California "Snow Day"

Yeah, there's no snow in San Diego...but this cool park by Devyn's house had a community "snow day" a couple weeks ago and we figured we better check it out. They brought in a bit of fake snow and made a sledding hill, the kids had a blast. They also had a rock climbing wall-Connor owned. Bouncy houses. Train rides. Horse and carriage rides. And Pony rides. This community day was no joke. It took us 30 minutes to find a parking space. But we all had so much fun just hanging together and watching our kids enjoy themselves. We'll be better prepared for the parking situation next year!

Thanksgiving...McPherson style

It was just us four in sunny California this year. My kids actually have no memory of us not being with other members of the family for Thanksgiving, so it was definetely a different experience. I was a little leary because I love being with ALL of my family for the holiday, but we ended up having a fantastic time. We started our day off with a movie! We went with our great friends, the Olsons, and saw Megamind. It was hilarious, I actually gutt-laughed a number of times. I'm pretty sure the adults thought it was funnier than the kids, but we all really liked it. Then we went home and relaxed and played games for a bit before we got to cooking. Darrin made an absolutely delicious turkey and of course we had potatoes, stuffing, corn, gravy and rolls. The kids wanted to have a "fancy" dinner, which basically just means putting a tablecloth out and drinking out of goblets. We really enjoyed spending the day with just our family and look forward to doing it again in the (hopefully distant) future!

Lessons learned...

Ah, the joys of having a first grader. When it came time for Lily's class to do their Thanksgiving crafts, her teacher didn't have much planned and not a lot of time to plan it. So I graciously offered to put together some crafts for the kids. I proceeded to buy all of the supplies and dyed about a 100 pounds (slight exaggeration) of pasta different colors, spent endless hours cutting turkey feathers and heads out of construction paper, drew some Indian arrowheads...and 4 days and $60 later....voila, craft day! The kids had tons of fun, which made it worth it. Nevertheless, I have two words for you--never. again.

Beautiful Fall Pasta. My house smelled like rubbing alcohol for days. Good times.

Random Sharing

Lily's latest offering...

Lily, much like her father, is constantly singing or humming her way through life. She'll make up words to a song to accompany whatever she's doing at the moment (brushing teeth, doing homework, eating snack...whatever) almost without even thinking about it. My new favorite thing is that all of her songs are now sung to the tune of "Do You Hear the People Sing" from the musical Les Miserables. It's fantastically adorable, especially since I can't even remember the last time we listened to that cd.

Lily's "Friend"

Dude! This has got to be one of the strangest things yet....

Ever since she won this huge rubber spider at the Halloween activity at church, she's been sleeping with it every night! When I commented on the oddity of this Lily told me "He's not scary, he's a good friend."

Girl Scout Service!

Lily joined a Daisy Scout troop this year and she loves it so much! Today her troop (along with other community members) spent two hours cleaning and beautifying the oldest cemetery in Oceanside. They picked up leaves and trash, cleaned up headstones, they even dug up a few headstones that were completely grown over. Then they put American flags on the headstones of all the Veterans. It was such an awesome experience. She had a blast (she got to use tools!) and felt good about what she had done afterwards. I love being able to share things like this with my kids. My allergies, however, did not love it.

Cutest. Girl. Scout. Ever.

She's an American Girl.

Yes, I allowed somebody to take a picture of me. Don't look too closely. This was at the end of the two hours and I was not at my freshest...I love my girl!!!

Random Sharing

A little while ago Connor told me that when he got married, for his honeymoon they were going to go to New York City and walk around calling taxis all week until they found the "Cash Cab". Then he is going to set a record for the most money won on the show. You heard it here first.

Halloween (eve)!

Halloween on Sunday...kind of a bummer. But our kids were awesome and took it in stride. Our church had a huge Trunk-or-Treat on Saturday night with games and food and trick-or-treating. Then Devyn's ward had one later that night, and we hit that up too. So the kiddos got just as much candy as they would've if we had trick or treated on actual Halloween. We were really proud of them for understanding why we weren't trick-or-treating on Sunday and never got upset or whined about it.

My kids weren't feeling very adventurous this year. Connor decided to go with "baseball player" (big stretch, I know). Lily decided she wanted to be Batgirl (again)! Easy-peezy. I wasn't complaining.

Heading out to our first Trunk-or-Treat of the evening.

Donut on a string. Connor got the entire donut into his mouth in about a millisecond, the other kids had barely even taken one little bit out of theirs. We all have special gifts...

