4. Sally Foster was due on Monday, so this week Patsy and I have been doing a lot of this...
As I said before, this is the PTA/volunteer job we do together. I was so not looking forward to entering all of these orders, but I was soooo looking forward to hanging out with Patsy. I am struggling with a particular parenting issue currently and I knew she was the girl to talk to because she is such an awesome mom. And I was RIGHT! I feel much better and appreciate her advice and suggestions and encouragement most of all! Plus, we just laugh so much!
5. Tuesday we got interrupted doing Sally Foster because Allie wasn't feeling well and came home to do this...
Poor Allie, she is also prone to knock-you-off-your-feet miagrains like her mom, no fun at all! She slept on the couch for FOUR hours and then woke up happy as can be. Ahhhh. A minute after Allie called, Patsy's little guy Trent called to say that he wasn't feeling well! Luckily, we have been able to make good progress on the orders so sick kids did not detour us too much. There's finally a light at the end of the Sally Foster tunnel!
6. Over the course of the last week we noticed that our hot water supply was severly lacking. Then Sunday we woke up to a freezing cold house and ZERO hot water and realized, our boiler is out. We have radiant heat (really hot water moves through pipes in th floor which heats our house - I Looooooove this type of heat btw) so it's all connected and so we are FREEZING at our house! A repair guy is finally coming tomorrow but in the mean time, I have to stop typing every few minutes to blow hot breath onto my fingers, seriously. Luckily our house has a lot of sun exposure which helps to keep the temperature up and the weather is not supposed to be really cold until the weekend. AND we all have downs on our beds, and I sleep with Rich the human space heater, sorry kids. Rich spent about 40 minutes downstairs with the heater guy and afterwards told me that unfortunately he saw WAY more than plumber's crack! I don't have anything but mental pictures for this entry, you're welcome.
7. While Patsy and I are doing Sally Foster, poor Ethan goes without attention and sometimes supervision and so I have been finding a lot of things like this lately...
He is way into the stage of toddlerhood where they want to push buttons and empty cupboards and drawers on to the floor. He has been so hard to stay on top of lately but he's so happy and curious most of the time, it's hard for me to get too mad. Poor kid, where is his mother anyway?
8. T'is the season for family Christmas card photos, which means several shoots lately which makes for a mountain of photo editing, but I did finally get Lori's baby pictures on line! YAY! Today I photographed an adorable baby Sophie, her handmade blessing dress was so beautiful, I wish I could sew like this!
9. On Saturday Rich took the kids (minus Taylor who decided he's too old now) to Grandma Todd's annual Halloween Party. She is in her nineties but she still throws a party every year for the great grandkids and younger grand kids at her house. I stayed home to paint and I sent Allie with the camera who has a great eye but later told me that all the pictures she took turned out blurry and she deleted them, bummer.
Later I found this one still on the camera and laughed so hard, obviously blurry but is too perfect an example of how Ethan has been perfecting the art of the toddler temper tantrum. He's really very good and cute MOST of the time! We all have our melt down moments I guess.
10. Have you seen me around town lately? I keep forgetting to blog about this...
I got vinyl lettering for my car to advertise
my business (thanks Stacie!) and now whenever I see people I know at the store they always say, "oh I knew you were here because I saw your van out in the parking lot!" So fun, but now I can't honk at anyone, pick my nose or do anything illegal because people will know who I am! :) The web address is way too small but I'm going to order new stuff to fix that.
11. Because of the heat/hot water issue, we have been taking field trips up to Wayne & Eileen's condo (they're in Africa) to take showers at night. It's actually been kind of nice because the kids have a quiet, distraction-free place to read and do homework while they wait for their turn in the tub.
And for whatever reason, the kids are more willing to practice on grandma's piano than on ours at home. It could be because ours is in the visiting teaching room and they have to unwrap the plastic any time they need to play. I'll try not to take that too personally.
12. Laundry heaven, well as close to heaven as laundry can get...
After 12 years of faithful service our washer and dryer were finally replaced with new models. Our old dryer was taking about 120 minutes to dry a load of regular laundry, and don't get me started on how long the denim loads were taking! I have to say that I wish we would've bought the pedistals that came with them because they are quite low, (remember that entry about Ethan's annoying stage of needing to touch all buttons) I get down on my kneeds to rotate from washer to dryer, but I feel so happy to have
energy star appliances and the fat credits from the power and gas companies were nice too. Maybe I'll use it to buy some knee pads. (the pedistals were an extra $400)
13. After photos this morning I headed to Annie's house to help with a special craft project we are working on for a special someone.
It occurred to me that he or she may check out my blog so I can't say too much more about it since it's kind of a surprise. (these seemingly ugly brown apples are just the beginning, I will blog more about them later when they're in their full cuteness) I had a ton of fun hanging out with Ann, who was in good spirits despite not feeling really well today. Ethan thinks he is one of the family with all of those boys around his age. Dan was taking a nap for this really bad lighting picture...
