avoidance is pretty much my number one coping mechanism

this is the time of year when the photos start accumulating, i can't help it, it's just so beautiful and so i just keep shooting. and we have so many traditions associated with autumn, trips to the pumpkin patch, gardner village, and always a photo shoot or two in the beautiful leaves to name a few. i have oodles of good stuff to post, lots of fun happenings. but this week is a little too insane to try and spend a bunch of time editing photos and telling all their stories. and some weeks i just don't feel the blogger spirit, i'm sure it's just feeling overwhelmed and so i'm avoiding it all completely. that's pretty much my number one coping mechanism. so for now, i'm posting one of one hundred fall photos i have in my ever growing "latest from camera" folder. and i'm posting it straight out of the camera - meaning no photoshop touching at all (gasp!). oh man, what a cutie.

early casting

i knew ahead of time that election day was going to be a very busy day for me, and i knew i wouldn't have a chance to get to the poles to vote. so ethan and i took a trip to the library for some early casting. i ended up having to fill out a paper ballot because of our recent address change. i was annoyed at first at having to fill in all the little circles with a ball point pen, it took forever. but in the end i liked it better because i got to fold my ballot up, seal the envelope and drop it in the big silver ballot box myself.it felt very official where the credit card swipey method feels more like a visit to the atm machine. while i was taking a photo of myself voting, i noticed that the old lady election judges, sitting at the table next to the ballot box, were looking at me like i was from outer space. maybe i am from outer space, but to me, voting is a big, big deal. i'm just so thankful to have the privilege to do it.

**have YOU voted yet?**

**what are you waiting for?**

spt - 100 things edition

i'm a little behind on the spts, two weeks to be exact and so this is a two for one. as a reminder, lelly's spt challenge this month is revisiting our 100 things about me list (mine's on the side) and elaborating a little more on numbers 7, 14, 21, and 28...check out lelly's blog and take the challenge yourself - you won't regret it!

on the with spt. my number fourteen is "i was born with rose colored glasses on my eyes". i've always naturally tried to see the good in everyone and i'm definitely a "the glass is half full" kind of a girl. this can be good, i mean really, it's not bad to have a cheery disposition, even mary poppins taught us that. but it does mean that i sometimes miss the bad stuff that you're supposed to see. the bad stuff that everyone else seems to see. i think that's called niavite. i think "gift of discernment" as come to me later in life, mostly through life experiences and so i would say i'm definitely a better judge of character, especially my own and i'm way better at listening to hair that stands on end when something is not quite right, but it's taken a while to perfect that skill. i still try to see the world with rose colored glasses, i don't think it's an entirely bad thing. in fact, pink is a great thing for drowning out the grey.

my number twenty-one is "i appreciate genuine people and try to be one myself as much as possible". funny how both of these spts are bi-products of growing up and life experience. i guess it's just that the older i get, the less tolerance i have for fake people, investing in them is such a waste of time and energy, i just don't have any extra of either of those things. for a long time i felt like i had to be a certain kind of teenager, then later, a certain kind of mom, a certain kind of housekeeper, homemaker, scraperbooker, photographer, body type (still struggling with this one), the list goes on forever. at some point i realized how dumb that is because i could never really be my best self while persuing someone else's. i don't really think it was meant to be a competition. so i try, as much as i can, to be genuinely me. this means, i'm not the perfect mom, we DO eat white bread here sometimes (GASP!), i DO have an untidy house sometimes and i don't enjoy laundry, not every photograph is award winning and yes i have way too much junk in my trunk. but i'm fun dammit, and i'm learning to embrace all of it. (except my grey hair - this photo is of my very UN-genuine hair that gets dyed every 5-6 weeks!) it's a life long process.

i heart technology

so i logged on to facebook a few days ago to try to spy on some old high school friends and ended up finding a whole bunch of people that i grew up with including some from my old ward in virginia. even though i feel a little like i'm in the twilight zone, and even though the last couple nights my dreams have been about being back in high school (bleh), it's been fun to check in and see what's up with everyone. the best part is that i found laura lee! marci and i have been looking for her forever, i did a post about it a while back - click here to refresh your memory. so now that we found here all we need is a sleep-over reunion so we can try to re-creat these photos...oh c'mon! i don't have those pjs any more, and i wouldn't fit into them even if i did, but i still think we could pull it off! or maybe we could all go goth to the next new year's eve stake dance...what? it worked in 1988! wow, bad flash, bad flash! anyway, the point is, we found her and now my list could say "reunited with TWO old friends", and two is always better than one. well, ok, not always, but in this case, for sure.