Cookie decorating. She took one bite out of it, then I carried it around for half an hour before she let me throw it away.

The annual Lily & Sydney picture. Sydney was a "Moon Fairy". When it was costume debating time, Sydney was picking between Fairy or Genie. Lily was debating between Batgirl, Zombie or Mummy. I think it's hilarious that two girls who are so different can be such great friends.

After the candy! This is towards the end of the Trunk-or-Treat at Devyn's church. Clearly, Jane is drunk on lollipop. See Dev's blog for cute pictures of Jane, unfortunately this is the only one I took with my camera.

Halloween Crafting Craziness

I really can't take credit for any of this. I am not a crafty mom...I have to rely on other people's creativity, but that's okay cause I'm a really good at copying. Some of these we did with awesome Auntie, some at school, and the rest at home (once I had stolen the ideas from people at school). We had a really good time, we had a "craft night" instead of doing pumpkin carving and the decorations are still up (yeah, it's Nov. 6th) which is a much longer shelf life than a pumpkin.

They are so proud of their creations. Lily wants to make sure that everybody knows that the paper cone witch is hers, not Connor's!

That and the adorable pumpkin bats were put together by Devyn a couple weeks ago when we had a craft night at her house. It was so much fun!

Don't you love our spider webs and pom-pom spiders? I think those are my favorites. The spooky eye reflection frame actually glows in the dark. Connor's class made those, and it was quite an undertaking. Me and a couple other moms were madly putting the frames back together after they dried before the bell rang. A couple days after I took this picture, Lily put a post-it note on the mantle under the eyes that says "I'm woching you closly, very closly." So freaking hilarious.


Lanterns! So awesome. Connor's class made these. The side partitions are pictures printed on vellum paper, so they look like it's glowing when light hits it. We had so many supplies left over, that I brought one home for Lily to do.

The Toothless Wonder

They're dropping like flies! At this rate, she won't have any baby teeth left within a month. The last tooth came out via soccer ball. Here's exactly how Lily tells the story:

"I was playing in my soccer game and this girl kicked the ball and pegged me in the face."

She was pretty awesome, she just yelled to me on the sideline "Mom, my tooth came out!". She brought it over to me, rinsed her mouth out with water a few times and jumped back in the game. What a pro.

Sofa Makeover

Oh my gosh, our couch is so gorgeous now!! Most of you will remember the couch in its previous state. It was a light khaki color, BUT there was some serious color damage. For some reason, big patches of color would rub off and our couch ended up looking like a dirty splotchy mess. It was driving us crazy and it got to the point that I was literally embarrassed to invite people over. So, we decided to undertake the huge project of re-painting our leather. We ordered all of the supplies online and after 6 days of back breaking work (mostly done by Darrin), this is the finished product. I LOVE IT!

First Day of School-2010

Lily's first day of first grade and she's so excited!! Connor's first day of 5th grade (kind of) and he's so over it!! He's already at that "school is lame" portion of life...it's gonna be a long 7 years!

Cutest First Grader Ever!

I don't think Lily could look more excited if she tried!

Carefully disguised disdain.

Walkin out the door.

Mom's FREE!!!!!!!

Last Days of Summer-2010

Yeah yeah yeah, I know I'm way behind (surprise surprise). Just a couple pics of our last few days of summer...seems like an eternity ago.

This was the last day of summer vacation. Lily, Connor and two of our neighborhood friends loved having monster water-gun fights in the front yard. This one lasted about two hours and my kids slept like the dead!

The week before school. It was gorgeus outside so we headed to the beach. Not sure if you can tell by the look on Con's face, but the water was FREEZING!

Lily and Logan sitting in their homemade "pool". This is something Lily loves doing. We go to the beach and dig out a big pit, when the tide comes in it fills with water and Lily calls it her pool. We didn't have Darrin's muscle with us, so our pool is pretty small, but they still enjoyed the novelty.

Things that Make Me Smile:

No pictures for this post. I was thinking about how this blog is basically the closest thing I get to a journal, so I thought it might be a good idea to put some thoughts down that weren't just pictures. Lately there's a handful of things happening around here that just make me smile. In no particular order:

1. Lily and her church purse dilemma. She has a small little bag that she takes to church with her Book of Mormon every week. In true Lily fashion, she also feels the need to take a pet with her. The rules for the pet are "if it fits into your bag, you can take it". This hasn't been a problem since she has about a gazillion little puppies that fit perfectly. But she's been getting more and more daring with her pet choices. They began peeking out of the bag little by little, each pet bigger than the last...until last week I walked by her room on Sunday morning and she was diligently trying to cram her stuffed "Thumper" (ya know, the rabbit from Bambi) into her bag. Thumper is over a foot tall and really, his little bum just barely fit in the bottom of her bag. His entire torso and big ears were sticking up out of the top. But Lily looked up at me in the most triumphant manner... I almost let her take him.

