Wallawas 2013!

Mom and Dad always host our fall trip to the Wallawas, and we look forward to it with much anticipation.  Muckers and our latest bag of fall deals from Old Navy are our standard uniforms, and "are we there yet?" starts before we've made it out of the first of the three states we travel through.  Everyone has their favorite thing.  I cannot even narrow it down for you, but this year will be hard to beat.  First, the weather was spectacular!  Secondly, the kids are getting to that age that means a lot less maintenance, and a lot more jumping right into fun.

First stop is our favorite picture-taking bridge.  It's good for the face shot, but I always manage to get a buns shot in here too :)

Here's 'the bear' shot.  But the kids are so big now, you can't even see the poor guy!

And yes, we do break out the electronics by the end of a busy day and night...

This year, we landed in on mom's birthday, so that of course, means pumpkin cake!

I couldn't bear to squeeze little Jem out of this shot.  Good-looking genes we've got here!

Shooting the elk head with nerf guns.  I think it used to be a bow and arrow...

Stephen always makes breakfast.  And it's not a wussy girly breakfast.  This one's for big boys, and it rocks.

Tight fit...

Off for adventuring in the sunshine, and the ladies head for town and shopping...and, my favorite chai in the tri-state area.

Lunch, outside!

It's hard to look at these, they are so bright :)

Fall football practice!

The grandparent shot.

Cuties :)

Love this pic of Georgia!  You can't beat those boots!

...and my littlest sweeties...

Brooklyn found a fuzzy caterpillar... she managed to captivate it for awhile, but it inevitably escaped before we took off...

This pic cracks me up in four different ways!  What a goob!

Flying!

There's the bear!

...and the buns shot I promised :)

The Annual Art Show.  With wine and hors d'oeurves!

Since it was October, we took advantage of the get-together to celebrate Kayte's turning 11.  She was disappointed about the brownies because she had this whole plan to make her cake look like the Wallawas.  Fortunately I, for some reason, had stuffed blue food coloring in with her birthday candles.  So that is how we got the Wallawa lake, the green gel was a happy coincidence, and she was thrilled!  Not a masterpiece, by any means, but fortunately I've maintained a low standard for birthday cakes, and the kids have moderate expectations... :)

We shared with Brooklyn, cause September was so crazy we didn't get together to do her birthday on time :)

What a crazy ride of fun, from beginning to end!  I love what started out as just a love story between two practical strangers turned into all of this!  Thanks, Mom & Dad, for another wild ride!

Schoolwork

Sara brought home this little gem:

It is a cat, made from leaves, to scare away the meeces in my country house.  Such a thoughtful little girlie.

Love most that she crossed out 'to: mom' and replaced it with "to: great mom".  :)

Technology woes.

Remember these?  I miss these.

 

There are never sharp pencils in our house.  Sara will spend a whole evening sharpening pencils on our electric sharpener, and then the next night, when we all sit down to tackle homework, there are miraculously only dull pencils in the pencil box.  (Sara is obsessed with perfectly-sharpened pencils, and loves using the electric sharpener.)  We've gone through several different sharpeners that failed for some reason or another, and since I like to define myself as an analog girl in a digital world, I'd like for the record to show I'm all for old-school pencil sharpeners attached to old-school all-solid-wood desks.  But, since we don't own a solid wood desk, we don't own an old-school sharpener.  It's a shame.

Sara had a brand-new shiny pink pencil.  She asked for the sharpener and disappeared upstairs.  I was on the phone.  (Cue warning music.)  All of a sudden, Will starts screaming bloody murder upstairs...there are other screams involved, but Will's is louder and usually involves my title, "MOOOOOMMMMM!!!!"  I'm calm for a split second, until I realize, even though my son is a panick-er, he doesn't usually break out what I like to call 'the stranger scream' unless someone is at least slightly in trouble.  (The 'stranger scream' is a term we've used to define what we expect to hear if a strange car slows down and a man asks for help finding his lost puppy and would you like some candy?)  So I drop the phone and three-step-it upstairs.  Now, I can clearly hear four individual screams.  Sara's finger is stuck up and twisted inside that evil contraption: the electric pencil sharpener.  Will's still screaming.  Sara's legitimately screaming.  And all the sound is blocking my vision.  I can't tell how bad it is.  It looks pretty bad, and I can't pull it out, and I can't twist the sharpener back enough to get it out.  I dump the batteries out to prevent it from getting worse, but the screaming is getting in the way of my problem-solving skills so I tell the kids to stop.  But I eventually have to take that command up a few decibels, cause clearly no one can hear me anyway.  I pick Sara up and head for the stairs, cause it is looking like even if I get it out, we might need some stitching up of some kind...and the kids are screaming and I'm all "stop screaming!", and now I see the UPS man dropping off several boxes on my doorstep.  Amidst all the screaming.

