"is it Halloween-time yet?"

that is what our darling Riley has been asking me repeatedly since we bought her costume in September and started getting out the decorations. (Thanks Erica, for capturing our darling Riley smiling AND looking at the camera--miraculous!)

Yes, Riley it is almost Halloween time. Here is a few of our decorations and more of celebrations in addition to the pumpkin patching we did.

We made haunted houses with the Wilsons

and I've had the smell of gingerbread wafting through my house for 2 weeks. Sweet!

What a great and fun idea, Bri! Thanks for making the gingerbread.

Then there was the Halloween costume party with a few of Mike's fellow dental students and their families. We won the costume contest for best family.

on the DL: I never look forward to dressing up personally, which is stupid, because I enjoy it when other adults dressed up and once I do it, I'm glad I did. I guess it is hard because all the affordable adult costumes for women are just slutty--sooo not my style. So either spend a lot of money or have a great idea and the skills to produce it out of thin air (I have very limited skills and creativity). I procrastinated on what mike and I should do until the week before. I THOUGHT I had bought myself a Halloween t-shirt was just going to wear that instead of a costume, but I search and could not find it. So I caved and decided to make something, but was without a clue what to do. So I stole an idea from my mother-in-law that did when they were in dental school: toothpaste. Kind of silly and little lame, but cute, right? I guess it depends on the crowd or if you can read the sign on the back.


Riley had a great time and she also won Best Kid's Costume. (don't have a pic of her in her costume at the party either--she got too hot and kept taking the monkey suit on and off) The prize: a Halloween coloring book. She is so in love with it, she takes it to bed with her every night.


She even won a cupcake during the cupcake walk for the kids. Pretty neat, I mean, spooky cupcake.

Spooky is Riley's new favorite adjective. Everyting related to Halloween is "spooky."

Anyways. All in all a fabulous party with great people, food and fun.

(I found my Halloween shirt on Halloween night at like 10pm--too late to do any good this year--oh well. There's always next year.)



Then there was a trunk-or-treat event at church. So fun to see all the kids dressed up. It was chilly and dark, but it made it feel more like the trick or treating from my childhood.

Riley, the monkey, and her friend Kallie, the mermaid.

Here is the crew carving pumpkins! Mike & I haven't done it in a few years, but my sisters taught me how the right tools and a good pattern the result can be
Pretty great,I mean, SPOOKY!
Another cute pose, from our pumpkin model.

We had two more Halloween parties.
One was held at a cabin on the lake with a really SCARY spooky alley. Riley was so frightened, and I don't blame her, it was REALLY spooky! But I forgot my camera and I also forgot just about everything as I scarfed done almost a dozen home made spudnuts. A-ma-ZING! So much fun. Thanks for inviting us, Whitney.

The next was at Riley's preschool. They invited the families of the kids and it was pretty cute.
Riley and Kallie sporting some the treats from the pinata.
Emma was invited to join the kids at the table for a cupcake. She acts like she's a big kid too!
The teacher invited Emma to join at the table for treats.

The little monkey getting her groove on.

the first birthday, the second time

So the actual birthday of Emma started out with pancakes w/a candle before we got Riley off to preschool. I thought this would be a special treat for her birthday breakfast.
She didn't like them and wouldn't eat a bite...arrgh. So I got out the cold cereal. I mean it is HER birthday, I gave in, and let her eat an almost healthy breakfast instead of the unhealthy 'special' one. oh well.

We tried to take time to make her birthday special, so Mike took a break from school and studying to hang out with us at the park. We wanted to do something that was fun for Emma, but we all had a blast!We all took a turn on these--way cooler than a merry-go-round.

Daddy and Emma on the slide!

"What?! she's going down alone!?!" as I drop the camera to catch the birthday girl flying down the slide too high and steep for a 12 month old.

After naps, we had my sisters/party guests over for dinner and the party.
Monica & Nate are pictured here, Auntie Erica was there too, but was busy being our photographer. Thanks Erica!!

After dinner we opened presents and Emma was so excited for everything she got, wrapping paper and balloons included that I could hardly get her to sit with me to open the next gift.

Then it was cake time.

I was excited for a repeat performance of tearing into the cake and eating up the sweetness.She looked excited enough about it, but when I set the piece of cake in front of her and gave her a bite, she wasn't so sure and just looked at it and rejected bites for about 5 minutes.

Weird.
Until...
Riley started feeding her. Then she couldn't get enough!

Look I can eat with no hands!

I guess it was plate-licking good after all!

Emma you are such a great kid! Thanks for giving us such a wonderful reason to celebrate and for providing us with such great entertainment! I can't believe it has been a year already. You are a huge blessing and ray of sunshine in our family. We love your sweet skills, like walking and dancing. Emma can already do a sippy cup for about 90% of her liquids. Pretty soon she'll say goodbye to the bottle and before we know it she'll be in high school. WE LOVE YOU!!

I couldn't sign off without a video or slide show and since I don't have time to upload a lot of individual pics for a slide show, here's a quick video.

Fall Fun

We went to the same pumpkin patch/farm as last year and had a blast, with a few fun photo ops.

Hauling the pumpkins
Still a lot of fun, like last year.

The next weekend had nice weather so we decided to hit another farm recommended by a friend. (She forgot to mention the smell) but this was like a real farm with baby animals and smells included. We saw piglets 1 day old! This time we forgot the camera--or rather the memory card for the camera--dang it! But nowadays there is a camera in every cell phone, so we got some pictures (what device don't they put in phones these days?!?)

what did you expect a chicken coop to smell like?
so sweet!
feeding the cowswow petting a bunny too!

early birthday

So we love to celebrate in our family. We celebrated Emma first birthday twice. We were in our home town with both sets of grandparents about 2 weeks before the big day but decided it was the perfect chance to celebrate anyways.

