Eli Turns 2, and lots of grandchildren pictures!

While we were wandering around New England this summer, we had a definite deadline for our return to the Midwest. We always planned to be back to Kansas City for our grandson's second birthday. We arrived a couple days before this very special two-year-old's party.

We got here early enough to help with the party preparation. Gram and sister Carter helped with the pickup-shaped birthday cookies. (We also made a batch of animal-shaped cookies, but their giant golden doodle discovered them and must have thought they were delicious.)

The house was decorated with red pick-ups, so we decorated the cookies to match.

The birthday boy got his own birthday cake, and he looks pretty happy about that.

Happy second birthday, dear Eli! 

While the grandparents and Uncle Blake were here, we spread the party out for the entire weekend. They hosted a day at KC Wine Co. where a couple princesses greeted the guests.

Carter was a pumpkin princess during this October fun day.

Eli was not impressed with the princesses, but a giant sand box filled with trucks is very impressive for a newly-turned-two-year-old boy.

The little kids loved the giant bubbles . . .

and the big kids were having fun as well.

KC Wine Co. has lots of fun activities for children, including a petting zoo of farm animals.

If visitors do not mind their manners, there are appropriate ways to control their naughty behavior.

It was a great weekend to celebrate Eli, and we're so glad we planned our travels to be here to share it! After our week-long reservation at Hillsdale State Park was over, we drove 6 hours southwest in the motor home towards the Oklahoma border. There were lots of bugs on the windshield as we took the picture of the "Welcome to Oklahoma" sign. We moved to the Oklahoma panhandle to see our Mothers.

We didn't take any pictures of our Mothers (who are sometimes a little camera shy), but we did snap this picture when we visited Denisa's 103-year-old aunt. One of her secrets to this long life is a little drink of red wine every evening. She was holding a year's supply of her Mogen David concord wine.

We parked the motor home at the ranch and winterized it against the cold weather. Then we made the six-hour trip back to Kansas City in the pickup for some baby-sitting with our favorite grandchildren. Denisa is in her element when she has both of them and a piano keyboard!

Sorry for all the grandbaby pictures, but we have been missing them for the last five months. We were making green eyeball cookies together, and we were even dressed alike in the picture below.

It's a good thing Mark winterized the motor home, because cold weather already found us in October. We took the grandkids to Deanna Rose's Children's Farmstead, and we all needed big coats and hats. We took way too many pictures that we couldn't stand to delete. So we'll finish up with an overload of pictures that you are welcome to scroll through quickly . . . or look through as slowly as we will. While we like traveling, we love this fall season that we were sharing with some of our favorite people.