So now I'm thinking, should I run after the UPS man and ask him to help me get my daughter's little finger out of a spiral of a mess, or just wait for CPS to arrive, cause if UPS guy hasn't yet alerted them to the drama in our house, they can surely hear the screaming from their office two towns away... CPS would have some kind of medical training, right?

Will soon showed up with a screwdriver and I was able to jimmy the thing wide enough for Sara to pull her finger out.  Bruised and puffy, but not a bit of the skin was broken.

Later Sara says to me, "when you said we were going to the doctor I thought you were joking.  I didn't think it was that bad."

Haha.

Apple-picking!

We've had a bit of a rainy September this year, but we can't miss the fall apple harvest!  It is one of my favorite fall photo ops...and the apples are pretty yummy too!  We always head back to Gma Annie's for chili and cinnamon rolls, which is definitely a fall highlight...

Joe & his juggling skills!  :)

My family :)



Homecoming Parade!

This is the loot we scored at the homecoming parade!  We will be lucky to get that on the actual Halloween night!

I love everything about the U of I homecoming parade. It was kind of rainy this year, but it was definitely fall in the trees already and in the crispness of the air.  All the nearby schools show up with their marching bands and all the crazy political people show up with their babies for kissing.  The college kids are a little less than bright-eyed but they are perched up on their floats anyway, throwing fistfuls of candy at my kids.  There are giant tractors and old hotrods.  It's like the best (and worst!) of our little town shows up on Main Street to celebrate that we are all bright enough to live in this beautiful place. 

Plus, I just really love free candy.

Ben plays soccer.

So we signed Ben up for soccer this fall, because he is in kindergarten, and it is really the only sport for this age around here, and as the last child, it seems only fair to get him into something!  At the very last minute, our cuz and good bud got switched to our team, and it was the icing on the cake! 

But next year, Ben will be ready for football and basketball, and I am super-excited for that!

And am I just slightly biased, or do these boys have some of the most beautiful eyes ever seen on a male form?



Mini-golf

Gma Annie has been taking the three older kids roller-skating occasionally, which leaves us with just this little fella!  And wouldn't you know we like to spoil him rotten!  So the other night, a gorgeous half-summer, half-fall evening, we went mini-golfing.

Joe would like everyone to know that he beat me this one time.  It is a rare occurrence, don't you know, so I will go ahead and mention it.  Either way, a fun date night with two of my favorite boys!

Aww...so cute!

Our quail family seeking refuge under the jeep during a storm.  I love living in the country!



Shall we start with the Fair? September something...

I love fair time!  This year Grandma Annie helped Kayte make cookies to enter in the fair, and they also snagged a Cinderella pumpkin out of her patch to enter too!  Both did pretty good!

Anyone who has had Gma Annie's chocolate chip cookies knows that the ribbon here should be large and purple, but hey, maybe the judge is not so much of a cookie connoisseur...  next year, they should really ask me to judge :)  But Kayte was thrilled with her ribbons!

We always say that the kids can only have one ride at the fair because really truly the prices are exorbitant!  But we usually get snookered and charmed into at least two, because they are also a bit of a highlight of the whole affair.  (I personally, would've been happy with a foot-long corn dog and an elephant ear, but I was not that way as a child.)  So off we go...

Beautiful night!

So this little cowboy wandered off at some point and since Joe and I were separated, we each thought the other person had him in tow.  It took us a good 15 minutes to realize he was missing (and took me a good 15 seconds to leap full-on into panic mode!)  It was dark by this point, ack!  I really hate it when I misplace a kid.  (And yes, sadly, this was not my first time.)

After about 10 minutes, I texted Kelly in hopes that she might panic too, and she texted me right back that they'd found him.  He was clear over in the food section, and was at least as worried as I was, which I found oddly comforting.

In a funny hindsight sort of way, if asked for a recent photo of my son, I think he would've gotten a kick out of the fact that this 'tongue photo' would've had to do.

Ahh, good times.



...the one in which I come up with a lot of excuses.

So, I've been really really busy, reading and baking and watching TV and doing sit-ups and staring out the window and getting worked up by crazy people on the inter-web or crazy people on the street and attending lots of sporting events, and such.  Sometimes I paint my nails and sometimes I do laundry.  Other days it's the crockpot or long phone conversations.  Or taking a two-hour nap.  There is also lots of homework and teaching the kids how to properly clean a toilet.  Sometimes I spend a whole hour on really important conversations in my head.  Sometimes it's haircuts or grocery trips, or a really great sale at Old Navy.  Or I'm planning Christmas parties or birthday parties or think that it's time to sign up for Pinterest, cause heaven knows I don't waste enough time already.  Or maybe it's fifteen minutes spent on procrastination avoiding a 10 minute task that's distracted by 20 minutes of something shiny.  Other days it's making to-do lists, or crossing them off. 

Yesterday I woke up and I swore I had fibromyalgia (cause I definitely have hypochondria).  So that slowed me down a bit.

What I mean to say is, I've missed some blogging moments, here comes the flood.