Halloween

Well, I'm several days late on Audrey's 22 month update, but we still haven't gotten her growth chart picture, so it'll have to wait. And since there would be something very weird about putting up a Halloween post in December I better just skip to this for now.

First of all, I was so close to going with this costume option:

Talk about hilarious...

But in the end I went with my original plan to pick another bird, since last year she rocked the baby owl and I love having real feathers all over her.

Still sporting a bit of a black eye from our fall
down the stairs. Not a fun memory. But this pic makes up for it!

I die just looking at these :)
Such a ball of chubby, fluffy cuteness.

So this year the bird was a peacock! 

(I kinda wish I hadn't done an owl last year, because she is CRAZY about owls right now and it would have been so cute to hear her hooting away in her costume. I showed her some pictures of peacocks in anticipation of this costume, but it still wasn't the same as being in a costume where she understands what she is. Oh well, she was still cute!)

I especially loved how it accented her
big belly and chunky thighs :)

She was pretty adorable, if I do say so myself. And she felt so fancy! That was my favorite part, watching her walk around like she knew she was in a special outfit. She even requested to wear her feathers around the house for several days after Halloween had passed. 

 So, wearing the fun outfit was excitement #1, #2 was answering the door for all the trick-or-treaters (all the older girls kept saying how adorable she was), and #3 was the bowl of candy! Besides her chocolate bunny for Easter she hasn't had any real candy before, but somehow she knew immediately that this was a pot of gold. 

Sorry, hun, that one will kill you :(

 KitKats were the candy of choice, and man oh man, did she love them!

Then Aiden and his folks came over so these two buds could experience their first trick-or-treating together :) 

But first, another KitKat in preparation...

Then it was time to head outside! 

Bucket in hand and we're ready to go!

She ended up with a good amount of loot from the 10ish houses we visited. And they were a hit each time, of course. It was pretty cute watching her pick out pieces of candy, smile at neighbors, ooo and ahh over decorations, and proudly carry her bucket like it was her most prized possession. 

the loot!

Can I have one, please?

pretty please... :(

The next several days consisted mainly of her walking around the house carrying her candy bucket, carefully "counting" each piece, and eating more KitKats :)

yum!

Fall Fun with Bop!

   When my dad came out the last weekend of September we decided to welcome fall in the most fitting way possible: 

go to the pumpkin patch! 

Last year we introduced Audrey to her first pumpkin patch with Auntie Marie (and then her second with Ryan's family at a fun spot a few hours north of us). A quick flashback to those pics shows how much she's grown!

Ree! 

love this one

but this is my personal favorite :)

This year we tried a new one that is less than ten minutes down the road. 

First we hopped on the wagon for a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch.

Audrey was pretty quick to spot one that she liked. But it was a little too big for her:

These were more her size:

her face in the last one makes me laugh :) "Ooooo"

Then we rode the wagon back to the main barn to make our purchases which included several pumpkins of all shapes, sizes, and colors (love the white ones!). We also threw in some quirky gourds, several squashes, and even popcorn on the ear! That's what's behind us in the picture below. I had never had it like this before, and it's so good! Different than the regular stuff; lighter and fresher, or something.

Next stop was checking out the mini barn filled with corn! It was a toddler's dream come true.

scoop and dump, scoop and dump...

We got in on the fun too, of course.

Then it was off to the corn maze!

It's a good thing we didn't attempt the big maze, this little one took us long enough.

she might have thought it was a little creepy...

Lastly, a quick stop for some of the photo opps 

The poor girl hates bright sun in her eyes and is always
so quick to shade her face.  Even when she sees the sun in a
picture book she says "Ohhh!" and covers her eyes.
So getting this shot shows what a good sport she was being.

That evening (I think) we tried out a new restaurant and Audrey was such a champ. She loved getting to sit outside under the twinkle lights in the trees and smile at all the people walking by. She got to show Bop the sweet way she prays with us. Ending with an enthusiastic "amen" in sign language (the only one that really stuck). As delicious as the food was, I think the highlight of the dinner for all of us was seeing Audrey's enthusiasm for licking sugar right out of Dada's hand. Who could blame her. 

All in all, it was a great visit! 

Watching the bonding that happened between these two just melted my heart. 

We love you Bop! (And we'll see how long that nickname lasts ;) For now it's pretty cute!)

Alaska

Okay, here's the next batch of better-late-than-never pictures from our most recent trip to CA and AK (end of August through beginning of September). Audrey and I had a few days in Cali while Ryan was finishing a few more shifts back home, and the purpose of these quick few days was to meet a couple adorable babies! First off, Audrey was introduced to Finn, an adorable hunk of a future hubby. I'd say it was a typical first meeting of destined love-birds. He didn't seem to notice her, while she kept pointing, staring, and saying "Baby." We managed to snap a few pictures that will resurface on their wedding day. (And don't worry, her future in-laws are proof that the girl can totally be the older one :)

what a stud

I wish I was cool enough to splice the images
so we could have one with both looking.

first pajama party!

"check it out, mom, a baby!"

Maybe we were forcing it too much.
Finn apparently didn't like her coming on so strong...

Then we got to meet sweet puppy Gracie (and see Aunt Nicole's adorable new house!) Audrey's still working up courage to be around dogs and not think they're trying to eat her, but Gracie was probably the best dog-experience she has had yet. It helps that she is so mellow and soft.

