Halloween 2011

So we did the whole Halloween thing. Prairie was Elphaba (we saw Wicked this summer), Autumn was a vampire, and Zephyr was either a frog price, an elephant, or a jaguar depending on the day and what was clean and what he wanted to be.

Ben took the three kids trick-or-treating and I stayed home to pass out treats. This is the first time that we have lived at a place where we actually get trick-or-treaters so it felt really weird not to have the whole family go out together. Ben took the kids to a small HOA across the street from us and then Zephyr got dropped off. He LOVED handing out candy and got so excited everytime the doorbell rang. Even if the kids had already say trick-or-treat he would say
"you want candy? say trick treat!" then he would strenly tell them "only one!". It was great. I loved it. And Ben still collected candy for him, and the girls got to go fast, so it worked out for everyone.

Happy Halloween!

Our carved pumpkins that we grew in our garden. I will have to admit I LOVED not buying our pumpkins and just walking out to the garden. Also we didn't even plant these, we had like 30 volunteer pumpkin plants and I got rid of about 25 of them. So here is to pumpkins that just grew! (we used our compost from last year and I had put the pumpkin seeds from last year in our compost)

Camping In Moab

The kids had 2 days off from school and got early out on the Wednesday so I decided that I should take the three kids camping to Arches national Park. There were no camping spots available at the National park, but I talk to the BLM office and they said I should be able to find a campsite close to Arches. So I loaded the kids, drove the 3 hours down there, and we left late, and by time we got there it was dark. We drove around for 2 hours in the dark looking for a campsite, never found one so finally went and "camped" at the Motel 6 and ate hot dogs from the microwave at 10:30pm.

The next morning we found a campsite, I set up our tent and we headed to Arches. We had a great day and did a 3 mile hike round trip to delicate Arch, and I LOVED it. Zephyr was a trooper and didn't want me to carry him, but we didn't plan well for his nap, so 1.5 miles back to our van he rode in the Ergo carrier and fell asleep. We had plenty of water, but it was a really hot hike. There was hardly any shade and we were going in the middle of the day. When we finished we went and picked up some firewood and went back to our campsite.

I worked on the dinner and the kids played by the river and in the tent. I was having a hard time with the fire because I didn't have any kindling, so the kids gathered some. I FINALLY got a good fire going, and dinner cooking on the campstove. Right about when dinner was done I puked in the bushes by our van. It was dark now, and so I served up dinner, but could hardly eat anything. I had had a headache for a couple of hours. All 4 of us sat by the fire and ate our dinner, (I could hardly eat any) but the kids LOVED what I cooked, and said I should make it all the time. Thankfully the time I can't possibly get them anything else to eat they actually like what I made. So they finish eating and I feel soooo miserable. So I tell them I just really want to talk to Ben, but we are about 3 miles away from cell phone service. So we all load in the van in our pj's and drive so I can talk to Ben.

When we get to cell phone service I call him and just start bawling. Telling him how sick I feel. He immediately says he will come, but I say no it will be okay, but then I proceed to puke while I am on the phone with them. Then he was adamant that I tell him what campground and what number we are at. Now keep in mind we have one vehicle and I am 190 miles away from home. Anyway Ben borrows a car from our neighbors and drives to Moab to be with me and help out, though ironically by time he got there at 2am, I had slept for a few hours and felt much much better. So much better we spent the next day at Arches.

Anyway overall we had a great time. I was really glad I took the kids camping. I learned that I will probably just go within an hour of our house if I am going to go without Ben, and I love camping with my husband. I was really glad that he came when I was so sick.

Zephyr trying to figure out what pull-ups are for

The kids at delicate arch. They were pretty tired. I kept promising them a fruit leather when we got to the arch.

That is Autumn and Prairie on the left base of the arch, and on the right-hand side of the that base. Autumn is wearing a white t-shirt. It is pretty large. I was impressed.

Close-up of Autumn and Prairie

I got someone to take a picture of me with my kids at the arch (I need to crop the man in the yllow shirt out but I was too lazy today)

Prairie sitting in her "seat" that she found, and then Zephyr had to try it too.

