We had our first real snowfall last week. I took these two little people out to see it and told them not to walk around in it because they didn’t have boots on.
That was wishful thinking on my part.
It was pretty exciting, but we’d be happy to wait another month for the next snowstorm.
Rightly I should have titled this the butterflies, witches, pumpkins, and ballerinas of halloweens past, but thats a bit much.
Time to revisit our archives of halloween photos.
Cali’s first Halloween: I didn’t take one picture.
I have changed a bit from that time to now when I have a camera handy every second.
Cali’s second halloween:
Look at that cute little butterfly. I just want to jump into the picture and scoop her up and give her a squeeze.
We were at the ward halloween party with all of our student-ward friends.
I was about to have baby number 2 in a few weeks.
Its hard for me to believe that Cali is the same age in this pictures as Natalie is right now.
The next Halloween we were living in another city and decorated pumpkins for the first time.
All dressed up to go trick-or-treating at daddy’s office:
And then the next Halloween:
Living in another city. We had spent months in between houses, and had just moved into our house.
Kimi spent a lot of her time with a scowl on her face during that time of life, but maybe she was just good at staying in character.
And then there was Cali.
She was also a character.
This last picture brings me up to where my blogging began. Ian got to wear the traditional first Halloween pumpkin costume.
If you call something a “tradition” then you don’t have to plan or buy anything new.
I’m still working on convincing Kimi to wear the “traditional” witch costume for this year.
I’ll let you know if I trick convince her.
Yesterday someone brought to my attention that Halloween was two weeks away.
Not one costume is ready yet.
Fabulous.
But that is the subject for another post.
I have yet to buy any halloween candy also, but that is not because I am slacking. That is because I know it would never make it to Halloween.
Because I feel that from now until the new year is the biggest test of anyone’s healthy willpower, I wanted to blog about one of my favorite things.
I love this DVD:
Since I am pretty much limited to workouts inside my house I have tried many DVDs.
I have been doing this one, 6 days a week, for over a year now. I try other workouts, but I go back to this one because I like it so much.
I am thinking about buying a new disk and putting it in a safe in case something happens to mine.
What I like about it:
The cardio is about 40 minutes long including the warm-up.
It is split into 6 different segments that have high and low impact options and they only last about 6 minutes each so you don’t do anything for too long.
The moves are simple and more athletic than dancing. (I have realized through trying other videos that I am not much of a dancer)
I get sweaty every day.
It has an additional 15 minute lower body workout that I do 3 times a week.
After doing this video for a couple months I was able to run 5 kilometers for the first time in my life.
I have been using it for over a year and I still like it.
So anyways, If I could find another video with a workout like this one I would be very happy, but for now I will keep on doing this one and try to ignore the egg nog in my fridge and the pumpkin cookies on the counter.
The two front teeth are both officially out.
Thank heavens.
Cali’s first front tooth became loose this summer and hung at an odd angle that drove me bonkers until it finally fell out, months later.
But that relief was short lived because as soon as that tooth was gone the other one seemed to sense all that room and fell down at its own odd angle and WOULD NOT FALL OUT.
I try not to base my perceptions off of peoples’ looks, but it seriously made Cali’s IQ seem to drop in my eyes.
I mean, look at this:
So last Tuesday I got the girls ready for picture day. After choosing some nice clothes and doing some fancy hair, I saw that tooth and couldn’t take it anymore. There was no way I was going to let her school picture immortalize the snaggle tooth.
I told Cali I just wanted to give it a little wiggle, and POP out came that tooth in my fingers. (It was a pretty serious wiggle.)
Cali seemed to be as relieved as I was.
The girls went off to school, and I looked at the calendar.
Picture day was in one week.
Oh well, at least we were ready.
I don’t think that anyone who grew up watching Pete’s Dragon can help but stand there singing “it’s a razzle dazzle day!” while they are using a brush to slop white paint all over the walls. At least I hope other people do things like that because I couldn’t help it.
The outside of our addition was needing some paint, so we (Scott with various helpers) did something about it.
This was just the priming day, which is why it is white.
They were out there until the sun set, getting it done. Ian stayed painting by his daddy’s side for most of the day.
He also gave his daddy a new hair color job.
Scott finished up with a coat of paint the weekend the kids and I went away.
Here’s the before and after. (You can’t see the color real well, but it is called linen. It looks almost exactly like the paint that was already on the walls even though I was going for something different. Oh well.)
(Those awesome blue curtains are in my storage room. Why do I hide them in there?)
I think that Scott and I can both say that we are glad the rest of the house is brick.
When the sound of the mixer starts up in the kitchen, this little girl comes running.
I have to work fast because she is right there trying to get the mixer away from me until I hand her what she wants; the beaters.
And I don’t get them back until they are licked clean.
Kimi had show-and-tell today at school.
One of the boys in her class had been to Tennessee and brought everyone in the class their own packet of barbeque sauce and a postcard of Elvis.
I like this kid.
Last weekend I loaded the kids up in the minivan and we traveled up north to spend the weekend with some people we love.
I can see that I need to work on my poses for self-portraits.
In my defense though, I had just finished a pancake in that picture and a 5K.
Christine was there to take my pictures and cheer me on. I did my best ever and I’m sure that’s why.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch. . .
The kids were having a good time enjoying the fall harvest.
I’ll be posting a couple apple recipes soon, but the kids like to eat them bobbing in a wheelbarrow.
The kids think that Grandma and Grandpa are farmers.
I just thought it was funny that Mom and Dad thought the garden was such a loss this year and I got so much yummy stuff to come home with.
It was a fun little getaway for all of us.
There are not enough hours in the day and now the days are getting shorter.
This lack of hours has made it impossible to blog everything I compose in my head, and when I was recently cleaning off my memory cards I found a bunch of stray pictures I just wanted to post so that they will be here in my family archives.
A bucket of sidewalk chalk is one of our best investments each summer.
Ian named it Mrs. Potato Bug.
The tiny wading pool. Another good investment.
Scott took the kids for a walk and came home like this. I thought it was funny, but then Kimi went downstairs and slept for the rest of the day and woke up with a fever. She wasn’t kidding that she felt too tired.
A trip downtown for lunch with Daddy.
Ian came in and told me, “I need a cup!” He filled it with water and ran back out. I followed with a camera. He ran up to Kimi, and threw it as she walked forward and. . . it missed her. There was a little disappointment from him, but he was undaunted and chased her around for the next fifteen minutes trying again and again.
He should probably think twice about that next time.
Natalie loves to take care of her babies, and is ready to babysit for anyone.
Just look at her in action:
Just give me a call whenever you want her to come over!
I love growing things.
That thought isn’t much of a surprise to people who know me very well. Right now we are enjoying the fresh produce from our garden, so I get to think it every day.
If you are like us, and have lots of tomatoes right now, go check out this recipe that I just put on my sisters’ recipe blog.
So here is the time-lapse garden show:
March:
After planting in June:
Beginning of August:
I don’t have a current picture for you because I don’t want to get up and go take one.
The tomato plants have over-taken the peppers now and are growing into the lawn as well.
I’m okay with that.
And do we have sunflowers like last year?
Just take a look at these.
That’s why gardening is addictive.
