Our November

Happy Holidays to all of you fabulous people!  This is such a great time of the year.  Once Halloween comes, time seems to fly by even faster.  We had a great time celebrating Thanksgiving.  Sometimes I wish that we could just pause time and enjoy it for a little longer.  Here is a review of our November and of our Thanksgiving.

The weekend before Thanksgiving my cute cousin/roommate came to visit.  It is always good to catch up.

We finally got to meet cute Baby Brooklyn:

The Children's Museum:

We went to a popular Milwaukee Restaurant.The entrance is hidden and you have to know the password to enter.  If you don't know the password then you have to do something crazy; like ring-a-round the rosies or the chicken dance.  Once inside while you are eating dinner you can go on secret spy missions throughout the restaurant.  

It was fun to see how the girls interacted.  They are going to be great friends!

On Monday morning we were going to walk to the zoo.  But then we woke up to a ton of snow.  We quickly changed our plans.

We were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with some of our closest Wisconsian friends.  The best part of it was that my beautiful momma flew in that day.  It is always fun to eat yummy food and be with loved ones.

(Abs helping out with the rolls)

 We celebrated it with the Lofgrans, the McCoys, the Sister Missionaries, and a sister from our ward. 

It was wonderful to have my momma come and visit with us.  She is always a delight to be around.  While she was here she took good care of me while I came down with what we later found out to be pneumonia, she played with Abigail lots, we played tons of games, did Christmas preparations, went to the Children's Museum, checked out Christmas lights, went to the Chicago Temple, etc. It was great to have her here and we can't wait for her to come back again.  

At the Children's Museum:

The Chicago Temple:

Driving around to see the lights:

Some Fall Fun!

Happy November to everyone!  As always, time is flying by!  We loved the month of October.  It was full of friends and fun.  

Barton's Co-Resident Keta through a fabulous 20's party.  It was fun to dress up and go out.  We were so thankful for our friends Allie and Brady who watched Miss Abigail.  (I promise, some day we will grow up and actually hire a babysitter :).  

The party was full of yummy food, good conversation, great decorations, and fabulous costumes.  I loved seeing what everyone came dressed up in.  Everyone was so creative.  I must say that this was our first cocktail party. Barton's Co-Resident was so sweet and had our favorite soda on hand since we don't drink alcohol.  People can be so thoughtful of standards even if they have different ones.

 The Cedarburg Fall Festival!  Something unique about Wisconsin compared to other places we have lived are the amount of festivals!  In the summertime it seemed like there was a festival every weekend, sometimes multiple festivals.  I love it.  We haven't been to too many yet.  It rained on the day of the festival I was most excited for, the kite festival, so we didn't go.  But out of the couple festivals that we have been to this one was the best.  Sometimes it seems like events like these are just for food vendors to make money.  But this one was really a celebration of Fall.  We had fun admiring the talents of so many crafty people, we ate some yummy food, and Abigail got to paint a pumpkin to take home!

Abigail loves craft projects.  She loves to draw, paint, color, and glue.  Here are a few projects that we did this month:

Pay close attention to the bottom picture.  Abigail learned how to draw people!  This was her first family portrait.  She did it all by herself and I love it!

For FHE we made a ghost family.    

The Ward Trunk-or-Treat was a lot of fun.  We went with the movie theme "Despicable Me".  Abigail was so excited to be "Ballerina Edith".  Abigail loved finally getting to dress-up in her tutu and collecting tons of candy.

Since it is freezing here we did trick-or-treating around the church.  Everyone got together and decorated doors.  We decorated our door with the Lofgrans and the McCoys.  We did Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter.

 Love these ladies!

The Medical College of Wisconsin throws an amazing Halloween Party every year.  We had so many friends going so we tagged along.  It was so much fun.  A bunch of the different departments through the school handed out candy.  They also had food and activities for the kiddos.  

One of Ab's best buddies, Jacob. 

Besides the party at the Med School we also had a party at our gym.  After the party at the gym we visited Daddy's work.  I should have taken a picture.  Everyone in his clinic dressed up as someone from Despicable Me.  They all looked great!

As you can see in the following pictures, Halloween was a success.  Between the church party, trick-or-treating at our gym, and the medical college trick-or-treats, Abigail made out like a bandit.  To save my waistline, Abigail was sweet and made little sacks with some of her candy for the 5 missionaries in our ward whom we hung out with the evening of Halloween.  

Our Trip With Grandma Sloan

One of the highlights of moving to Wisconsin is that we are in Zielke territory!  The Zielkes are Barton's Mom's side of the family. Barton's Mom grew up in Illinois/Wisconsin.  Therefore we have a lot of family around us.  Mama Sloan came to see us and a bunch of her family.  Here is a run down of our week!

Mama Sloan arrived on Friday, September 13th.  We spent most of the time hanging out and relaxing.  Barton gave us a tour of his clinic which is always super fun.  That night we went to a Fish Fry. My first Fish Fry and I loved it!  Who wouldn't love loud polka music, sitting and chatting with total strangers and eating tons of yummy, greasy food!?!

On Saturday we headed to Watertown to visit with Mama Sloan's older brother, Uncle Al.  We also got to visit with his daughter Mary and her family for a bit.  Abigail loves Mary's kids Ella and Logan.  She kept asking for her new friends all day long.

 While in Watertown we got to stop by and visit a couple of places from Mom's childhood.  This is Mullen's.  It had amazing hamburgers and delicious ice ream!  Interesting fact, Mullen's Dairy is who owned the Zielke Farm before Mom's parent's purchased it.

