2014 Week Forty-Two | October 13-19

Try not to faint, but today is actually October 19, and I'm posting the same day as the actual week. It's pretty amazing.  I'm no where near caught up in my physical album, but this week is scrapped, so it gives the feeling that I'm caught up...

It was easy to pull together this week as I took a ton of pictures this weekend with my family in town. Annaliese helped out a bit in the picture taking department, too.  I had the camera on the tripod from late last week when I was taking pictures of the moon rising at night.  Darrin showed her how to work the time delay and she would set the camera and frame the shot, the press the shutter release and run to get in front of the camera.  Unfortunately, I had it on manual focus from my moon shots, so some of hers were completely out of focus, but her composition of the pictures was awesome, and her adorableness showed through in every photo.

Family in towns means lots of..... drum roll...... family time.    Game playing. Book reading. Wrestling. Playing cars.  And secret agents.  And crying because the boys won't let you play with them.

We tried a new pumpkin patch while they were all here this weekend, Camp Fontanelle.  The kids had a blast, and the fact that it was half the price as the other patches around here made me pretty darn happy.  Both my kiddos said the jumping pillow was their favorite thing.  They spent most of their time jumping, between the pillow and the bounce castle.  It was a big enough place we needed maps, and since I did such a wonderful job when we were in the corn maze, someone else needed to take over.   I enjoyed watching the kids in the petting zoo; seeing Ian's reaction to feeding the alpacas and goats was awesome. Annaliese loved to pet the bunnies, but was too scared to hold her hand out and feed the animals.

2014 Week Thirty-Seven and Thirty-Eight | September 8 - 21

As I was going back and working on pictures for September, I had a harsh realization when I only had three pictures for an entire week.  So it's getting combined with another one.  

First Sunday of Sunday School there were big balloons in the courtyard after church.  

The kids loved popping and chasing the big balloons. You could even blow back at them, creating smaller bubbles inside the bigger ones.  

We bought some new furniture for the new house and this has quickly been established as the best seat.  It's called a 1.5 chair, but it seems to hold two very well.  

One of the reasons I couldn't wait for a new house was to have the space to finally buy a piano.  So this picture makes me one very happy momma. She's played on it every day since getting it, and Ian has practically, too.  Now to figure out lessons.  

Annual fall apple picking trip. We tried a new orchard this year because it is close to our new town.  It was their annual apple festival, so the place was packed. Unfortunately, the quality of apples weren't as great as other orchards we've gone to in the past, because it's a lot more convenient to drive 15 minutes than over an hour for apples.  

Fun in the bounce houses at the orchard apple festival. 

She was in heaven at the apple orchard meeting Anna and Elsa. She's wearing shorts, imagine how hot the princess are!

Yep, even got me in a shot at the orchard.

She can pose like no other. She also wanted her toes painted, so she took it upon herself while I was working in the garage to paint her toenails.  She was so proud of herself, and I was happy she was able to do it by myself, because it's not something I enjoy doing.  

It's the last half of September, and it was warm enough for the kids to get in the pool . It probably should have been winterized already, but it's hard when we have warm weekends to cover it up.  

The best helpers a girl can get. I finished the cabinets to my craft table this week, and then we focused on the desk top, which is a hollow core door, topped with wood laminate flooring and trimmed to hold it in place, all purchased from Habitat from Humanity.  

2014 Week Thirty-Six | September 1 - 7

Most of the pictures from this week are at my cousin's wedding on Friday night.  As I've been going back through September's pictures and realizing how few I've taken, I think I need to start taking pictures of the things I take for granted, like our dinners together as a family, the kids working on homework when we get home from school, and the other seemingly mundane, but oh-so-important stuff of the week.

Cousins impatiently waiting for dinner.  Thankfully there were rolls on the table they got to dig in to.  

My dancing queen. Couldn't keep her off the dance floor. She even managed to drag me out and get me to dance with her.  That video will end up in the scrapbook with these pictures (thanks to a QR code), but not here for all to see.  

Silly dancer.  And this was about the only shot I got of Ian that night. He wasn't on the dance floor much. More content to run around with the other boys, and hang out by the food. Did I mention they had ice cream sundaes along with cake- be still my heart (a page out of our wedding reception 10 years earlier).  

My two favorite shots of the night.  The picture on the left just makes me smile and makes my heart happy. That is my girl right there; all innocent and sweet.  And then the picture on the right of her snuggling with my dad; love watching the relationship my parents, and Darrin's parents, have with the kids.    

The day after, the boys playing a game of football in Great Billie's basement.  Ian is the youngest of the group in second, the oldest is in 6th, and the other two in the middle. Poor Annaliese had to just be an onlooker.  

Before we left for the wedding, we took the top off corner hutch and put up a new flat screen.  Needed to take the top off to get to where the cords go.  If I had to place a bet as to what Annaliese would be doing after school, I would say 80% of the time, she has a pad of paper and some type of writing utensil in her hand. She's either interviewing us ("Mom, what does love mean to you? What is your favorite color? Movie? Food?"), or she knows what she wants to write and she's asking us how to spell it, or she's just writing random letters. And usually there's always a picture to go with.  