Didn't my mom get the cutest cake ever? I can always count on her for that!

Don't I have the cutest little one year old ever?

This kid knows how to EAT cake. She didn't need any help.
After a quick bath to remove the cake from her hair and everywhere else, we opened the presents! Sweet! Thanks grandparents for celebrating Emma's very special birthday.

I had a few darling videos of her eating and everything but I couldn't get them upload, and have procrastinated this post long enough! Sorry!

Beware

not because it is almost Halloween (or maybe that is the reason) but please beware of hard-drive eating goblin hiding in our home. It is creepy. So I have my new hard drive up and running and learned how to back up all my data. I got the pictures that Michael had on his computer transferred to my computer and less than 2 days later, his hard drive breaks down and needs to be replaced. What are the odds. It seems pretty slim. Are you convinced yet to go back up your hard drive right now? That is what I'm doing right now while I work on this post. Consider yourself warned. But maybe just to be safe don't bring your laptop to our home.

plea

Can I make a plea to all our family and friends for photos? So I thought I had uploaded and printed off more pictures than I really had before the big crash and death of my hard drive It turns out that I haven't printed a single picture from 2008. We have a few SD cards with some photos from Jan/Feb and then most of the pictures from Aug-Oct 2008, but not much representing the time in between. So if you have any photos of my family, could you PLEASE email me and tell me what event/date you have? Then we can see if that is something I need. I lost Riley's 3rd birthday, Emma 3-9 months, Easter, Mike's birthday, and so much more. You know how the 2nd or middle child always complains that they have significantly less pictures than the 1st child? I went to great lengths to prevent that situation, but now all evidence is gone that I actually love and photograph Emma just as much as Riley. Maybe it is just the way it is supposed to be, but I really hope not. help.

goodbye

So at 1 year and 3 weeks old my hard drive crashed and died. Cause of death was unable to be determined by autopsy done by my local Mac store (now I know for sure it's dead). With it, a year of financial tracking, budgeting, calendar, photos, videos, music and lots of other stuff are lost and gone. It's memory lives on through a few photos and videos on my blog and Google photos/Picasa.
I'm pretty bummed, but moving on. Isn't a mac not supposed to have those kind of problems you ask. I asked too and apparently "a hard drive can last 5 minutes or 15 years," the mac guy informed me and macs are not immune to this kind of failure. So as I have now learned, back up early and often. I always intended to back up my computer but didn't really know how so I never got around to it. Luckily, I use web based email so that is all saved online. I lost a lot of photos, but recently I made an effort to upload some of my favorites from the past 2 years to Google photo/Picasca to prepare to have them printed--Thankgoodness!! They may not be saved in the highest quality format but they are not completely lost and for that I am grateful. But I did lose all the videos I took on my digital camera except the ones uploaded her on my blog. I kept a pretty good calendar on my computer, so if we made plans together you might want to remind me of them, because my computer was my brain, apparently. So learn from my mistake. Please. Buy the bigger external hard drive to back up easily (I just got 500GB one for only $140--it feels like a good deal if only I'd bought it sooner!) and OFTEN. I was 3 weeks past my warranty so I have to pay for the new internal hard drive & repair labor myself -- probably about the same price that the extended warranty would cost, but that would not have saved all my precious data. So now I resolve to learn how to back up my hard drive and do it once a week. (who says you have to wait for New Year's to make a resolution?)
I already have a new hard drive and the act of rebuilding all my files, music, data begins.

is it October already?

Am I the only one wondering where summer (or even September) went? Now Fall is most definitely here and it is time to embrace it. As the previous post detailed we're preparing for Halloween by early and regular costume wearing. But this weekend we did something very Fall-ish.

We had the whole family together and we attended the Salmon Days Festival. In the rain and wind no less. We felt very brave, but I say "welcome to ___________" (sorry to be vague, but if you actually know me, you know where I live, but if you are a crazy stranger than you'll have to guess).

Here is the only picture of the actual salmon (thanks Erica!) but we watched them jump and swim up the fish ladder. They get really big and can jump 4-5 feet (or at least try until they hit the lids above the tanks).

Riley loves her rain gear and the rain and the puddles.

Emma was darling in her outfit, even though it was not waterproof, she was still happy and fairly dry.

We are glad we braved the rain and enjoyed yummy BBQ salmon and the Fall air.

Does anyone else get torn between blogging about today while it's fresh and catching up on the last month? as if people just DYING to know what I have to say about every moment, but maybe a few for pictures of the girls.
I digress.
If it's October already, I need to hurry and catch up on September.

We went to the fair, twice.
Riley rode on a few rides all by herself!
I got to see my first rodeo.
First animal petting experience
Emma was very patient
We went to a football game and it was good game. Emma did fine and Riley only covered her ears because of the noise until we ate at halftime.
We went boating and I actually skied and it felt great!

Riley had her first pony ride at the Fall Fiesta.

We visited the Temple Grounds for family night. Michael & I didn't feel very photogenic and Emma was sleepy so we had Riley pose with the statue family instead.So Emma started walking Sept 1st, and she is doing great!
she had her first corn on the cob
here she is in action:

Riley started preschool and is doing wonderfully. She also started a darling dance class and loves that too.

This is my only shot because they don't let parents stay and distract their kids during class, until the last day (stay tuned for future posts after that performance) Riley is standing up with her back towards us in pink leotard, 2 messy buns and cropped white leggings. Isn't she cute?!

So that was the short version of September, its been fun and busy with lots of fabulous firsts and photos too cute to skip.