Then it was off to AK, where Dada met us the following day. Our week there was chalk-full of good hang-out time with all the family, plus a few little adventures thrown in. 

Our first Sunday up there we got to go out to lunch with a bunch of the extended family after church.  It was the same restaurant where, almost 27 months previously, we made our very first announcement that I was pregnant :) And here she is, in all her sweetness:

 Talk about sweetness, Elijah just adored her and was so incredible with her the whole time. He even sent her a recorded, self-composed song after we got back home about how much he loves her. Precious. He sent her another one when she was in the hospital that just about made me die of sweetness and hilarity (that's a word, right? Either way, it was a super funny song.)

And, while this shot doesn't do it justice, Audrey got to meet the rest of the extended-cousin clan too. Including Harlee and Waylon (below), Kailee and Jamison, and Milly. Such a cute bunch up there!

Sadly, we didn't get much cross-over time with Alayna and her kids, as they were headed down to CA shortly after we arrived. We did, however, got to celebrate her 30th birthday in an awesome 80's style! Sadly Ryan and I did not attend in costume (even though Sonya picked out an incredibly cool one for me) since he was just arriving from the airport and we headed straight there, just catching the end of it. But the outfits were all quite memorable :) Audrey was going to go in style with a leotard and leg warmers look, but then she had a diarrhea incident that necessitated a new and non-80's outfit. So she couldn't even make up for us. 

Sunday night we did an overnight get-away for Mama and Dada at a fancy ski-lodge (a belated birthday celebration for yours-truly! 31...yikes.) Audrey had some quality time with Grandma and Grandpa, with Elijah stopping by often to "check-up on Audrey." (They are currently next-door neighbors :)

Grandma is known for her expertise as a baker-of-delicious-cakes/cookies/bread/cinnamon rolls/etc. Pretty much anything yummy she's baked it. So of course it made complete sense to have their first Grandma/Audrey baking time! Audrey got to be in charge of the dumping and stirring. I envision a lot more of this in their future :)

Grandma also makes wonderful play-dough! So that was next up on the menu:

Bedtime stories and cuddles rounded out an awesome day for all of us.

The next day (after lazily sleeping in and eating a leisurely, big breakfast just the two of us!) we met up with them at the fair! I'm going to be honest, I was looking forward to this for a long time. For my sake as well as Audrey's. Hard to beat greasy fair-food and the buzz of energy all around. The fact that it was drizzly the whole time didn't dampen our mood too much. (Until we were in line for way too long for the ferris wheel and then decided to cut out when we finally got to the front. Those squeals of wet metal as it tried desperately to have enough traction to turn a barely full load was too much for us. Plus Audrey had had her full and was ready to go home, so we'll just have to wait for our first family ferris wheel experience.) 

My highlight was the bucket of fresh donut holes we plowed through. Audrey's highlight was the petting zoo. Kind of. She was actually pretty terrified at first and clung on to me for dear life. But check this out, she's petting a goat with a smile on her face! ("But don't even think about putting me down, Mom."

not so sure about the pigs...

The chicks weren't nearly as difficult to warm up to. 

She would have happily stayed there the entire time.

The pumpkins were the biggest things I have ever seen! Clearly Audrey wasn't impressed.

But she was impressed with the duck river game! 

She was pretty proud of herself for catching one and winning a prize :)

We got to hang out with the Swansons a good deal while we were there too (including the fair). It was fun to see their kids (who are hilarious!), their new house, and catch up with them, while hoping that Jenny would go into labor and we would get to meet the third Swanson child, but alas, baby Kate did not arrive until right after we left. We did, however, get to meet her the following month in Santa Barbara when we were all out there for a wedding!
Of course we were lame and didn't get a picture with all of them, but I snapped some cute ones of what will hopefully be the start of a sweet friendship between Audrey and Lola :)

chillin in a tent in REI

One day they took us to the Alaska children's museum (if that's what it's called) that had a ton of fun hands-on activity centers.

Audrey and Dada riding the pully chair

she could have watched the marble maze all day long.

the fish too

crawling around the nature corner
peek-a-boo!

learning about doll houses :)

Back at Grandma and Grandpa's house Audrey got to go on her first four-wheeler ride!

don't worry, they pretty much just putted around the driveway.

She also got to go on her first canoe ride in the creek!
We wheeled her down the road in a cute little wagon, which she thought was a fun ride all in itself.

Then for some reason I decided to crawl in too for a slightly silly looking picture, but having a creek like this in your back yard is worth a family photo!

we're off!

We we got back Audrey spotted the big balls on the lawn, so of course we had to stop and play for a while.

The rest of our time was spent hanging out with family (Mama even got in a girls night with the cousins and a baby-free shopping trip with Sonya). Little did we know, at that time, that we would be seeing them all again in July when we MOVE UP THERE! It's true, though it's still hard to believe...We're going to be Alaskans for the next few years. Ryan got offered a great job at one of the hospitals up there and we really felt like it was God opening this door for us and giving us an awesome chance to live near his family. We'll see how God continues to direct us in the future, but for now, we're pretty excited about it!
So all of our goodbye's were really just see-you-later's :)

a final story time with Great-Grandma :)

a little more playdough time with Grandma

saying our goodbyes to Alan and Adele.

and an extra big goodbye hug from Elijah!