Halloween 2008

Well, Halloween has come and gone, but I wanted to post some pics of last Friday night. We went to a "Trunk or Treat" party and had a fun time. There were lots of cars in the parking lot and Liam went home with a healthy stash of which we have claimed our fair share of parent tax :-)

I'm looking to be more ambitious with costumes next Halloween. I have grand ideas of sewing elaborate costumes, but it doesn't usually seem to happen. Maybe I should start now for next Halloween...

Anyway, here's our adorable pumpkin, Aeva (her uncle Gordon is holding her):

and of course here's the ever precocious Liam as Thomas the Tank Engine:

And here are some family photos :-)

A day in the life of Aeva...

is always a busy day. At least for her. While of course I'd be bored out of my brain if I spent the majority of the day on the floor trying to get that crawling thing worked out, Aeva is kept busy as she becomes coordinated and is now within weeks of her official first crawl. She's already quite good at scooting, pushing, and rolling around to get where she wants to go. And paper is her favorite thing. Wherever there's paper, there's Aeva:We are gearing up for the 16th Annual Baconfest tomorrow, and so I left to go shopping for my special Baconfest entree. As I was rushing off, I asked William to feed some pureed prunes and rice to Aeva. She's a tad messy, but if you're vigilant, it's not too terrible an affair....that is until William takes over. He's now fired from spoon feeding Aeva until further notice (i.e., until she gets good at it). Here's evidence of how out of hand it got:

To be fair, she is REALLY strong and it's impossible to keep her from grabbing the spoons and dumping food. I've used the trick of giving her a second spoon, but of course, she's always more interested in the new spoon coming at her. Add to this all her drool (William says this is mostly what soaked her sock), and you've got a nice mess.

After her bath and another bottle, Aeva was finally defeated and knocked down for the count:

Campfire dinner with family

On Monday (Oct. 6th) we decided to go up the canyon and have a campfire dinner with Heather and Wendell and the kiddies. We brought the steaks and veggies and they brought the hot dogs, marshmallows, utensils, wood and trimmings. They were quite patiently waiting for us when we finally showed up with the food.

Liam and his cousin Ethan were, as usual, ecstatic to see each other. Anymore, we usually don't tell Liam he's going to see Ethan until we're close to leaving, otherwise, he pesters us until we DO leave because he can't wait to see "Nee-Nee", as he calls him. Here they are "sharing"one of my favorite things in the world, Pringles:

We cooked the asparagus and yellow squash in tinfoil over the coals, but the squash took on a horrid flavor. At least we had marshmallows! I love hanging out with Heather and Wendell. It does me good, and I love that Liam gets to play with his favorite person.

Here are some more fun photos of the evening:

Heather, Cole, Sydney, then William & Aeva, and then Heather and Cole. CUTE!

We're a beautiful family :-)

If they weren't so cute....

our children would probably all have an early demise. This morning as I was rushing to fix some eggs and milk for a quick breakfast before heading to work, I discovered that my refrigerator was quite warm. In dawning horror, I saw that the cooling switch, which is unfortunately located in the very front of the refrigerator, was turned all the way to "off". I quickly realized that this included the freezer as well when I mournfully grabbed a bag of once frozen chicken and found it pliable. Reflecting back in that moment of disbelief, anger, and horror, I realized now when it had happened: Yesterday, in the morning while I was on the phone with William.

He reprimanded Liam for leaving the fridge door open (yet again, as he is apt to do when he helps himself to a snack or juice). He's too clever for the latch we installed. That's when he'd decided to monkey with the switch (and not for the first time...usually he turns the setting up so that I discover frozen milk and eggs instead). It went unnoticed because we ate canned soup and pbj's for lunch, and then ate out for dinner....

If this little face wasn't so cute.......argh! So...there went about $150 of groceries this morning. To continue (it gets better), now that I had no eggs, no milk to eat cereal with or make waffles or pancakes with (and the cupboards are pretty bare), it was off to the store this morning at 7:30am while I'm supposed to be to work by 8:00am.

I headed to Smith's, trying to plan meals and things to buy in my head . After a 35 minute shopping ordeal, I finally get up to the checkout area. It's now about 8:10am and I'm feeling panicky. Lo and behold, there are NO checkout stands open EXCEPT for the self-checkout. I turn back to my basket in dejected anger, looking at all of the food I had loaded up on, especially all of the cheese sticks for snacks (I probably had about 50 of them, literally). I also had about 8 items of fresh produce.....yeah. You all understand. I had to look up each code for every bit of produce and I additionally had to scan EACH AND EVERY ONE of those stupid cheese sticks since the machine won't allow you to continue if it doesn't detect the weight of the scanned item being added to its accursed shelf. I'm practically frothing by then...I should have just left and picked up some fast food and brought it home and told the fam to fend for themselves whilst I was away at work and had the car. Instead, I forged ahead. So, after FINALLY getting out of the grocery store, returning home, hastily explaining to William the recipe to throw together to salvage our still somewhat frozen (and individually vacuum sealed) sirloin steaks (crockpot!), I finally get out the door and to work at about 9:15am.

All I can say is it's a good thing this happened while my boss was out of town. I tell you, if kids weren't so cute....

My parent's visit

So, my wonderful parents came to visit us last week. They had an old dresser set and BBQ grill they thought we could use (plus it was a handy excuse to see the grandbabies), so they drove up from Ione, CA to come work, uh, I mean hang out, with us.

Hah! My simple desire of merely wanting my electrician Dad to help us install a light in my living room ceiling turned into 4 different projects (none of which wound up being my unnecessary desire for a front room light). Instead of my parents resting and taking a nice little break, they threw themselves into their best "shirt off your back" parental role and did miraculous fixes for us for which we're incredibly grateful.

My kitchen faucet was broken (only the hot water worked), my husband had broken the back door to the house a week before by kicking it in when he was locked out, the pull chain on my kitchen light had been busted/stuck for WEEKS, and our toilet had been behaving poorly for years and seemed close to giving up the ghost.

My parents generously fixed all of these things for us, on their dime (cuz we sure as heck didn't have it!). I'm so grateful I'm almost sick to my stomach...it's a difficult feeling to relay. Anywho, here are some fun pics from their slave labor visit:

Here's my Dad slaving away on our fantastic new toilet. It seems silly to be so excited about a new toilet, but we got to put down a small but lovely piece of linoleum where the owners before us had made the tragic and unforgivable mistake of laying down carpet in a BATHROOM! Plus, this toilet will never ever clog! My niece can now use it without fear. The added bonus is that the new toilet is so nice and clean! My old toilet wouldn't have cleaned away all of its rust and mineral deposit stains if I'd soaked it in pure hydrochloric acid for a week... You may also notice that the people before us decided never to paint the wall space behind what was a HUGE tank.

Here's a super cute pic of my Dad with his little grand-daughter Aeva Loraine (we call her Aeva-Bean...so often in fact that her little brother Liam now calls her "Beans". I blame her Dad). My Mom somehow managed to avoid the camera this entire visit. She won't be so lucky next time...

And next time, we're gonna take'em up to Sundance behind Mt. Tempanogos and show 'em the perty stuff around here.