Wyoming, not the most beautiful drive but we made it there safe and sound. Tuesday we drove to Lincoln, Nebraska, I must say BLAH! Nebraska was so hot and had the largest most nasty bugs!


This is what we found on top of the van when we got ready to load up the car the next morning.

Wednesday we were headed to St Louis, Missouri, made a stop in Liberty, Missouri We got to see this cool site. It was nice to get a break from the car and let Sadie run around for a bit. She was such an angel on this trip, I think that all of the sugar we kept giving her for being "good" helped keep her happy, and us sane =0) Thursday was the last leg of our trip... We only had a 4 hour drive a head of us so we decided to stop at the zoo as a treat for Sadie. One of Sadie's favorite things is animals, they had a great zoo much better than Salt Lake's Hogle Zoo! We saw bears, giraffe, elephants, birds, bugs, penguins, monkeys, zebras, and so many other animals I can't even remember! We only lasted to lunch time before the princess decided she was plum worn out, so we loaded back up into our cars and headed to our NEW HOME!

We are still in the process of "settling" I feel like it will take us a couple more months before we feel completely settled, but we will get there. We are loving our new home and have meat many nice people, and our neighbors have all really nice that we have meat so far! The scenery here is beautiful. I feel like I am in a secluded woodsy little town. There are trees EVERYWHERE!

The hardest part of this move has been when Sadie tells me, "Mommy I wanna go home." Meaning that she wants to go back to our home in Utah. I hope that she can adjust and meet some new friends, it crushes me to see her so sad about not being at "home".

Here's to a great couple years of change and growth! Bring it on!

Roundup

Jake and I decided that we better make a trip out to see Great Grandma Hill before we moved out towards the east coast. With less than a month left in Utah we took off for a quick weekend in Montana. We had a great time visiting and catching up. Sadie entertained us with her dancing, running around and collecting rocks!











We were fortunate enough to see Jake's Aunt Joan. She made a trip in to see us and spoiled Sadie with some fun gifts.





Reading with Dad, one of her favorite things to do :0)





Shortly after Joan showed up Sadie decided it was nap time, poor Joan didn't get to spend much time with her, but we are glad we got to see her.





Thanks for a fun weekend, and for all the fun gifts. We will miss you so much Grandma Great!





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