2. Connor's morning "cartoons". Most kids get up and eat cereal while watching cartoons. Connor gets up, eats cereal and watches "Quick Pitch" on the MLB network. For those of you who are wondering "what the heck is that"-it's the non-ESPN version of "Baseball Tonight". He is AWESOME!

3. Lily's morning "cartoons". Lily never complains that Connor is watching "Quick Pitch". She just goes downstairs with him, eats her cereal and reads....the Marvel Encycolpedia! Even more confused? This is a thick book that contains the pictures, stats and stories of every Marvel Comics character...from X-Men to Fantastic Four. She is AWESOME!

4. Music music music. My kids love music (and good music too!). Both of them are literally incapable of doing anything that's not accompanied by music. So whenever they are doing ANYTHING in their room, from getting dressed to making their beds to doing homework, even if it only takes 2 minutes, they absolutely have to turn on their cd players. It's not odd to wake up at 8:00 on Saturday morning to the strains of Julian Plenti, Interpol, Postal Service, Broken Bells or David Gray. They are AWESOME!

Purple Thunder!!!!

Okay, we're gonna give it a try! Lily is playing on a real soccer team this year. After doing the little developmental program earlier in the year, she still wanted to play and asked if she could play "on a real team with uniforms and a name". So here we go. They had their first practice last Friday and she wasn't a total wreck...but more importantly she was having so much fun. She's such a different kind of kid than Connor, who has to be absolutely perfect at everything he does. She just goes out there and tries and laughs and has a great time, it's just awesome to watch her. The girls voted and named their team "Purple Thunder", you gotta love it. I'll keep you updated on her progress as they start playing games in a couple weeks.

Purple Thunder! Be very afraid!

Sassy little soccer player with her brand new yellow ball from Grandma and Grandpa. Yellow is her new favorite color and she was so excited to have a yellow ball.

The difference between boys and girls soccer?...the hairbow of course. Look at that adorable bow made by the team mom. They might really stink but they'll do it in style!

Botanical Gardens

Last week, Connor went to go spend a couple of days at Auntie Devyn's house with Logan while he's visiting. They spent their time doing a bunch of boy stuff. So Lily and I took the opportunity to have a girl day. We went with my friends Vanessa and Sara and their kids to the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas. We had never been before and were really excited to check it out. We had a great time adventuring in bamboo forests, watching the "frog show" (that's what Ella called it anyways) in the little lily-pad pond, picnicing in the rain forest and exploring the secret garden. I know we didn't even see all the different areas and I was still blown away by how gorgeous it all was. I can't wait to go back.

Cousins are the best!

As I mentioned in the previous post, we had the great pleasure of going to Las Vegas to visit Grandma and Grandpa McPherson. The added bonus was Jen and Abby and Aubri were there as well. Lily was in heaven playing with her cousins, they like playing dog almost as much as her (although Abby often chose to be a cat instead). They played games, went swimming and just hung out with each other. Darrin, Jen and I caught a couple movies together and had such a great time! I had my camera with me...but didn't take it out of my bag until an hour before we left town (I'm a thinker!). So I only caught these two pictures...hopefully Grandma and Grandpa got more.

Lily and Abby checkin out the 3D tv at Forum shops.

Connor, Lily, Abby & Aubri in front of the Atlantis statues in the Forum shops. We had just watched the little show about the destruction of Atlantis, which is very loud and has lots of fire. Aubri was not very thrilled with it and really just wanted to go home...can you tell?

Connor & Lily 2010 pics

We went to Las Vegas to visit Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Darrel a couple weeks ago because Jen and the girls were also in town. We had so so much fun spending time with the McPherson family and Lily had a blast playing with her cousins. They live way too far away (frown) and need to move back out west immediately! While we were there, Chelsea kindly agreed to take some photos of my kids. I was on a time crunch because Connor was scheduled to have 4 teeth pulled as soon as we got home and I didn't want him to look like the toothless wonder for his photos. Of course, Lily had to smash her face jumping over the couch a few days before we left and popped one of her front teeth out!!! So she has that awesomely awkward toothless look going on right now. But Chelsea is brilliant and managed to take some awesome pictures and I love them!!! Here's just a few of them: