Happy Halloween

Corn Maze fun!

Engineer. We had so much fun making this train!!

Nittany lion and Fireman.

Hannah was so happy about this sucker. I haven't seen her smile so much in a long time.

The other morning Owen was really begging me to do all sorts of stuff (play with me, let's go to the library, can we ride TRAX?, help me build a fort....) I was feeling bad because I wanted to hang out with him but had so much to do. So I said "If you can think of something that takes less than ten minutes and doesn't involve going anywhere I'll do it." I thought maybe a puzzle or a story was what he would ask for. But he thought about it and decided on making a peach smoothie and watching a "mommie movie" (A home-video from when I was little. I don't think piano recitals and family vacations would be that interesting to him but he LOVES them.) So here he is so happy with his peach smoothie. And I was happy I could now sort laundry in peace.

I wanted to get a video of Hannah walking, but she was only interested in eating the acorns. When she first started doing this about a month ago I would take them out of her mouth, but there was really no way of stopping her so I finally gave in. She has never choked or even made me think she was going to. The only trouble we run into is when other moms are around. "Do you know she has an acorn in there?" "ha ha... yes, she might even have two or three."

She is walking so much now I think she might be classified as a walker. It is only when she is in a hurry that she crawls. I can't believe she is so big!

Something New

Well it's not a jaguar (like one of the residents) but it's ours! We all agree it is a "Brad car." Any suggestions for a name? It is a 1991 but only has 135K so there is a lot of life left (we hope). It's stuffed with all the extras-A.C., power windows and locks, seatbelts, and even a radio/cassette player. As Napoleon would say "Lucky!"

Cabin

We had an awesome trip to the cabin last weekend. We were worried we wouldn't be able to get General Conference on the radio but Saturday morning we got the signal loud and clear...well somewhat clear. I was glad we didn't have to get the kids dressed up to go listen and the church. It pretty much snowed the whole time we were up there, but it was really wet and slushy.

Saturday night we had a campfire.

Sunday afternoon we went for a walk. Here we are at the mom's creek.
On Monday while Jeff and I were cleaning the cabin Owen came running inside and said "Dad, there is an animal out there." We went and looked and there was a moose with her calf.

We were all ready to leave at 1pm when Jeff went to turn the valve to drain the water out of the cabin. He took off the cap to find the pipe full of rocks, dirt, sticks, and pine cones. The pipe is about 5 feet long and it was shoved to the top. We tried vacuuming up the stuff, but only made it about 2 feet and then nothing else would come up. If anyone was going to be able to come up during the winter we had to dig it out so the pipes won't freeze and break inside the cabin. So here is Jeff digging it out. It took both of us digging for about two hours. I helped the kids on and off but the ground was really hard and we kept having to go wider. There was a point when we wondered if we were ever going to reach the water line, but we finally did. This picture doesn't do the hole justice. And here he is removing the rocks and pine cones. The grand finalie was a two foot stick. Just for the record we're not going through that again so Dad you better child-proof the pipe. We finally left at 4:30 and made it home with only one stop. We're sure happy to be within driving distance of the cabin:)

September

At the request of Laurissa and Dad I am going to put up some pictures. The truth is that we haven't taken very many pictures the past few months, but I did fins some.A p.j. shot.



Sunday at Dad and Mom's it started pouring rain. Everyone just ran outside. Owen of course went straight for the hose...he is so obsessed with water. And the case of the missing pajama bottom: While staying at my parent's house (when they were in Europe) Owen lost his pajama bottoms. I found the tops in the basement by the toys but could not find the bottoms anywhere. He had woken up before me and started playing and I guess decided to get undressed. Well a week later when Kanien was there she found them. They were hung up nicely on the side of the old play kitchen. Guess I should have looked harder.

Living my dream

I have always wished I could do cool flips on a tramp. Here are Jeff and Owen showing off their tricks.

Help

This picture made me laugh out loud. Better pick up your pants Kristin.

Curious George

A few weeks ago we went to the University's health and safety fair. The theme was centered around Curious George and Owen was SO excited to meet him. After he got his picture taken with him he said to me "I think it was just a guy in a big soft George costume." There was also a really cool doctor dog. Plus lots of free food, a train ride, and clowns making balloon animals. The lady who made Owen a dog had some physical problem that made her shake. But she was so happy and you could tell she enjoyed what she was doing even though her disability made it hard:)