autumn = enormous piles of lovely, crunchy leaves

We went to my sister's on Monday to play. Kim and I started out just bagging up the rotting pile of leaves she had in the backyard (no offense, Kim, but you know it's true :) and then ended up raking the whole yard into an absolutely gargantuan pile of leaves. The girls had sooooo much fun! It brought me back a few years just watching them being so carefree. I love autumn. I love the leaves. I love the crisp air that smells of leaves and wind. Yes, I think wind has a scent - and a lovely one, at that. I love the apples and the pumpkins and the beginning of Christmas. I've decided that's part of why I love autumn so much: it is the beginning of the Christmas season. The anticipation builds from autumn through Thanksgiving and into December. Why not let Christmas last for months?

(I love this first photo - even though they weren't all looking at the camera, it captures the spirit of the afternoon for them :) and it turns out you can even click on it to make it bigger!

beautiful spring

These were from May, but I never got them up for some reason. They're beautiful, though and I wanted to share them. Basically, I love them because the colors rock!

celebratory stay-cation

After the ultrasound last Thursday, John "surprised" me with a little celebratory outing. I say "surprised" because I knew it was happening beforehand - someone forgot to tell me to forget about the budget for a week or so :) So, I saw the charges for a hotel and tickets to something, but had no idea where we were going or what we were doing. Anyway, we dropped the girls off at my parents' (who were so gracious to watch them even though they were dead tired from a whirlwind trip to Houston the day before and my mom was still feeling sick from a sinus infection). They do so much for us and I can't believe they're always still willing to do more when we are presumptuous enough to ask. I always hope that I'll be like that when I have grandchildren.

We drove up to Salt Lake, stopped at Cheesecake Factory for lunch - oh yum! - walked around the mall a little, then continued up to the hotel where we promptly fell asleep. no joke. I apparently was exhausted! I guess taking a nap is considered okay as part of a vacation when the kids are elsewhere... right? We finally peeled our sorry lumps off the bed and walked over to the Gateway. Browsing at the Gateway on our budget is like browsing at the Galleria in Houston:

lots of gawking at price tags and feeling way out of your league. So we hobbled (my feet really hurt for some reason) over to the Planetarium and played around for a bit :)

I think John did a much better job of floating in space than I did. I look like I'm jumping up to try to eat my hair - like a dog chasing

its tail - fruitless effort. But I got pretty sweet ups for a pregnant woman, eh?

Aaanyway. We browsed the Gateway a little more, even found a few Christmas gift ideas (that we'll get somewhere else for a much better price), then headed back to the Planetarium for an IMAX movie that John had to practically drag me to. I really didn't want to see it. He really did. And we both really liked it :) It was the Under the Sea in 3D - and I think whoever designed their 3D glasses must have thought they were being pretty funny. John said he felt like a little kid watching it because he kept thinking, "wow! I didn't even know that existed! wow! cool! check that out! awesome!" I thought the same thing, just in not so many words. mostly just "wow!" If you want to see an IMAX, go see that one.

The next surprise was later in the evening at Capitol Theater. We saw Ballet West's performance "The Dream." I loved it! John probably might say he liked it. I asked him if he was going to tell the office the next day about the ballet he attended :) Honestly, I will probably always love most anything to do with ballet. I don't know much about it, but I know I love it.

After crashing in bed at much to late an hour for people used to going to bed around 10/10:30 pm, we were awakened by what we thought was a bomb right outside our window and people cheering and the power going out in the hotel. Though we forgot to ask in the morning what it was, we are just happy that it wasn't a bomb and that we are alive :) Seriously, it rattled the windows. I hope I never get woken up like that again!

(we breakfasted at the Nauvoo Cafe in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building - it was amazing. The prices aren't bad, either! yum.)

put your thinking caps on

Ultrasound yesterday concludes that we are definitely having a boy!

No name yet, though. Submitted names include:

(from John)

Chip

Tito

Bo Diddly

(from Kim K)

Mo

Munchy

(from Steve-o)

Ham
Cheese
Tofu
Turkey
Veggie

(and from an online site)

Kermit

Send in your ideas to join in the fun.

please...

happy halloweening!

That's what Natalie said when she was trying to say "happy halloween" and "trick-or-treating" at the same time. Unfortunately, I don't remember the context.

So this year was quite a bit different than last year's Halloween. In fact, Natalie actually has a few memories of Halloween last year --she pulled out some random facts when we were looking at pictures. Last year, we forced her to be Tinkerbell one last time, before she even knew who Tinkerbell was. This year, she really really really wanted to be Tinkerbell (she's seen one of the movies now) and I had to desperately convince her that it was really much too small for her. (Actually, it was a tad too small last year, but we squeezed her in.) So, she settled on being a princess.

Now, those of you who know Natalie know that she talks about princesses a lot. All of them. Choosing one was difficult. Getting her to choose a dress with sleeves was even more difficult (as her favorite right now is Belle and it's a sleeveless dress). Getting her to choose the un-favorite dress we gave her for her birthday? Nothing short of a miracle! Thank you, John. Whatever you did was perfect. Now that she's worn the dress 3 times for different "halloweening" activities, she has finally decided it's worth playing in every day! hooray! It wasn't a waste of money!

...moving on... back to the girls and Halloween...

So, Natalie was a princess with no particular name. The dress is gorgeous, though. And Lilia was Dorothy :) I think she just might be the cutest Dorothy ever! I really hope she doesn't have an opinion next year of what to be for Halloween, because I really think she should be Dorothy again!

oh my cuteness. Those two girls together were so cute on Halloween. Natalie took Lilia under her wing, so to speak, and showed her what to do. We went to a trunk-or-treat, and about 5 cars down, Lilia knew the drill. Except, even after practicing "trick-or-treat" for days, she never said it once. She did say "Thank you" on her own every time, though. That's something to brag about! Natalie led the way and Lilia tried hard to keep up, but 2 things were against her: her trick-or-treat bag and the moon. She was supposed to have a bucket, but it got left at home and the only bag we had in the car was a humongous tote bag that she insisted on carrying "by self." I don't know how many times I heard that that night: "No, Mommy! I got it by self! Let go." And then there was the moon. She saw the moon about halfway through and stopped traffic to point it out every step she took.

take a step. "look! the moon! and stars." take a step. "look! the moon! and stars." take a step. "lookit! the moon! and stars." etc. I struggled for several minutes to get her attention back to the task at hand. I think it was Natalie who finally got her to keep going. Who knew? She's fascinated with the moon right now - possibly because it's been almost full? I think it was full tonight (nov 2).

Halloween was definitely a night to remember in our kids' minds. They were overjoyed at all the candy they got - and Natalie keeps telling me she got aaaall the candy. What's funny is that I put it in the cabinet to keep them from thinking about it all the time and as I'm writing this I have realized that they didn't have any today. crazy. For how much they talked about candy from about Tuesday last week until yesterday, I am pleasantly surprised. That's not to say I didn't have any, though...

oh, and these were our pumpkins. Natalie and I painted them on Friday (a little late, I know). I let Natalie go crazy on the big one and she did. And then she helped me with the others. She helped cut, glue, paint, color, and glitter-ify. I think painting them is about 20x easier and more fun than carving them. I want to do it every year.

curiosity didn't exactly kill the cat, but it definitely made the mouse afraid of the straightener for a while

ever wonder what Lilia looks like with straight hair?

my curiosity overcame me and I had to find out.

and Lilia is not exactly scared of the straightener, but they aren't best friends, yet.

anyone else think she looks like Natalie?

cutest photo shoot ever

in August we had a little impromptu photo shoot while at the temple for a cousin's wedding: