11.11.11

what are we doing on this monumental date in history? we are gearing up for meagan's first meet. that's what we're doing.

she has her very first gymnastics meet tomorrow, and i have a list a mile long of things that need to get bought, packed, and done before we head out. but my to-do list is by no means the focus of today. she is. she is beyond excited. and more than a little nervous. she chattered about her meet all morning while i did her hair. she told me (and showed me) how you make pretty hands for dance elements and soluting judges. she told me that you get higher scores if you point your toes, have straight legs, and keep your feet together. she told me that she isn't all the way ready for this meet yet.

i told her it's not time to focus on the scores yet. that her day of being a rock star gymnast is coming, but that it's okay if it's not tomorrow. that tomorrow her focus should be checking out the meet and seeing what it's all about. it should be trying to get her floor routine to line up with the music (since she has never yet actually PRACTICED it with the music, that in itself would be an accomplishment all on its own). i told her to set a few goals, like staying on the beam, or sticking her landings on dismounts. she said, 'my goal is to do everything great.' hmmm... i don't think she was listening in all that time i was talking *lol* what can i say, my daughter is a hyper competitive perfectionist. not sure what else there is to say about that.

anyway, in preparation for their first meet, they had a mock meet earlier this week at their tuesday practice. she wanted to have curly hair, so we curled it all up. this was her for school on monday actually:


then she slept on it monday night, and we pulled it back into a spider web on tuesday for practice...

you should have SEEN the excitement and buzz in the gym on tuesday. it was a sea of glittery leotards, fancy hair do's and over-the-top giddy little girls. giddy.


parents weren't allowed to stay for the mock meet... not enough seating, plus maybe a bit of a distraction to the girls who really just needed to focus on what the coaches were saying. BUT i did manage to see her beam routine. she was just mounting when i got there to pick her up. she stayed on. it wasn't a train wreck. it was actually pretty cute. maybe not technically spectacular, but super adorable nonetheless.

so yes, tomorrow at 8:00 am the show starts. it should be quite a day. it will, at a minimum, be a VERY early morning for us. please be praying for her and her teammates that this will be a positive experience for them. i'll let you know how it goes.

p.s. sorry for the horrible picture quality... these came from my cell phone, and they were all pretty much taken in horrible lighting with very little chance at a still shot. lol
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fyi

it's snowing.

that is all.

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the bad A word

meagan informed me tuesday after gymnastics that one of her teammates had said the bad "a" word during practice. my response was something to the effect of 'that's not a nice thing to say. we shouldn't talk like that' blah blah blah. she went further to say that sometimes her brothers also say the bad 'a' word, to which sebastian IMMEDIATELY took the defensive declaring he doesn't say that stuff... ever... oddly, isaac stayed pretty quiet *lol*. so the conversation went on for a few more minutes, talking about the way we choose to use our words, and so on. then there was a moment of silence, which was broken by meagan saying, "annoying. that's the bad 'a' word isn't it mamma? annoying isn't a nice word to say.'

i couldn't help but do a mental forehead slap. i KNOW better than to assume i know what's going on in her brain. i didn't see that one coming at all. so now i know why she was throwing her brothers under the bus *lol*. she went on to make sure there was a distiniction made between annoyING and annoyED. apparently, annoyed is an okay word to say because you're saying how YOU feel. but annoyING is calling somebody else something that's not nice, so we shouldn't say that. i guess i see her point. so i learned something new. and got a good laugh in the process.

motherhood is never dull.

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smell my feet

okay, it's only taken me a week and a day to get this handful of pictures edited and uploaded to share with you. *shrug* i have no excuses other than being busy. sorry to keep you waiting. i figured at some point the saying 'better late than never' might not even apply, and so maybe i should get these guys up here before christmas rolls around. ya think?

so without further adeu, our halloween 2011 pictures... well, a few of them...




(little sisters. *rolls eyes*)


(this, by the way, is just about the only photo i have of sebastian looking at the camera with his eyes open. he seemed to keep ducking out of camera range... quite the opposite of his sister... i know i said it last year too, but it just seems like he is on the cusp of being 'too old' for all this jazz. makes me a bit sad.)


i dare you to look at these next two without at least smiling. she cracks me up!! this might be a face only a mother could love? *lol*



like i said, our trick-or-treat trip around the neighborhood was brief. not a lot of houses participated. and our neighborhood isn't all that big to begin with. so i didn't get to be the mammarazzi that i usually am. but i got a few pictures, and we had a good time. and it was BEAUTIFUL weather. for that i was VERY thankful!


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Polka Dot Pumpkin Cupcakes

I found this recipe on verybestbaking.com and tried it last night for desert. On those evenings when I make a not-so-favorite meal, or one that's new to us (which I think both could have applied last night), I try to make desert to kind of ease the pain of trudging through the dinner part. So these were desert last night. They were pumpkin-y and tasty. And I made a tray of mini's for after-school snack today.




Credits: Sahlin Studio Kitschy Kitchen Mixed Media

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this is how we boo

finally the halloween season is behind us. while halloween admittedly is my least favorite of all the heavily-celebrated holidays, i confess that i rather enjoy certain aspects of it. i do enjoy the pretties - the decorations and glittery things, the fall colors, and even the bats & spiders. i enjoy the costumes and the candy and the fun parts of it, even if the day itself is quite yucky.

so i thought it would be fun to put a mini album together to kind of highlight all of the fun things we've done this halloween season to celebrate and enjoy the holiday. i used papers from allison pennington's for the love of halloween papers:


I also used Sahlin Studio's monogram journalers on just about every page. those are great every-day must-have's in the digi stash. 1 million percent versatile! love them!

anyway, here's the album... it will have to suffice for a glimpse at costumes until i can get a few more photos edited.