2014 Week Thirty-Five | August 25 - August 31

Trying to play catch-up...

He's been reading this book, one of my favorites from my childhood, every free moment he gets.  Heck with Legos, the pool, or any other toys. If he's not playing his video game, he's reading The Trolley Car Family.  

Annaliese learned to ride without training wheels this week.  She couldn't make it in a full circle in our driveway, and couldn't start or stop, but she was maintaining her balance on the straight stretches. Amazing to me for a 4-year-old. 

There were very few moments this week when the sun actually shined... 

Darrin and I had been talking about trying some different pizzas for awhile, and this one was definitely a hit- BBQ pulled pork with diced apples and smoked Gouda cheese.  I think next time, I'll cook the apples a bit to soften them up and add some caramelized onions. But this was soooo yummy like this. 

Grabbed some lunch after church at Firehouse Subs.  First time for the kids.  They both loved the hats they got, and, well, Ian loved his sandwich.  

Brought home the game Bananagrams from work. Everyone pulls a tiles from a center pile and works to make their own crossword, using all their tiles.  Darrin ended up dominating, and neither of them ended up loving it as much as I do. 

Annaliese came home from school with her hair like this and I had to do a double-take.  I can't touch her hair without a huge battle, but apparently Mr. George at school can.  He said she was complaining about being hot while outside and offered to braid it.  Wish my skills were as good as his.  

2014 Week Thirty-Four | August 18 - 24

The second week of school.  Work was really overwhelming that week, and it was nice to take time on the weekend to just enjoy ourselves.  Most of the pictures are of the weekend, because the weeks consisted of going to work, getting home and making dinner, doing bedtime, then doing more work to get ready for work.  

It's not exactly clear which house is ours from the road, so I put  my cameo to work and cut our house number out of vinyl and finally one of the projects I wanted to do for the house was done. 

Annaliese has been practicing swimming without her life jacket lately, and has really gotten quite good at it.   She loves to swim from the ladder to one of us, and then back again.  She can make it in one breath, too. 

Choosing paint colors for a project.  Ended up letting Annaliese pick. She went with one of the purples, of course. 

Love moments like these.  

I didn't think this dish would go over well with the family, with the zucchini and  tomato chunks, but surprisingly, everyone loved it. 

This girl is all about school stuff and learning.  She's going to be so ready for kindergarten next year.  Her favorite thing to do right now is interview Darrin and I. "Mom, what does love mean to you?" is just one of the many questions she's asked. And then she proceeds to write letters down on paper to document it.  She will also ask how to spell particular words so she can get it correct.   When she's not writing letters, she's coloring or drawing.  Ian is our reader, she is our writer.  

On Saturday, Ian went to a birthday party for his best friend from first grade.  It was the first time he'd seen him since we moved.  They loved the mobile gaming experience for the party, playing Minecraft and Lego Indiana Jones.  Annaliese wanted to go grocery shopping with me, so we grabbed lunch at HyVee before shopping. She was in heaven with her plate full of fruit and pudding.   

2014 Week Thirty-Three | August 11 to 17

In my last post, I talked about the start of school, and with that, routine.  Around here, though, the routine has been stay at school late working, come home, make dinner, play outside, do bedtime routine, then continue working on school work. Thus is the life of  teacher.  I did spend some time this past weekend choosing pictures for week thirty-three.

Ian's first day.  Continuing the tradition of pictures by the easel every year.  This year, with the move, means a new school. So far on day 12 of school, he really enjoys the change. 

The front of our house faces east. This was the sunrise on the first day of school. First time in a long time we were up early enough to see the sun rise.  

At our old house, the routine was always a bit of screen time after they were home, had a snack, and homework was done.  In the new house, though, we have a new routine, alternating pool one day after school and screen time the next.  They always have a blast in the pool, but they always whine when I pick them up from school on pool days begging to have screen time instead.  While the weather is good, though, we have to get as much pool time in as possible.  At least that's what I tell them.  

As Darrin and I were going to bed this week, we noticed Annaleise's light was still on.  We went up, and found her like this.  When I asked her about it the next morning, she said she had wanted to stay up and read books like Ian does. 

Spent my first weekend after teaching filling nail holes and sanding down the base cabinets for my scrapbooking table.

Just two pictures being her adorable self.  On the left, she snapped that of herself.  On the right, she was dressed up on Sunday after church in her brother's cowboy boots and carrying the purse she got at church in the swap meet. 

Two pictures of Ian. On the left, at church, laying under the chairs during service on Sunday. He brings a book to church every Sunday, and apparently this position was comfortable. He's reading one of the books in the "How to Train Your Dragon" series.  On the right, his best friend from first grade had a birthday party on Saturday in which they rented the gaming experience truck.  Ian had a great time playing Minecraft and Lego Indiana Jones, which he has already asked to get for home.