Freeze Frame

For the past 6 months or so, I have wished I could freeze Olivia.  I am enjoying this little girl so much and it saddens me just a little to see her get bigger (not sad enough to have another one though :)

Olivia has a great sense of humor.  She makes me laugh every day.  I love her selectively grown up vocabulary like when we were heading to the lake one day and I asked her if she could see the water and she responded “eet not the water, eet ACTUALLY a lake!” 

When you call her silly or a princess or any other pet name, she will correct you and say in the sweetest but tiniest bit annoyed voice, “No, I’m just Olivia!”

She loves her status as the baby of the family.  I fear she may never leave the comfort of her crib or brave the toilet. I have tried to bribe her to go on the potty with a new big girl bed (I can’t wait to redo the girls’ room and get rid of that old nasty crib and changing table) but she respectfully declines. “It’s okay, I like to sleep in my crib.” 

She has a loud voice!  It’s not obnoxiously loud, just loud enough for the youngest in a loud family of four to be heard.  She does not let you forget about her!

I love this little girl.  She is a special spirit and although I look forward  to having her potty trained and a little more independent, I am soaking up these precious moments.

Sipping Cider

It has become a family tradition to press our own apple cider at the farm.  When they are all done giving apples away, we make cider out of the leftovers.  It is SO yummy.  Sydney wrote about pressing cider for a writer celebration at school, so I will let her tell the story. . .                                                         

Bye Bye Birdy

This is Firework.  We didn’t mean to get a rooster, but it happens sometimes.  He was a favorite among the kids because of his beautiful array of colors.  He enjoyed being the boss of the chicken condo and was growing rapidly.  Then one morning, Garth and I awoke to him crowing.  It is fall, so luckily the crowing wasn’t terribly early but we heard in nonetheless.  We tolerated it for a while but he was crowing all day long and we just knew our neighbors were silently hating us. 

One Saturday, I was off in Idaho at a dance clinic with Sydney and Garth decided Firework needed to go.  With the help of Google and some YouTube videos, Garth turned our beloved Firework, into dinner.  Carter couldn’t watch but later helped pluck feathers off of him.  The little two couldn’t stop talking about it (they still tell everyone about it).  I was shocked and Sydney almost cried when we came home and saw what was left of him in the fridge.  Garth made a delicious orange chicken and fried rice dinner and that was the end of our rooster problem!

Fall Summary

We had a full Fall this year.  Since I was without a computer for a few weeks, I thought I’d throw all of these pictures into one post. . . just to get them done. 

Garth is enjoying his pressure washer and recruited Carter to be his helper on the roof one day while he washed our house. 

I have been watching Sydney’s friend Carly a couple of mornings a week when her mom has to leave early for work.  These two are like peas in a pod.  They love to dress alike or at least have me do their hair the same for school.

Sydney is little miss creative.  In the mix of figuring out what everyone would be for Halloween, she found this box and made Derek his very own Buzz Lightyear costume.  It didn’t make it till Halloween but it was super fun for a day or two.

I did lots and lots and lots of canning.  It was exhausting. . . for everyone.

Sunday best.  Halloween version.

Halloween, as usual, was super busy.  We started with the school’s Harvest Festival Friday Night.

Halloween day, I took the little one’s to Garth’s office for the annual “cubicle trick-or-treating”

A friend from Carter’s football team had a bunch of the boys over for some pizza, fear factor games, and trick-or-treating.  The houses in their neighborhood are closer together than ours so it made for a pleasant trick-or-treating experience for the littler ones.

I even got Garth to dress up as a Ricks cheerleader with me.  What a good sport he is!

Again, we have Grandma Theresa to thank for the great mummy and Red Riding Hood costumes.  What would we do without her? 

It was one of those falls that was so hectic, we never even carved our pumpkins!  Oh well, there is always next year.

Family Pictures 2011

I've been wanting to have our family pictures done at Norm & Ele's farm for quite a while.  I figured now was a good time.  All the kids walk, none currently have weird teeth,  nobody has started getting zits (except me. . .you'd think I could stop that nonsense since I'm in my 30's).  Anyway, Emily Mikkelson did a great job and managed to catch some pictures that capture the essence of my kids at their favorite place on earth, "the farm."

You wouldn’t know it by looking at the pictures, but Olivia was a total pill.  It was hard work to get any pictures of her.  When we were all done, Garth looked at me and said, “We’re not doing that again until she’s eight!”