My Baby Sister Is Getting MARWIED!

Dear Friends & Family-

Our baby sister is getting hitched next weekend. IN LESS THAN A WEEK. Married. For reals. And though I know she's old enough to make that commitment, in my head, Autumn will always look like this (this is back when Mom used to do her hair every morning):

I took that picture with me to colledge and since then have kept it on my dresser. You know, cause I love my sister or whatever.

Then Autumn grew up a little bit. Here's what she looked like when I got married, in the loving embrace of her brother (Autumn, you're rockin' that pensive side-hug-stare-off-into-space look)


And now, she's found her True Love. Oh Drew, we love you too. Not just because you own a sword:


Or because you'll dress up as a zombie with Autumn to walk down Hollywood Blvd (you know, for fun...)


But because you're everything we could hope for in a brother-in-law. You're pretty great. YAY!!! We love Drew!!!

Other Reasons Drew & Autumn Are Perfect For Each other:
-They like lots of the same things (If Autumn were to write a singles ad, it could say, "Hi! I was a Professional Pirate and worked on a tall ship. I know how to batten down the hatches. I broke my toe when I dropped a cannon on it. I camped on the street for three months to see the Star Wars movie. I am in a folk band. I like to obsess over awesome shows (Battlestar Gallactica, Legend of the Seeker, etc.) I am really cool. " Then Drew would read it and think, "What the frak, I gotta meet this lady." Then they'd fall in love & get married. OH WAIT. THEY DID. YAY!)

-Drew is wicked smart, and Autumn is pretty clever herself. They'll procreate smart babies.

-They both OWN Renaissance Costumes. Ready to go, in their closet. You know, just in case.

-There are more reasons, you can add them to the comments section when you think of them...


Ok, now that we've made our feeling clear about our love for Drew, the perfect match that they are, I will tell you what we've been up to lately.

Posing (hey kid, clean your room!)...


Decorating the tree...


Snow days (Gretchen insisted on wearing the Goofy Hat)...


Snow Angels with Dad...


Sledding down the street!!!!


And Ella got a hold of the camera again. Pensive Self Portrait...


Stunning depiction of Grandpa (I'm pretty sure he just finished shoveling the walk)...


Super flattering picture of me...


And Dad (who thinks he got all A's last semester. GO COLBY!!!)...


And me again. Even more flattering this time (we were playing "house" while Gretchen was napping, and she put me to bed, and I may or may not have actually FALLEN ASLEEP. Hence her finding the camera & being all photographic with it...)


Her ceiling & lanterns...


And her bear.


Ok, I'm finally done talking now. We hope you've had a wonderful week & if you live in SoCal, we'll see you on FRIDAY!!!

xo

Our Favorite Things

Hello Dear Family & Friends-

Our Thanksgiving was loud, fun, happy, crazy and loud.
Number of People Sleeping At The House: 14
People Eating Thanksgiving Dinner: 19
Chunks Of Matia's Hair Pulled Out By Gretchen: 3
Time Outs: 5,000
Trips To The Emergency Room: 1 (Baby had a UTI and 104.6 temperature. :( All better now...)
Heard During Ella's Prayer: "Thank you that our family can all leave now." (Not really. But maybe a little bit.)

Tis the Season for Oprah's list of favorite things. But since we don't leave the house (except to mess up other people's houses during playdates), I can't tell you what's in the stores. So our list of Favorite Things is completely random and mostly free.
Ella's Favorites
Favorite Song: Santa's Coming To Town. Because it's my favorite.
Favorite Color: All of them. Green is the best. Because it's my favorite.
Favorite Food: Strawberries. Because they taste good.
Favorite Thing To Do: Play Barbies with Mom. Cause it makes me happy.
Favorite Playdate: Going out to lunch. (But going out to lunch requires spending $ AND leaving the house. So that's an every-other-week kind of playdate...)
Favorite Youtube Video: HORRIBLE QUALITY! They still can't get enough...


Gretchen's Favorites:
Favorite Song: Popcorn Popping, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Jesus Wants Me for a SUNBEAM
Favorite Food: CANDY CANDY CANDY. Candy? Candy? CAAAAAAN-DEEEE! Candy? Candy? Candy? Candy? ........ Candy?
Favorite Thing To Do: Get into things. Assert herself agressively. Throw dramatic temper tantrums. Laugh. Copy Ella. Make Ella Crazy. Read stories. Say, "Momma!" over & over again. Crawl onto my laugh and jump on me. Dance. Laugh again. Make faces. Laugh. Repeat.
Favorite Thing To Wear: "Gabba Shirt!"