Ann is my drop-in day care service when I have photo shoots or volunteering that doesn't easily include Ethan. I love that he loves playing at her house becuase I never have to worry for a second that he misses me or that he isn't being well cared for. Ethan loves Annie, and so do I.
This self portait turned out great of Ann, not so much of me, but the new blogging me posts these kinds of pictures anyway! No FEAR!
Ok, that was a lot of pressure to think of thirteen things to blog about, I think it's time for bed. Tomorrow is the Halloween parade and the spook alley that the sixth grade puts on every year. It is one of the things Allie has been looking forward to the most being a sixth grader this year. AND, it's Friday, which is always a great day. Good night!
Oh what a beautiful mornin', Oh what a beautiful day. This is my most favorite musical of all time and I can often be heard singing this song on any sunny morning. Today is definitely one of those mornings, I mean, mornin's, the weather is absolutely stunning! AND it's Friday AND it's a four day weekend because of UEA. I love Fridays, I'm looking forward to getting a lot done this weekend and Rich is even taking Monday off to do something fun as a family, I'm so excited. This morning started early with the anticipation of our elementary school's annual Halloween Parade. The sixth grade puts on a fantastic spook alley with planning that starts during the first week of school! Allie has been looking forward to this since she was in third grade, so we took her make up and hair very seriously this morning. She was part of the huanted High School Musical group which rose from the dead to dance a huanted dance. 
Dance? Yup, that's what dead people do you know, didn't you ever see Thriller? So, lots of hairspray, teasing and a little bit of baby powder and we came up with this...yuck. The zombie eyes she made for the picture are a nice touch though.
The spook alley really was great, I wish I could take better pictures in the dark, a third grader in front of me screamed when a bug dropped in front of her. The truth is, I'm glad it was her and not me, if the bug had fallen on me I would've done more than scream, probably taken out a few little kids during my sprint for the exit. Seriously, I hate bugs. When I got home, Ethan did a little happy dance when he saw me (he was home with Rich who was babysitting the heating guy) and then hugged me so tight I remembered why I wanted another baby so baddly, I love these kinds of moments, they are a mom's thank you. We played play dough the rest of the morning, he is particularly fond of poking holds in the play dough shapes and wearing them like rings.
We made the bed, wiped down my bathroom and did some laundry. We are home bound today because the heating guy is here (you remember plumber crack guy, I'm soooo tempted to go down there and snap a picture!) fixing our heat YAY! I did escape for a few minutes to make a run to Target, I need to blog some time about why I love this place so much. I found these beauties with cute seals to match, in the stationery aisle, don't they just scream GOOD MAIL! I can't wait to use them...very me.
Before Taylor left for the Jr. High Halloween dance, I snapped a few pics of him. 
Can you guess what he is? A chick magnet. Is he cute or what? Beautiful mornin', beautiful day.
Phil, the awesome handy-man, finished the beautiful moulding and so now it's ready for paint. 
Sigh...as much as I'm happy this is finally getting done, it feels like it should be on the bottom of my priority list.
As always, the best part of my job is getting to hang out with a family for 90 minutes and have the chance to get to know them better. They were both such crack-ups, being silly and lovey the whole time,
and Addie was all about posing like a super-star and saying "take my picture aunt Wende!" Of course I obliged, it's my job and she's too cute to say no to!
(plus, it will be a cute story to tell about her when she is 20 years old :) What is an auntie for?
It touched my heart to see these pictures, because at 97 years old and the weight of the world on his shoulders, he is still truely joyful. It just goes to show that you don't have to always be so serious all the time. What a wonderful man we have leading our church.
Baby Joey was the most fun to shoot pics of, totally worth laying on my belly in the semi-wet grass. :) He is such a cutie, I'm always so jealous when I see him because I thought FOR SURE with all of our family history, that I would get at least one red headed baby. 
But, I have none, so I have to pretend with Joey, he's so cute.
Oh my gosh! She was so new that the shoot was a breeze and we got tons of great pics that Lori will LOVE! YAY! Tuesday is my crazy day, so after the busy morning and afternoon, Webelos, homework, dinner, some picture editing, a Target run and lots of cold rain, this seemed totally appropriate. 
Wouldn't you agree? Last year we bought a 
These photographs are courtesy of Taylor, all of the kids have been as excited as me, it's been a fun little family thing we have going here. In fact, the birds like our seed so much that we had to fill up the feeder with another bag within two weeks! YAY! ....they're first to see the sun, they must tell everyone, in the leafy tree tops the birds sing good morning! (this is one of Ethan's favorite songs btw)