Our campsite by the colorado river

Autumn (on the left) and Prairie (on the right) climbing up a rock

Ben and the kids sitting on a ledge on one of the fins (large rock formation).

close up of Ben and the kids on the ledge

Autumn, Zephyr and Prairie at landscape arch (Landscape arch is around 290 ft long)

Kiddos

Emily and Ben at the landscape arch

First Day of Kindergarten

Prairie had a really rough day of kindergarten so I didn't feel like posting pictures of her while she was at school, so now two months later I am getting to it.

We had to literally pull her into the school and then she had a 45 minute freak out session in the hall. Yelling, crying, hitting. It was pretty intense. I started crying at one point because I was so sad that she was so scared and couldn't verbalize it with us. Anyway we finally got her to calm down and she went and had a great time. We decided to take some pictures on the second day of school when she was happy to go.

First day of school outfit (at this point we didn't know she was scared)

Zephyr wanted his picture taken too

Things starting to get bad. She won't get out of the van, trying to close the door. We had to pull her out and quickly lock the doors so she wouldn't get back in.

Finishing her first day, and she enjoyed herself. (We restrained ourselves and didn't take pictures o freak out session)

Second day of school. No drama this morning, phew! Showing off her jaguar backpack.

We ran into Autumn in the hallway, and the sisters were overjoyed to see eachother.

Prairie showing us her hand and name on the wall.

First day of Second Grade

Autumn started her first day of second grade today. She was really REALLY nervous. The last two years she went to an elementary school for spanish immersion, then we decided to switch her to the elementary school in our neighborhood. We are excited to be going to school with all our our neighborhood friends, but Autumn is now doing chinese immersion and she didn't do first grade, so she has no chinese background right now.

When we dropped her off she was nervous. The teachers are extremely strict about not speaking any English in front of the students. So even with the parents the teacher will only speak chinese (lucky for us Ben took 3 semesters in college and can get by). At first the teacher told her she was in the wrong classroom (because there is another Autumn) but we all got it worked out even with the teacher only speaking Chinese.

Ben taught her how to ask a couple of questions in Chinese because the students aren't allowed to speak any English in class either. Anyway I hope it goes well today.

Autumn insisted that she needed to stand on something for first day of school pictures because of the first day of kindergarten.

It was fun to take first day of school pictures at our new house. Ironically this is not the door that we use to leave for school. Oh well.

We LOVED walking to school, and seeing so many people we knew going to and from school.

Pictures of the House

I decided it was high time to post some pictures of my house. I kept delaying because we bought a foreclosed home that was empty for 10 months, so there has been a lot that needed to be done to the house, and I kept thinking that I wanted it to look better or whatever, but I decided I was tired of that and would post pictures of it in its imperfect state. (For example Ben has been working on the sprinklers so there is piles of dirt and sod on our sidewalks.)

We have been living here for 6 months! I really can't believe that we have been here half of a year already. We absolutely adore our house, and have really found a new hobby for ourselves....home improvements! I will have to post before and after pictures of the inside. I don't have any before pictures of the outside. The grass was completely yellow when we moved in because it wasn't watered at all last summer.

***disclaimer: The yard hasn't been mowed for a while, the grass hasn't been watered for over a week because Ben has been trying desperately to fix our sprinklers, and we have been putting in our own fence, so this is a realistic look at our house, not a pretty staged one.

This is our house viewed from the street

This is the view of our property from the corner (we have a corner house). Also that is NOT our Porsche, we are just renting out part of our driveway.

This is the view of our house from the other street. The garage is on the basement floor. Our house was built in two stages. the basement was the only thing built for a long time, but then a family bought the house and decided to build the upstairs and that was in 1949.

The side yard by the basement door.

A view of the garage, and the porch on top of the garage with our 12 ft picture window

A view of the porch and the front door on the main floor.

The huge porch. the kids LOVE playing here, doing scooters and small bikes and whatever else. Even though that huge window is southern facing, it really doesn't get a lot of heat coming through it during the summer because of the large tree that shades the porch.

The sidewalk leads around the house to the backyard. This fence is very new, like Ben finished it last night. We now have an area of our yard that is fenced in and we can let our dog out, we are so excited!

This is the side of the house, and where the yard is fenced. That door goes into our kitchen.

This is the fenced in backyard

This is the two story playhouse in the backyard, that is a little rough but has a lot of potential.

This is the view from my kitchen door.

more views

This is the view of the side yard by the basement door, viewed from the porch

From the kitchen door looking to the front yard

Views from the porch swing on the front porch by the front door

View of our double driveway (why we have space to rent out)