Happy Harvest

I couldn't resist....

James Dean eat your heart out.

I Love Fall

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I love pumpkins
I love wearing sweaters
I love cold, crisp, clear fall days
I love all the beautiful colors of the trees
I love having a warm fire in the house
I love baking pumpkin bread
I love fall candles

Oh, and I love fall for this reason too...

...yeah, it's pretty good.

A Sneak Peek

Here's a picture of what's to come...
If you can't tell from the picture, here are a few word clues...

"Sock Hop"
"To infinity and beyond"
"Twinkle Toes"

If you still don't know, check back in on Friday for the big reveal! Stella and Jonah are so excited. Jonah is pretty pumped to wear his new space guggles (goggles) :)

AVA

She's too cute to spook :)

Good Times with Old Friends

Erin, her mom Jan, her boys Drew and Drake, and her sister's little girl Ellie all came for a visit. It was so fun to see Erin and her cute boys. They both are so sweet and Drake is perfectly soft and squishy just like I like 'em :). Sadly, these are the only two pictures I took of their visit. I'm hoping to get more when Jan sends the ones she took to Erin. Their visit was short, but it was definitely sweet. It makes me wish, even more, that we all lived on the same block so our kids could grow up together... sigh...

I HEART My Friends

Since Erin was in Seattle visiting her family, all of us Washington girls planned a get together. It included a yummy dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, where Jorden brought her baby Brooklyn who is as sweet and cute as can be, and then a slumber party for me at Karen and Tori's - word to the egg sandwich I got in the morning, awesome.

I'll take the time now to give a big shout out to Kate, Reese, Liz and Molly. It's never the same without you girls, and we all missed you at our little reunion. Lake Chelan, 2009, get ready it is so on.

I can't even begin to explain how much I love each of these girls. Here's a little list of a few reasons which barely scratch the surface...

We share the same faith

We pick up right where we left off
We laugh, laugh and laugh some more
We love to eat
We encourage and uplift each other
We talk about everything
We pray for each other
We like candy
I feel short when I'm with them :)
We love to take pictures....
and oh so many more reasons

Go big red! We noticed we all had a piece of red on, except Jen, so she draped herself in the red blanket.

It's tradition...

Fall 2003

Fall 2004

Fall 2005

Fall 2006

Fall 2007

Fall 2008

The joy of having a school aged child...

Nothing like a good LICE scare to get you to clean the house. Yesterday morning I was parting Stella's hair for some pigtails before school when I saw some things, some things that were white, some things that looked sadly suspicious, some things I didn't and don't ever want to see! I wasn't sure what it was, but the first thought that came to my mind was it was the dreaded lice. So I started picking, what I thought were, eggs out of her hair and I was just dusting them off of my fingers on to the floor. Then I freaked out and got the vacuum because I was like - what am I doing?! If those are eggs and they hatch, oh no!!!!!!!!!! So I banned Stella to the exercise mat that happened to be out. I told her to sit there and not to move and then a vacuuming I went - upstairs, downstairs, beds, couches, Jonah's hair...no I didn't really, but I was tempted. Thankfully my parents were in town and could pick up some shampoo from the store. I shampooed Stella's hair, and I did mine too just for good measure. Then I started in on the laundry. Seriously I did so many loads of laundry I really can't even begin to count or think back to what the grand total was. I caught myself looking at the coats hanging in the mudroom and I said to myself - Stella's coat was touching that coat, and well they could have jumped to that one over there, oh let's just take them all down and wash them.... I tend to get a little OCD-ish when it comes to things like this. So I pretty much laundered every item in the house, or at least it felt like it. I was exhausted when it was time for bed. Today I went in early to talk to her teacher and explain her absence and see if I should have her checked out by the school nurse. So we went to the office and she checked Stella's hair and and asked me what I saw and when I was describing it, she informed me that it wasn't lice. Praise the Lord, because I was thinking about how I was going to have to go home and re-wash all the linens again...again, signs of OCD. She then said if they were in fact eggs, they would be very hard to get off the strand and that wasn't the case with Stella. There was definitely something on the strands of her hair, but it slid off pretty easily. Big, huge, gigantic sigh of relief. Tonight I plan on takin'er easy. Does anyone have an itchy head after reading this...I do.

Where do I start?!

My blogging has been few and far between (for me at least). So here's my attempt to catch you up on the happenings that have been going on around here, in no particular order...

Elder and Deacon Retreat...plus the wives

The retreat took place the weekend of October 4th at Cedar Springs in Sumas. It was a fruitful time for the men to gather together and discuss and pray over our church body and come up with ways they can better serve. During the morning devotion time Tim focused on one of Christs attributes, faithfulness. It was so good to be reminded of His faithfulness, because so often I find myself living in fear. I came away very encouraged. While the men met with one another the ladies went and hit the shops all the way from Lynden to Bellingham. Overall the retreat was good. Good fellowship, good food, oh and let's not forget the great game of Catch Phrase, which if I recall correctly, the women won.

