If you rake them, they will come......

In my attempts to rake the leaves, I couldn't help but let the kids have a go at it. They immediately starting making a pile to jump in.

Good times.

If you give a kid a snack.....

He'll take the kiwi, blackberries, apple juice and do this:

"Look at my pattern mommy!"

The wonderment of the little things they do, gotta love 'em!

A Bowl of What?

After baths, the older kids always giggle about their raisin fingers. Not that I'm leaving them in there for hours like *cough* some people I know, they're just little and it doesn't take long.

I think.

Anyway.

Gage has finally gotten into the fun now and last night, with great pride, he showed me his fingers and said "Look, my raisin bran, me raisin bran fingers."

Apparently his little world truly does revolve around food, especially his favorite meal of the day: breakfast.

Before and After

Thanks to an "inspirational" post over at the laundry pile, I decided to tackle this:




Note the two blenders. My good old Osterizer just plain pooped out on me and my fabulous cousin Lisa gave me her mom's Kitchen Aid blender. Now, I have been using the new one and, um, haven't had "the time" to clean up the old one and store it. You know, just in case the new one really dies and I really need an already sorta dead one that would work in a bind.

Also, I took the picture after I had moved the fax machine and a bunch of papers.

Yes, that would be Gage's head in the foreground foraging through the junk drawer.

And yes, the sign on the wall above the radio reads "Simplify, throw everything out".

My messy excuse goes something like this: "I've had company for five weeks straight and have been faxing papers just about every day for a week and who really has time to organize and pay bills stacked on the counter and....."


So I took the time and here are the amazing results (no, I am not submitting to you the picture of the kitchen table directly behind said area):



Whenever I need to look at the clean, I'll be sure to look up this post.

Happy Birthday Christopher!!!!

Happy Birthday to my fantastic brother-in-law Chris!!! I hope you know how happy we are to have you as part of our family, we all love you so much!!!!

Wish we lived closer....though I think the Midwest would be a great place for you guys.....hope to see you in February!!!

xoxoxoxo Randy, Liz, Ashlynn, Ryder, Gage and Addie

Aslynn, the Choreographer

Ashlynn has started back up with ballet this fall. Yesterday she called me outside to watch a dance she created. As you can see she drew out the moves on the patio with her sidewalk chalk. The large circles indicated a twirl the small oval circles were single leg kick/jump and the X's were curtsies.



Here she is taking it on:



It was really quite amazing, I even asked if that is what her teacher had taught. "No mommy, I made it up myself."

Wow.

Look who's five months old: