seriously?

Well we have lived in Oregon for over two years now and we really do love it here. But there are just a few things that I can't seem to be able to handle and frankly I don't think it is going to change anytime soon.

I walked outside tonight to blow out the candles in our jack-o-lanterns. After I had picked up a couple of pumpkins and turned out the lights I noticed THIS pumpkin. Look close.....blow it up if you want too.....It has been turned into the most frightening jack-o-lantern ever!

SERIOUSLY?!?!?! I about screamed, threw up, and ran in the house. I hate slugs. I think they are one of the most gross animals EVER! They are ugly and slimy and remind me of a certain bodily fluid that comes out your nose. I started looking around and realized that I was surrounded!

They were everywhere! Apparently they must like pumpkins. I has been raining quite a bit lately which hasn't helped the situation but the worst thing was that I went outside BAREFOOT! Can you imagine the horror had I stepped one of these suckers! How Josey can love them is beyond me. I don't think I will ever get over the horror.

And then as I was headed inside, this little (and I use little liberally.....he was HUGE) guy was there, I think just to rub it in or something.

Seriously gross.

is it any surprise we are having another girl???

Just Kidding Dustin! But this picture and video really crack me up. My girls have the silliest daddy and I love it! I myself am not generally a silly person so I conpletely appreciate Dustin's talent for silly. Dustin is the teasing,tickling, wrestling and dancing with the girls kind of dad and they are so lucky!

Look at the joy on that face......and I don't mean Lilly obviously. Lilly was actually a little terrified a that moment. And in the arms of that man who wouldn't be? And if you want to see it in action just watch the video. It is priceless. And like I have always said a man who can move his hips like that should have been a dancer. I think you missed your calling Dustin.

Little brains

I had a seriously funny conversation with Maddy today in the car that I wanted to post on here. It always amazes me how little brains sort things out and this was just an example right here.

Maddy told me that she and Josey were talking the night before about sleep walking. She said that Josey gave her 3 really good reasons why sleep walking would be bad; #1: You could walk sleep walk downstairs and there could be a robber in your house and you would walk right into him and then he would take you, #2: You could sleep walk downstairs and there could be a short in a wire somewhere that would start a fire and you would be trapped, asleep, downstairs. And then she told me that when Josey told her the third one that Maddy informed her that this was the one that would never happen. #3: You would sleep walk downstairs and open up the front door and walk outside and get lost.

I seriously could not stop laughing that #3 was the one that she thought for SURE was totally ridiculous, not the robber, not the random sparking wire, but possibly walking outside.

PUMPKIN CARVING

For FHE we carved our pumpkins. The girls love carving pumpkins and actually I kinda do too. Dustin on the other hands tries not to throw-up the whole time....SERIOUSLY! He hates it and I didn't get a picture of him wearing his rubber gloves that he insists on wearing but at least he helps the kids!
I have to give Josey the award for helping get the most guts out of the pumpkins.


The finished product and some proud girls.

Lilly wanted a black cat....Daddy worked on it and made her a cat/vampire, but she loves it.

Josey wanted to design her own face and she actually cut out most of it herself. Maddy chose a stencil this year and did the whole thing by herself. She is SERIOUSLY proud of this pumpkin!

I let Lilly pick out the stencils for the big pumpkins so she thinks these are hers as well. She picked a ghost and...

a happy face.

Here she is with all "her" pumpkins.

And all lit up.....kinda.

Pumpkin Patch take 2

So last Saturday we decided to take advantage of the great weather we had and head one more time over to our favorite pumpkin patch. I have to admit this year I didn't really want to go! Which is SO not like me! I am as much a driving force as the kids are to go to the pumpkin patch every year. But I think I was coming down with a bug and being pregnant and having a general "I really don't want to move much" feeling has definitely hampered my holiday spirit this year. Hopefully I will be back in the swing of things next year but then we will have a small child....so no promises to my kids. But I have felt a little guilty about my lack of enthusiasm this year.....I didn't even get them Halloween shirts this year! Can you believe it!!:) Josey is wearing one from last year and Lilly pants....she was so desperately missing her Halloween outfit. So I decided that each night this week leading up to Halloween I will do some sort of project with them to make me feel better. So stay tuned for those exciting events to come!

On to the the pumpkin patch....please don't laugh at their outfits. Honestly I just don't care anymore. They can wear whatever they want as long as they are clean.....and sometimes that isn't even a requirement. I do recommend that they brush their hair. I use the word recommend because it doesn't always happen. They are happy though.....right? Sad, I know but it has come to that. Just wait for the fourth, everyone will probably think she is homeless.

I told everyone to pick their favorite pumpkin to take a picture next too. Maddy's favorite....

Josey's favorite (with a wink thrown in).....

And Lilly's favorite with a pose thrown in.

Then of course we had to B-line over the baby chicks that my girls love to hold. I think they could spend a better part of a day with them.

Sometimes I look at these pictures and can't believe how old Maddy is getting!

Then on to the animals....baby cow...searching for eggs in the chicken coop.....

..... feeding the horses......

.... and watching the bunnies. I didn't take any pictures of the pigs...they smelled too bad and didn't deserve the time it would take to take a picture....I just moved on.

Then the girls got to pick one thing to do. There were pony rides and jump houses and face painting and hay rides and hay mazes. Unfortunately they have the reality of having multiple children in the family. It just costs too much! I kinda feel bad for them because we don't even buy our pumpkins at the pumpkin patch. They are just not the best price so they can pick out baby pumpkins but not real carvable pumpkins. When I can get them for half the price at Winco I just can't justify getting them at the pumpkin patch. So we take them to the pumpkin patch and tell them that they can't buy a pumpkin and that they can't do all the fun stuff. We are really nice parents....

They all chose the hay mazes though because those were unlimited times that they could go.....those are my girls! This picture cracks me up because it looks like Lilly is practicing her parade Miss America walk and wave with the crazy guy in the background. Lilly is a total scaredy-cat. She does not like to go down slides by herself so daddy had to help her.

Maddy and Josey were old enough to brave the big hay maze and loved it.

One last picture. Lilly was too scared to get up there with Maddy and Josey but not to scared to make that lovely "scary" face.

my daughter the news anchor

That's right. There is Joselyn at the KATU news station sitting in the anchor chair.

And there she is on tv as the news anchor.

Ok. Her class had a field trip to the channel 2 news station this week. They were only allowing 1 parent to come and I was the lucky mom that happened to get picked to tag along.



I have to say this. I really don't like sleepovers very much (completely unrelated to this post but it is how I feel) and I really don't like going on field trips. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that I get to spend the day with my daughter and that I get to get a better feel for her classmates and teacher. But I hate having to help keep the other kids in line and that I have to ride the bus with all the LOUD 2nd graders. AND I definitely wore the wrong shoes by the time we were heading home, my feet hurt! But Josey and I did have a good time hanging out together.

She kept begging to take her own pictures and when I could persuade her to give the camera to me I would snap some quick shots of her. You should have seen the pictures I had to delete off my camera. The things a 7 year old finds interesting to take pictures of was astounding to me! But she sure is cute in all the pictures I took!

I really hope that not a lot of the other parents would ever find my blog because I have no idea who some of these kids are. But every time I would take my camera out to take a picture of Josey some random kid would jump in the picture! It was driving me nuts! Which I know isn't fair because they are at "school" and they all want to be in the picture but it really was quite funny. I would hide the camera and then try to quickly whip it out and take a quick picture of Josey by herself. I didn't get very lucky very often. (And Katie if you see this post I took a few pictures of your daughter as well if you want them!)

Josey's teacher and Maddy's teacher when she was in 2nd grade.

At the end we visited the AM Northwest studio and I took one picture of Josey behind their little cooking counter and seriously IMMEDIATELY all these girls came running over to be in the picture as well. SO FUNNY!

And then even more came running over and then I had to put the camera away or I don't think I would ever get out of there!

I love watching my kids in their school habitat. It is fun watching them interact with the other kids. We went to the park to eat lunch afterwards and there was Josey running around with the boys. The teacher was telling me what a kick she gets out of Josey and the boys. She said that she has just enough tomboy in her that all the boys want to play with her but she has such a good heart that all the girls want to play with her as well. I witnessed this when 4 people were fighting over who was going to be her partner. We ended up just having a 5 person partnership because we couldn't turn anyone away. She really is a sweet little girl and I feel lucky to be her mom.

Pumpkin Patch take 1

So we tried to go to the pumpkin patch last Saturday unfortunately about half way there it started POURING rain. We were so sad! We decided to go anyway and just check out the barn and the cute little store in hopes that it might stop raining. We even stopped off and outfitted everyone in new rain boots hoping that we could still get out in the mud. Unfortunately it just rained the whole time we were there.

So I decided to get my camera out anyway and take some pictures of my girls holding their beloved little chicks. These are the pictures I got......


and then my camera ran out of batteries and they weren't selling any in the store. HOW SAD! So we are going to try and make it out there again this Saturday when the weather is predicted to be fairly clear and I have charged our batteries. Wish us luck!