Apryl's Favorites:
Favorite Food: Candy. Sigh.
Old Favorite But Still Favorite Blog: Awkward Family Photos. The best kind of voyeurism.
Favorite New Website: imeem.com (Thanks Meghan!) You can listen to almost any music out there FOR FREE. It's even legal. Whole albums. That's right, you can hear the Jingle Cat's album for free. You're welcome. (Pandora kicked me off when I reached my 40 hour monthly limit. Apparently I listen to a lot of music.)
Favorite New Thing To Waste My Time Doing Online: Watch youtube videos of my favorite musicians. Clips from concerts, etc. It's almost like having a real life, except that you don't. Oh Andrew Bird, do you feel the special connection we share? So what if I'm married with two small children.... Watch what he does with the looping violin. I know. I KNOW!!!!


And I'm pretty much ready to move into an Artist Loft in the city now and learn to play the trumpet. Do you think they're zoned for good schools?:


So share with us now, what are YOUR new favorite things?

The Frosting Incident and Other Stories

Hello dear Family & Friends! Last week was spent feeling mostly overwhelmed and with too much stuff to do. I may have been heard saying, "Dude, if anyone asks me to do ONE MORE THING, I'm going to loose it." And when I reached my limit & started saying, "Sorry, no," then I felt guilty. And then I overcompensated. Which explains how children ended up with frosting facials. I was making "Value Colored" cupcakes for a special meeting with the youth at church. I was also wondering if swearing under your breath while trying to be of service takes away blessings. Especially if the theme of the meeting is:"Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest" (Joshua 1:9; italics added). Well, crap.

But all my commitments are almost ALMOST finished, and then we can concentrate on the PARTY THIS WEEK! (Eight more people in this house? Really? And two of them are Gretchen & Matia? Should be an adventure...)

Pretty Princesses

Today was Stake Conference, so instead of regular church (where Gretchen's reign of terror in the nursery is slowly morphing into an easy dictatorship) we had a two hour meeting with all the local congregations. You sit on folding chairs* in a darkened room (cause there are so many people there, they use a projector & extra TVs so everyone can watch the talks) for TWO HOURS. What do you do in a dark room with two small children and hundreds of witnesses? You do a lot of coloring. And then play with some dolls. And then eat some snacks. And then draw some more.

Here's Ella as a princess, eating a tortilla chip. Then Ella drew some princesses too.



Huh, what's that on the princess?



Um, it's the PRINCESS SLEEVES. (Gross, what did you think it was?)



There was a girl in front of us coloring this month's coloring page from The Friend Magazine. It just happens to depict Lismarie and her sweet family pushing an old lady in a wheelchair. I so wanted to say, "Hey little girl! I totally drew that! And that's my BFF Lismarie and her family!" But I knew what would happen. She's look at me all weird and think, "Ok, strange lady. I'm going to turn around now and grab my mom's arm." So I refrained. But I couldn't refrain from telling you, dear friends and family. THERE WAS A GIRL IN FRONT OF US COLORING MY COLORING PAGE! IT WAS SO COOL! And I've only got one more picture left before my reign as Official Coloring Page Artist is over. Sigh. It was a good two years.


*Technically, people at the front in the chapel get to sit on nice upholstered benches. But to get those seats, you need to be early (overachievers!). And then when you inevitably have to get up in the middle of the program, the hundreds of people there get to watch you try to wind your way down the aisle while balancing a gyrating, screaming toddler, trying to keep her flailing feet from kicking everyone's heads.

And look what Blast from the Past ended up on Facebook this week? (I was going to black out everyone's eyes to preserve the privacy of the innocent, but figured you probably won't be able to tell who it is anyway... THAT'S ME IN THE BACK! SO CUTE, I KNOW!!!)

Autumnal Splendor (en backyard)

My so-cheap-it's-practically-disposable-digital-camera is giving me issues this week, so I only have 5 pictures to share. (Collective sigh of relief.)

To start out, here's a Gretchen Classic:



If you visit our house between7 am - 10:08 am weekdays (6:30 am - 3pm on Saturday), this is how you will find Gretchen's hair. We wait until JUST BEFORE WE LEAVE to fix it, because it will inevitably revert to it's "natural state" within 30 minutes. However, she looks really cute when it's back in a pony tail. Maybe one day I'll get a picture of that.

