HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Happy Halloween all!! We are the Halloween scrooges in our neighborhood tonight!! But do not feel bad for our deprived children, we did the trunk or treat at church last Saturday, and we are battling the stomach flu, EWWWWWW!

So here are a couple cute pictures of some really cute kids!!

The whole gang!! Our Super Riley, the Cutest Cowboy on the range, and a Sweet Fairy!!
Fairy Fern from the back, do you like her wings?? :)
Jake was so cute as a cowboy I did not need anymore sweets than him!
And Super Riley, (the 3rd time around!!) Dad has informed Riley he needs to pick a new costume next year! He was Super Riley first when he was 2, then 4, and now 6! What a funny guy, at least the cape I made has gotten good use!!

And I just had to share this!! Mary sent this to me today of sweet Novella the Peacock!! I should have stolen her before we left Calif.!! :)

I hope to get back to vacation pictures soon, I just have not had time in between grabbing buckets and doing the extra laundry, don't you LOVE stomach bugs!!

California!

Well here is the start of our trip, it will continue for a couple days, I need to make Fern's Halloween costume today so this is it for now!!

A couple days after we got to Calif. it was Fern's actual birthday! And since Jake's birthday is just a couple weeks away we thought we would celebrate with family and friends! Plus Aunt Mary & Grandma did the whole thing, so it may have been the most enjoyable birthday! :) We had planed to have it at Aunt Mary's but it was so pretty, plus that morning Aunt Mary had rescued a stray bull dog, so having the party in the back yard was not an option! :)

Fern enjoyed the park!!
Especially that their were willing grandparents to push her on the swing!!
We had lost of pretty girls! Here are Maya and Sahara, Fern's friends! It was great getting to see them and their parents!!
Aunt Mary and Novella!! I think Novella may already realize that her Mama is a little weird! :)
Aunt Mary bought these Tinkerbell head bands for all the girls, but the birthday girl refused to wear it!

Here is Fern mid-blow, blowing out her 2 candles!!!
And Jake so excited to dig into his cupcake!!
Here is everyone, and the only picture of Grandma at the party, she tends to hide from the camera!! :)

Fern loved her top, we usually do not do presents at birthday party's, but seeing that most of the party was family, I knew this would not happen! :)
Jake was so excited to get new "fastest shoes" and they are velcro so he can do them himself!! Now Riley wants some velcro ones too!! :)
Fern was glad the festivities continued into the night, balloons are so fun!! :)

Thanks Grandma and Aunt Mary!!

HAPPY early BIRTHDAY FERN!!

We thought we would celebrate Fern's 2nd birthday a couple days early so that Dad could celebrate with us!The boys were so VERY excited for Fern to open the gift they helped pick out!
Fern could not believe her eyes!! Her own baby doll! (She loves plastic head dolls and I have resisted it, you know me and the plastic thing, but oh well it made her very happy!)
Then she had to wait for Dad to get it out of the box, what an ordeal!
So happy!
Is this not the best picture!!!! She was bouncing and rocking just like I do when holding a baby!
On to the GOOD stuff! Chocolate cupcakes ala Dad!
But thankfully the doll I made last year for her has not lost it's place!

More birthday fun next week from California!

What's Up!

So what do you store in your food storage? You know they always say you should store something sweet!Here is Fern in her new jammies, they have the sweetest little owls on them (great-grandma J. would be proud)and they are organic to boot!
And well yes I am showing you a picture of our trash can, that little black thing, with the guts coming out is what happens when little brothers get your caterpillar. :( We had the most sad sobbing the other night! Here is how the other is doing.
:)

Our Week!

Who is that guy behind the ginormous carrot??? :) Well the kids and I worked on cleaning out the garden the other day, as winter is quickly approaching)! As we were getting the rest of out carrots out we found this beauty! It was 14 inches long and as strait as can be! This is quite a feat in this rocky CT. soil!! I sliced it up and we enjoyed it with our dinner!Here is Riley and Jake with their pets of the week! Riley has a Woolly Bear Moth Caterpillar, and Jake, I am just not sure it looks quite a bit like a Tomato Caterpillar, but it did not have the big spike on the back. But Jake was happy he was green! We had several friends come over to see the caterpillars.
After dinner the other evening we had a treat! Acai smoothies! Here are the three munchkins wearing theirs!

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

RILEY GOT HIS TOOTH OUT!!!Here is the happy (but a little woozy) guy! This is his first tooth!!
Yea he asked me a few minutes ago to pull it out for him, but unfortunately it is the most truly EWWW! kind of thing for me! Yea I use to work in a dentist office and when the little kids came over and said, "LOOK!" and wiggled their tooth I would smile and hold back the puking! So thankfully he got it out all by himself from wiggling it! He is very excited that the tooth fairy will come tonight, what do tooth fairies bring these days, I was excited for a quarter when I got out a really hard tooth, but what would he buy with that now?

Cute Fern in the Fall!

I know it is a little dark, but her smile is so sweet!
I just love this picture, she is trying to put something in her pocket. The first thing she did was hike up her shirt and then try to twist over there, it was hysterical!
This is after our hike at the Rolling Brook Nature Center, she was telling us all about the turtle! He was trying to escape through the fence!
Here is our pretty fall inspired door step, in case anyone needs to recognize it when they come visiting! :) It was fun to buy mums for myself, I remember the first fall we were married and had just returned to Virginia we were staying with Debbie and Danny and they had just purchased their first house. Debbie and I went out and picked mums out for her door step and it always stuck with me. So here are my mums! The pumpkin is one from the organic farmer at the farmers market here in town, he always gives the kids free taste, cucumbers, tomatoes, you name it! And the corn stalks are the only thing I reaped from the corn in our garden, the raccoons got all the corn! Next year I hope to have a fence! Later this month we will be celebrating our 1 year mark in our house, what a year!
This weekend is General Conference Weekend, so I will be MIA, we watch it on the computer. But there are beautiful pictures of the fall colors and such over on our nature blog, maybe I'll get a couple more up too!

Adventures at Home!

So one day last week the kids and I spent the morning at the park and then had lunch with a friend, so in all we did not get home until after 1pm. A little bit later the boys were playing outside and came in to tell us that a tree had fallen and smooshed the fence the neighbor had put up. It is usually one of her trees but I went out to see. But it was in fact a LARGE branch off our Winne the Pooh tree! Here it is, it was mostly hollow inside the branch, we almost put a swing on it! Glad we didn't!
Here it is, the twigs poking up from the neighbors jewel weed on the left is the tip of it! It was a LARGE branch!
Unfortunately with the branch falling it stirred up an unknown (to us) hornets nest! Here is Dan doing battle, they were quite nasty! We have not been able to play in the yard all week, they just smell you and come attacking! It was pretty bad.
Finally they were under control enough that Dan was able to use his handy dandy new chain saw!
The boys could not get too close because the hornets were still attacking some. But we could not keep them too far, they LOVE Dad's new toy too!
So Dan was able to get the branch all out of the neighbors yard, but has not been able to get close enough to the tree to get it chopped up in our yard. So seeing that he is leaving tomorrow for the week, we will resume the adventure then! :)