 This is the old farm that Mom lived on for 4 years of her childhood.  I LOVE family stories, so to actually visit some of Mama Sloan's stomping grounds was AWESOME!

 On Sunday we went to church.  After church Mom, Abigail, and I kissed Barton goodbye and left for Illinois.  Our first stop was to see Aunt Grace and Jeanine.  They are such lovely ladies!  Aunt Grace is Mom's Dad's sister.  She is an amazing lady.  One that you could sit and visit with for forever.

  We first got to know these ladies (plus two more of Aunt Grace's daughters in Idaho), 4 years ago when they visited Mama Sloan while she lived in Coeur d'Alene.  We had such a good time with them and with Brandon and Diedre. It is fun to now only be an hour away from Aunt Grace and Jeanine.

Sunday night we continued our travels to Aunt Lanie and Uncle Norm's house.  They are such sweet people.  Aunt Lanie was Mom's best friend growing up and she ended up marrying Mom's cousin Norm.  So cute!  Something every girl dreams of happening with their best friend.

We stayed with Aunt Lanie and Uncle Norm for a couple of days.  Abigail loved all of their toys and I loved hearing all the stories that Aunt Lanie and Mom shared.

On Monday night Aunt Lanie and Uncle Norm had a party for Mom.  A bunch of family came.  It was good to meet so many people.  Here are a couple pictures of some of the people that came:

On Tuesday Morning I got the tour of Aurora.  Here is the house that Mama Sloan grew up in:

 I also got to see a bunch of other places including her elementary, her church, some more relatives houses, her high school, etc.  I LOVED it!

Before we left Aurora we stopped by the cemetery to see where Mama Sloan's parents are buried. My favorite part of the headstone is the caption "Together Forever" and the story behind it.  Mom picked it out for their headstone years before she found the missionaries and joined the church.  Years before she knew that through the Temple they could be "Together Forever".  She just felt like it was right at the time.  And now all of their temple work is done.  We are so blessed to have the power of the Temple in our lives.  

Next we headed to Decatur, Illinois to visit with Great Grandma and Grandpa Sloan.  We stayed with them from Tuesday night to Thursday morning.  It was good to spend time with them. Abigail loved them!

Abigail loved to go out and talk to Grandpa on the swing during his cigar breaks.

I loved watching her push Grandpa in the swing.

Abigail and Great Grandma Sloan

As you can see we had a great time!  But I can't end this post without a shout out to Grandma Sloan. The best part of the week was being with Grandma Sloan.  We love you Grandma!  We can't wait to see you again!

We Have Gone Private!

Thanks to all of you loved ones who have stuck around even though we have recently gone private.  I know that it can be a pain but we feel like it is the right thing to do. I have found it ironic that sometimes I feel uncomfortable telling strangers Abigail's name but yet I post tons of details of our life on-line for anyone to read.  As I was about to publish the following post about details of our life in Wisconsin it hit me that this was a great time to do the big switch.  We are so grateful for the internet and that it helps us stay close with you all, even though we live so far away!    

We love you all, 

Bart, Em, and Abs

Our Life in Wisconsin

We are getting settled into our new life in Wisconsin.  We miss our old Kentucky Family but we are starting to enjoy our life here.  I thought I would give a little introduction to our new life.

The weather has been crazy.  Thankfully it is sunny and warm now but for a few weeks it was rainy, dark, and cold.  I was relieved to hear that this is not normal for summers here.

The Zoo!  The zoo is just a few blocks away.  So we walk to it numerous times a week. Abigail is obsessed with the Seals and she is always talking about how scary the Lions are. As she says: "they scaries me!".

The Children's Museum!  A great perk of being employed at the Children's Hospital is a free pass to the Children's Museum.  I am sure that we will take much more advantage of it during the winter.

The Park!  We have a great park practically in our yard.  We spend oodles of time there.  The above picture is taken at Abigail's Ice Cream Shop!  This is where we spend 90% of our time while at the park, enjoying Wood Chip Ice Cream.  It is Abigail's Specialty!

We are diaper free!  Abigail is potty trained.  So happy!  She still does the pull ups during the night/naps but usually wakes up dry.  Here she is sporting her prize for filling up her sticker chart.

The beach!  The local beach is wonderful.  Sun, being with my favorite people, and a slight breeze equals a perfect day.

Swimming!  Our awesome Landlord/Neighbor owns a pool that is open to us anytime.  We have gone lots when it has been warm enough.  We are going to miss our lazy pool days come Fall.

Barton's Residency.  Barton absolutely loves his Residency Program.  It keeps him super busy, but he loves it.  He is always so excited to go to work in the morning and even gets excited when he gets called in for trauma cases during the evening/weekend.  He is so happy that he is going to be working with kids for the rest of his life.  Which in turn makes me super happy.

I am slightly employed!  Well, besides being employed full time as a Mommy I have started working a few hours a week at a local gym.  I wouldn't give up the opportunity I have to stay home and nurture Abigail 24/7 so thankfully it is just a few hours a week. In Kentucky we found that exercising helped pain from my Endometriosis a lot.  Well, we moved away from the lovely YMCA and the gyms here are super expensive.  A friend in the ward helped me get in at a local gym.  I work a few hours one morning a week in the Kids Clubouse and I get a free pass to the gym!  Wahoo!  And Abigail comes with me.  Which is good for her to have the social interaction.  The only problem is that I don't want her to be in the Kids Clubhouse too much.  Therefore, I try to get most of my workouts done early in the morning before Barton has to leave to work.  Which means some early mornings at the Sloan house.  Those of you who know me well know that this is an accomplishment for me, the one who is not an early riser!