Last week was SO BUSY. We had a playdate EVERY AFTERNOON. So this week we took some time off of playdates (plus, half of our friends are sick or have sick siblings. Not "SWINE FLU 2009 duh-duh-DUH!!!!!!" sick, but we'd rather not get anything thank-you-very-much, so we've become extreme-handwashing-anti-social agoraphobes. It's quite liberating in a never-leave-the-house kind of way.) Our lack of outside stimulation has allowed us to enjoy some of the simpler pleasures.

-Learning how to get your OWN PICKLE out of the fridge! (Good job Ella! Still only one a day. And not before 10am.) (You have to put your foot down somewhere...)

-Colby taking awesome new pictures of Ella in the trash can for photo class. Proof will be forthcoming. His next project may or may not reference this fun pop culture dramatic-sunglass-removing phenomenon:


-Teaching plastic princesses, pirates & goofy the joys of literacy. (Education is power, people. Also, Ice Age Squirrel is a really good teacher.)



-And playing with leaves in the backyard:




Oh my gosh, you guys. Don't you just love taking super-duper cute pictures of your kids in the autumn leaves. And then realize you've actually just documented your slothful mothering because there is SNOT DRIPPING OUT OF YOUR KIDS NOSE? Yup.





PS - Please don't ask why Gretchen is wearing a Sponge Bob Square Pants pajama top.

The Required Halloween Post

So what did y'all do last week? Oh, Halloween? Yeah we did that too. Pretty much all week. And because you know how much we love to dress up, today we went to Target and bought 5 more costumes on clearance for our dress-up-stash. But how smart am I? I'm saving them for Christmas presents. Ha ha! (I know. Genius.)

So remember how much I love Ella's kindergarten teacher? Yes, she is fabulous & amazing & wonderful. They had the most amazing Halloween party on Thursday. I'm pretty sure I heard 3rd graders walking down the hall, complaining about how lame their parties were compared to the awesomeness that was Ella's class party. They decorated pumpkins (that they got at the pumpkin patch on their FIRST FIELD TRIP EVER on Monday. Bus ride and everything. They even had matching tie-dyed shirts, though since they wear a uniform anyway, I wasn't sure why they needed matching tie-dyed shirts.....but still fun.) They made spider hats. They put chocolate pudding and gummy worms in cups and ate them. They played musical chairs. And they had a DANCE OFF. Seriously, I love her teacher. Kindergarten dance-offs are just as amazing as 5-year-old-birthday-party dance offs. One kid even tried some break-dancing moves. (TRIED.) Love.

Also, I did catch Gretchen stealing treats off kids plates at the party. How many times? THREE TIMES. (I was "helping" with the pumpkin painting station and otherwise occupied. 5 year-olds wielding paint is a dangerous thing. But so is Gretchen...)



We got a picture of Ella with her teacher in costume. Even though this is only what Ella was for her first Halloween party. There were 4 costumes in all this year.



For our SECOND Halloween party, we went to the church's Trunk or Treat. Everyone (well, in this case, about 10 cars. Bad turnout.) shows up in the parking lot and the kids go from car to car and collect candy. Wham bam, thank you mam, thirty minutes later you come home with a bunch of candy. Short & sweet.

Gretchen is powering through her tears in this photo to smile for the camera. Shocking, but I don't remember what was upsetting her. I probably took away yet another piece of candy that she somehow aquired. This kid has Mutant-Powered-Candy-Sense. It's her super-power.



For Ella's 2nd Halloween appearance, she was a cat.



We finally got around to carving our pumpkins 2 hours before Halloween. How cute is this? She drew that "scary" face all by herself.



She's actually only kidding about being mad in this picture....



...but not in this one. (I took away the blue sharpie. Blue sharpie + Gretchen = BAD IDEA.) But Ella was happy.






Dressing up as a kitty is the easiest costume ever. Kudos to Aunt Terry for giving me the MOST AWESOME leopard print coat ever. I love you Aunt Terry!



We went to our friends house for dinner and Trick Or Treating.



Their oldest son, "Hank", earned his keep by scaring small children. And a lot of moms. We didn't have to wait for the doorbell, we just listened for screams of petrified trick-or-treaters.



Did anyone notice that in none of Ella's Halloween Appearances, was she Casper The Friendly
Ghost? Yeah. So much for planning ahead.

Gretchen Extreme Closeup.



HAPPY HALLOWEENIE!!!!

Christian post

aunt Nie and uncole Mike came down to visit us today, and the missionarys are coming to cisit to.

I was dressed up as the green gobbalin, j was dressed up as the black spider man [spider man show]