While we were at the retreat, my sister Kelli and her family watched our kids. I'm so thankful for them and their willingness to take in 3 more kids to their home. It's safe to say not one of our children missed Sean or I, even Ava! It's helpful too that Kelli and I look pretty similar :) Here's a picture in case you may not know....On the drive home after picking up the kids from Steve and Kelli's this is what Stella and Jonah had to say...

Stella:"I'm going to miss aunt Kelli"
Jonah: "I wish we could stay at aunt Kelli's house forever."

So yep, they were in good hands and didn't miss us a bit.

Stella

Kindergarten
5 years, 8 months

ready for church and wearing a cute necklace from Erin

Stella loves school. Her favorite electives are music and P.E. I love how she comes home singing all sorts of new songs. The other day I heard her singing to Jonah and clapping her hands and then she says "see Jonah, that was a good beat." Her P.E. teacher does magic tricks for the kids and she cannot believe her eyes! She counts down the days until it's Thursday, P.E. day. Monday is library day for her and I bet you can guess what kind of book she has brought home every Monday. If you guessed some sort of princess story, you are so right. Friday is the day I get to help out in her class. It's been fun watching her play and learn. Almost every day when she gets home she gives me the report on a couple of squirrelly little boys in her class... "this one had to go see the principal, and this one was not listening to the teacher".... I just gently remind her that is not how we are supposed to behave and tell her to keep being a good example to her fellow classmates and her response is "yes, and they need Jesus." I guess with her never really spending time with children who on a regular basis are outright disobedient, it can be shocking, and distracting and maybe a little confusing too because she really doesn't understand why they do the things they do. I'm thankful she is enjoying school. We have our first parent/teacher conference tomorrow night. I'm anxious to hear how she's doing.

Jonah

Jonah still misses Stella when she's gone at school. Just the other day on our way home from dropping her off Jonah says, "mom I miss Stella....do you know why I miss her? It's because I love her." He's a sweet boy, and inherited a tender heart like his dad. He's becoming so good with his baby sister. Ava lights up when she sees her big brother. He is still obsessed with going fast and having races, whether that be race cars, horses, motorbikes or himself, it's his favorite. The other day while in the car Jonah says "come on mom, go speed!" And I'm sure in his head he's saying to himself "speed, I am speed" can you guess what movie that's from??

Ava

And then there was Ava. I think I'm going to call her my problem child. That may sound harsh, but honestly if anything is going to happen, it most likely will happen to her. This is what I've found to be true in her short 10 months of life. Don't get me wrong, I love this girl, sometimes so much it hurts or makes me cry, but nonetheless, she still seems to be plagued with unfortunate happenings. I took her down to Children's Hospital on October 3rd for a follow up appointment. She had another x-ray done on her hip and was seen by the Orthopedic doctor and everything looks great. What a blessing. I have to take her in to the eye doctor in December to get her plugged tear duct fixed. We were hopeful she'd grow out of this problem, but she hasn't so far and it is causing her eye to constantly be irritated because of the constant goop that comes out - lovely I know. She had a nasty fall at night church last Sunday while in the nursery. It was a good 3 foot fall, straight down on hard floor. The outcome could have been so much worse and I thank the Lord for His protective hand over her. As far as I can tell, all she came away with was a bruised forehead (which you can see in the picture with her and I). Other than that she's doing good :) She's a busy girl, much different than her brother and sister were at this age. I took her in for her 9 month check up last week, although she is technically 10 months (we've been busy). She weighs 19 lbs and is 28 1/2 inches long. She jibber jabbers a lot. She's cute and I just love her.

Sean and I

As you know, Sean's growing a beard. It's growing. He has switched back to five, 8 hour days again and I'm thankful. As much as it was nice having 3 day weekends, I love having him home in the mornings and home earlier in the evenings. He's starting school this month. Every other weekend he'll be heading down to Seattle to attend classes. I'm not really looking forward to having him gone so much, I kinda like having him around. To look on the bright side, it will be nice having him run to Costco for me, and maybe I'll get to sneak away with him for the weekend here and there.

I can finally say, after a good 6 weeks, that my back is better. I had the worst lower back pain ever! It was horrible and I'm extremely thankful that I'm starting to feel like myself again. Besides shuttling Stella to and from school and myself to and from the chiropractor, I've been busy working on signs. A big thank you to all who have asked me to make them one!

Sean whipped together this cute little bench the other day. I finally stained it and put it inside yesterday to see how it looks and I love it. He was able to use the table legs from our old table and the wood on top is extra from when we built the table. That Sean, he's a handy guy to have around I tell you.

What? Who's the strange guy sitting on the bench you ask. Let's have another look...

hmmmm.... he looks familiar. How about one more look.....

Yep, he's no stranger. It's Sean, beard faced Sean. He's getting pretty woolly. I think he's getting used to my tourette's syndrome of screaming every time I see him. :) According to Sean the beard makes him more manly and he's pretty certain it has made his voice get a little deeper too. I have no comments to such claims as those.

We were watching a show on AE called Dog the Bounty Hunter. If none of you have seen the show, this is what "Dog" looks like. Woof woof.After the show was over Sean says, "he's my new hero." Beards I can handle, but if Sean starts wearing muscle T's and starts growing out the back of his hair but keeps the front good and short....so help me.