teenager

could it be true? thirteen years old? as in teen-ager? when did this happen? when did i give permission for this to happen? i guess if i have to live with teenagers at my house, i would choose allie. aside from the occasional sassing (which we're working on) and attitude adjusting (which we're also working on), she is a delightful girl who we all enjoy. we celebrated by going to mimi's house (our house was covered in mucky dry-wall) for cake and ice cream.like taylor, allie already knew her big ticket birthday gift because she came with me to try them on the saturday before - we had to have them ready in time for her birthday. she has been waiting for toe shoes since she was a tiny ballerina and so it was very fitting that her first day dancing in them happened to be her birthday! it was so fun for me to see the look of joy on her face as she tried on all the different shoes at the store, this girl loves to dance, and i love that she has something that she feel so passionate about. some time soon i we need to do a ballerina photo shoot, it's been a long time and they're such beautiful photos i'm trying to remember why i don't do them more often.

so happy birthday to my now THIRTEEN year old daughter, sweet little allie girl. ten things i love about alexandra...

1. she always has some kind of exciting story to tell accompanied by teenager girl voice dramatics and hand motions. i remember being this way when i was her age, maybe i'm still this way?

2. she is an incredible help whether it is tending ethan or chores around the house, she is my right hand girl and i don't know what i would do without her!

3. she is a hard worker and so smart! she is a straight a student!

4. she is very laid back and gets along well with everyone, she doesn't take anything too seriously, including her self.

5. allie loves to sew and has made some pretty awesome things, including clothes she wears to school, with the help of aunts and grandma's. soon i'll post her and grandma's latest project - it blew me away! this talent definitely came from her grandma's because i am NOT a sewer.

6. she loves to cook and is almost always found in the kitchen next to me wearing an apron (that she sewed) helping me make cupcakes or whatever is for dinner. (i can't believe i don't have a more recent photo of us doing this! look how little she was!) she also loves to bake treats with girlfriends when they come over to hang out.

7. she has an infectious smile thats good for everyone around her. 8. she fills our home with lovely piano music.9. she has mad polishing skills. she can paint anything on your toe or fingernails, i'm always surprised by what she comes up with. i also love that this is another girlfriend pass-time. whenever they get together allie always loves to give everyone a pedicure and paint their toes with daisies.and really, who doesn't love getting a pedicure?!

10. she is 100% all girl and loves everything girlie, make up, getting dressed up, ballet, shopping, purses, mud masks, spa tratments, girlfriends, all of it. and i love it, because we're a little out-numbered around here!

**i love you allie bob-wa! happy birthday!**

happy birthday lauri!

so i am behind, like, WAY behind, but my goal tonight is to get caught up starting with lauri's birthday! friendship is one of the best and biggest blessing in my life. there is something especially extra wonderful about my friendship with lauri, i'm certain i knew her before this life! i'm grateful for her love and cherish her friendship, she is a gift to me! we celebrated her birthday a couple of creative thursdays ago with pumpkin pie because lauri loves anything pumpkin. in fact, pumpkins make me think of her! so here's my list of ten things i love about laur - even though i could think of 100...

1. when the phone rings around lunch time, i know it's lauri ready to drop everything and get me out of the house for a bajio salad!2. she has the most beautiful eyes ever - they never need a photoshop touch up, they're just naturally crystaly clear and gorgeous.

3. she is very genuine - what you see is what you get.

4. we have so many inside jokes and spend plenty of time laughing. she can always lift my spirits.

5. her and phil are a blast to vacation with - we have done several now and they have been our favorite vacations by far.

6. she is very self-motivated even though she thinks she's not - she exercises every day!

7. she is an STP (same twenty people!) at church. she has been in more yw and primary presidenies (usually the president) than i can think to count, she just finished her primary program YAY!

8. she is an advocate for her children, they are lucky to have her.9. she adores her husband, he is lucky to have her too.