COVER

PUMPKIN PATCH

SCHOOL PARTIES & INSIDE DECORATIONS

SPIDER PUMPKINS

OUTSIDE DECORATIONS

CHILDREN'S MUSEUM HAUNTED HOUSE

CANDY APPLES & COOKIES

COSTUMES

TRICK OR TREATING & PASSING OUT CANDY

CANDY SWAP & TV TRADITIONS


all of the envelope pages will have additional 4x6 photos of that particular event (like the kids making their spider pumpkins, or each of their costumes, and so on... i just haven't gotten the 4x6's printed yet).

this album was super easy to make. i used a pack of kraft envelopes and 5x7 notecards that i got at hobby lobby 50% off (so like $4 for 50 cards & envelopes). i had 5x7 printed at snapfish and picked them up at my local meijer. then i adhered the photos to the cards, punched holes in each card, and bound the album with 2 jump rings that i had on hand.

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update

don't throw stones. i KNOW it's been over a week with no updates.

sometimes life is busy. too busy to sit and blog and edit pictures and whatever else.

so i thought i'd give you all a quick update before i go get read for the day. at least this way you know i'm still around. so here you go, an update of sorts, in random bullet point format.... *lol*

* we went trick or treating. there were very few houses participating. kind of a bummer. but they still have 3 buckets of candy, so i guess it worked out.

* tomorrow is gymnastics picture day. i'm about pictured out. school pictures. football pictures. gymnastics pictures. small fortunes for printed paper. *sigh*

* the door MANUFACTURER is coming to our house today to see if he can figure out why our door leaks. personally, i say, 'who cares WHY it leaks. it leaks. give me a new one.' clearly we are on two different pages at the moment.

* i made pumpkin muffins for desert yesterday. and bean soup for dinner. surprisingly, my two pickiest eaters both LIKED the bean soup. who knew?! i'll try to come back and post the recipe for the muffins later. it's pumpkin season, yum!

* i have managed to at least find the floor in the closet. i have a lot of organizing and arranging and sorting to do in there still. that is quite the undertaking.

* we got a king size bed. my parents had one in their guest room that they wanted to get rid of (downsizing to a full that will fit in there better i think). so they gave us the king. and we about peed our pants laughing at ourselves trying to move this thing up the stairs to our bedroom. poor lucas has ME for a lifting partner *rofl*

* tomorrow is grandparents' day / special person day at isaac and meagan's school. my mom is coming. she'll be meagan's special person, and i'll be isaac's. should be a good morning.

* we are coming up on meagan's 1st gymnastics meet. it's next weekend, and she is starting to get nervous. team pictures are tomorrow, and next week they will do a mock meet at one of their practices.

okay, so since the door people are coming in about 2 hours, i should go get cleand up and dressed. somehow i think pj's are inappropriate attire when conducting a 'give me a new door' meeting. i'll see if i can get some time later to come back and post a few things.

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your time is coming

i threw this together in about 15 minutes last night... just a fun, quick layout warning our new-found pumpkins of their impending doom. bwaahh haaa haaa haaa!



(click here to view full credits)

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the pumpkin train

i love it when we have the chance to do something out of the ordinary with our kids. even better is when extended family can be involved as well. i think it just makes for great memories. how can i not want that for my children?

yesterday we had a day like that. we took a train ride to a pumpkin patch. we spent about an hour there, picking out pumpkins, of course. but there were also a few farm animals to pet, and a hay maze to go through, and a ring toss game (that isaac loved because he LOVES to win trinkets as prizes. LOVES it), and a hay ride to and from the fields. it was a very simple, no-fuss, back to basics way to spend the early part of our day.

the train departed from the transportation museum at the park in town. meagan was beyond excited to be going on a train destined for a field full of pumpkins! she was definitely ready to go!


while we waited to board, there were engines and cars and cabooses to peek at. they have a collection of old - some VERY old - trains that are waiting to be restored. i'm so thankful that someone cares enough to restore and maintain something that was such an integral part of our culture at one time. sadly, if no one does it, these giants of the past threaten to slip out of our awareness altogether. i love that our kids have had so many chances to see trains up close and to enjoy them and develop a love and fascination with them.




(don't you love how excited meagan is? she's great! and sebastian is always so serious. it's funny how different they are.)





it seems boys will FIND a way to see inside those compartments and cubbies they want to see into. *lol*

on the ride there, meagan made a simple, yet profound observation. she said the best part of the train ride is that you can just sit and talk, and you don't have to be distracted by where you're going like you do when you're driving. she really values quality time, and no other statement could have made that any more clear.










meagan was really the only one (besides grandpa) who got excited about petting the farm animals. but she was thrilled with it, despite her brothers' disinterest. she saw an opportunity to learn and enjoy, and she took it.




i swear this was this girl's dream come true - to have a wide open field full of pumpkins at her disposal. she took off running through the pumpkins, headed straight for the biggest one she could find (there weren't many big ones left, since we're so late in the season, and many of them had holes in them and were beginning to rot. but she did manage to find one that was big enough for her liking, so she was happy.)




the boys had a good time, too. don't get me wrong. they are just so much more subdued about their enjoyment. they no longer wear it out there for the world to see. i guess they're just getting too grown up to run around care-free all the time. :(




grandpa wore meagan's gloves while she was picking her pumpkins.




(i don't know what it is about these far away pictures, but i just love them)

riding home with the loot.... it was a good thing we had an extra seat in our section...




when we got back to the park, grandma stopped in the shop to find the kids each a t-shirt to help them remember the day (as if they could ever forget it). i snapped a few pics of them just hanging around waiting, and i was pleasantly surprised at how they turned out.




it was a long morning, and we were all quite hungry, so we made a straight line to logan's steakhouse for lunch before grandma & grandpa headed back home. what a great day!

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