Angelina Ballerina and the Bumble Bee

Todd and I got some great laughs out of our evening!! Super fun.

Doggie pictures...ETC

Luther is so great with our children. He puts up with quite a bit of jowl pulling, back climbing, food bowl hovering, and so on, especially from Will!







Those are the doggie pictures. As far as the ETC:

10 days later, I am STILL constantly wiping (and sucking out with the good ol' bulb thing) two green noses...not to mention my own, but to a much lesser extent. We also have two productive coughers and a somewhat grumpy William.

Also, I HATE the fall time change!! Before I had kids, I thought there was something kind of fun about the time change. How sick and wrong I was. In preparation for Sunday when the clocks "fall back", I have been moving my own watch - thus E's and W's naps, meals, bedtimes - back by small amounts each day. I started this last Saturday night. This idea has worked great in the past with Eleanor. Will, however, is not napping real well, and is waking up early (early in our old/current time, not even just the time we're working toward!) even though he is going to bed "late." *sigh* Things could be worse, I know, I know.

AND this whole week+ the temperature downstairs in our house has been between 78-81 degrees in the afternoon. Ugh. Two weeks ago we had a little cold snap and figured the middle of October in Colorado was probably a great time to remove our whole-house swamp cooler for the winter. How wrong we were!

And we had a little financial crisis as far as timing bills...

AND I broke the side view mirror off the car when I backed out today.

I suppose this is just "one of those days" for me! But my blessings FAR outweigh these momentary discomforts!! God is so good to me in Christ Jesus.

This has been a random post, so I'll add to it:

Here are a few more recent photos.

Although Todd and I agreed this probably wasn't the best idea Eleanor has ever had, it was pretty funny!

Pre-breakfast hang-out.

Wrestling!

Last night we carved a pumpkin and roasted the seeds. Fun!

Fire Station 17

We've been sick here, and Todd has been super busy this weekend with our church's missions conference, but today fevers were gone and Todd was home and so we decided to get out for a couple of hours. On kind of a whim we decided to swing by the fire station just 2 minutes from our house and ask if we could look around (we were inspired by "Curious George and the Firefighters"). We received an extremely warm welcome and we all four had a great time! Firemen Eric and Ian gave us a grand tour of the station, let Eleanor sit in the the driver's seat of the firetruck and turn on the lights, and suited up in their gear for us to see. It was so, so fun. As much as Eleanor liked the fire engines, at the end of the day her favorite thing was climbing onto all 9 of the armchairs in the station's TV room! That ranked pretty high for Will, too.

Changed my Life

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins - Eleanor and I love to make these. I may or may not be known to consume up to four of these babies in a single day.

The Grocery Game - A college friend of mine told me about this, and it is saving me roughly 35% a month!! I am SOLD.

The Oil Cleansing Method - This is where you clean your face by slathering olive oil and castor oil all over it. Yep, weird. The oh-so-reliable internet claims that this may turn my skin into something that glamorous french women with perfect skin will envy. While I have to admit I have not seen quite such shocking results as this, my skin I think is a little better than it was, and I am not shelling out much money, and my skin doesn't feel dry after cleansing. So I give this a thumbs-up, strange as it may sound!

Emergen-C - Although I don't know for sure, I like to think that during our latest bout with illness this stuff kept me from feeling as close to death as I usually do when sick.

"Don't Make me Count to Three" (Plowman) and "Shepherding a Child's Heart" (Tripp) - I would highly recommend these books to any parent!

Graham "Cookies" - I have two small children. No other explanation needed.



So there you have it, a short and relatively lighthearted list of things that have recently "changed my life"!

The Park

Back to the Pumpkin Patch

Uncle Scott, we miss you!

Can't get much cuter....

(Thanks, Uncle Scott!)

Birthday Weekend: Family Photos

We were blessed by our family who came to celebrate - my parents, Todd's parents, and Todd's brother Scott.

Eleanor chose this gift for Will herself. She loves her own robe and has said for months that "Will needs a robe!"

Will's First Birthday - October 12, 2008

One year ago I held my sweet little boy in my arms for the first time. My love for him was complete then, yet has grown daily! I cherish his bedtime snuggles, his clean smell, his contagious laughter, his beaming face and charming grin, his love of an audience, his speed crawl, his tentative first steps, his impersonation of a bunny or a car, his attraction to things dirty and dangerous, his affection for his sister, his little boy babbling, his enjoyment of the outdoors....and so much more! Happy Birthday, William! I love you and thank God for you!

Party Prep! Eleanor had a lot of fun decorating one of Will's presents.


This isn't a great picture, but we had 2 french memo boards full of pictures of William over this past year. They turned out really well!





I think our friend Abigail enjoyed her cupcake!

Eleanor ate hers quite painstakingly!

Will's buddy Amy

I will do another post with pictures of all our family who were visiting!