10. she is a closet singer who dreams of being on broadway with a lovely voice but is afraid to sing in public.

***i love you lauri! happy happy birthday!***

too good to last

all good things must come to an end, rich's vacation is no exception. he still has a few weeks left of comp time to take but we're going to wait until the holidays so he can be home when the kids are home from school. i'm so excited for how long their christmas break is this year! ethan was not happy about letting him go, when i told him to, "say bye to papa, he has to go to work", i got a broken up little voice saying, "bye papa", it was the saddest dang thing you ever heard. then he watched him pull out of the drive way from our big living room window with these puppy eyes - poor kid, first the kids go back to school and now dad goes back to work. we have all enjoyed having rich home this past two weeks. we didn't really do a ton, we spent several days in our pjs watching movies and playing play dough with ethan. i did talk him into a few little trips out of the house though, like grocery shopping, the children's tree house museum in ogden - we love that place... and to gardner village for tuesday play date with the cousins......and i started cooking dinners again, it was nice to sit down as a whole family to the table.

besides being ethan's playmate and my sanity base, it was really bad timing for rich to head back to work. a few minutes after he left i noticed a giant puddle of water on the kitchen floor and big "bubbles" of water all down one of the walls! crap! long story short, phil ripped out my kitchen cabinets and dug a big hole in the ceiling to find a persistant leak in the copper pipes above. the ceiling is ruined and perhaps a wall or two but everything else should dry-out. phil to the rescue...again. i guess this is good news, but really i thought maybe it was my chance for a new kitchen, oh well. i knew there was a reason i had procrastinated painting the cabinets...

SPT - 100 things about me

during the month of october, lelly's SPT challenge is to elborate on our 100 things about me list, today is #7. (if you want to see my list, there's a link to it on my side bar). i wrote out my list a long time ago to try to jump start my blog, it's appropriate now i guess that i examine it a little closer. i'll be honest, #7 is kind of a tough place to start, "i wish my husband would agree to having another baby", is sort of a can of worms that leaves me feeling torn between diving all the way in, or just skimming the surface...

i've been sitting at the keyboard now for several minutes trying to simplify the whole thing: my feelings, rich's feelings, depression and trying to fill the hole in my soul with food, guilt over feeling sad about it because i'm so blessed have four other beautiful children that i adore, feeding the guilt with more food, my obsession with odd numbers, letting go of my own plan and embracing god's plan instead, worrying about ethan being a loner, anger, feeling spiritualy, emotionally & physically 'stuck' and unsure, etc. so much could be said about each of these things, it's just so complicated, so gray where i prefer more black and white. most days i feel really ok about calling our family complete. some days it feels more like denial. the bottom line is that i haven't yet come full circle, i'm still healing, still figuring out what i'm supposed to be learning from this life experience. so far: enjoying the moment, gratitude for my family and blessings, and especially, empathy. so even though i have moments that are still tough, there is light at the end of this tunnel where for a long time there wasn't, and so, life. is. good. really. i mean, look how lucky i am!

**will you go to lelly's blog and take this SPT challenge?**

**are you striving for contentment?**

recharging

it was a perfect weekend for staying home, in my pajamas and slippers mostly, cozy on the couch with an embroidery project (my first), to watch conference. it's finally cold and rainy today, i've been waiting for the cold, where has it been! i made everyone keep the windows open even though it was kind of chilly, it just felt so good to have cool, fresh, rainy air circulating through our house. conference weekend is such a special time for me, i'm not sure that there's anything better than listening to the encouragement of our beloved prophet and other general authorities. what a great opportunity to recharge my spiritual batteries, what beautiful and simple messages were given. from this weekend and listening to their talks, i took away HOPE and ENCOURAGEMENT and REASSURANCE and LOVE and CHARITY. and as always, they said all the things that i needed to hear. i'm so grateful, just so incredibly grateful for all the good in my life.

do you live here?

look who's finally home! ultimate band is being reviewed by nintendo for final approval. in the mean time, rich is enjoying a few weeks off while he waits to hear what they think. ethan is happy to have someone to play with during the day besides me, and all of us are happy that he's home for dinner - oh ya and help with homework. finally.