Doing some catch-up...

Due to coughing like there's no tomorrow, I have done absolutely nothing blog-worthy this week. Which means I have taken zero photos, except for some I took at Cheri's shop The English Garden to make her some postcards which will probably show up over on my other blog sometime soon! So I think I'll take this week to catch up on a couple of things we did before Halloween!

First up, Aunt Penny's house! Autumn goes over there to visit Aunt Penny, of course, but she also gets some fun play time with the dogs. Mostly Conan because Ace is kind of shy. I need to get video of this but Conan will bring her a toy and Autumn will say, "leave it! Sit!" And then Conan will do it.


And then she tosses it, he leaps in the air, and she giggles maniacally.


Fun times.


Also in October, Autumn finished up her first sticker sheet (I talk about her sticker sheet in detail here) and her last item in the treasure box was a trip to TCBY. She had been wanting a cone since she saw Pinkalicious eating one in her book.


She actually did a great job although it got a little messy. What's not showing up in the photo is how much is in her hair. Mike is continually amazed and baffled at how much food gets distributed in her hair...I used to have her eat in a hat, I should start it up again, hahaha.


And it took a seriously long time so the ice cream melted and this happened.


There was much sadness.


But I think she had a good time trying out her cone! That being said, the next time we went to TCBY (after her flu shot, I should write about that when I am less gross), she got a cup.

And, since I can't end on a sad, spilled ice cream note, have this picture. :) It's all grainy because I took it with my phone. Molly was staring intently out the window the other night. I turned on the light and saw this big, grey cat that I think lives at the corner house. Autumn ended up taking Molly's place and she and the cat stared at each other a while. Autumn said, "what's up kitty cat? My name is Autumn."

Halloween! Continued!

I wanted to be creative with this one but I have a raging sinus infection which appears to be stifling the creative juices. They are apparently all stuck in the front part of my face. T_T

Fortunately! I don't have to be creative because I have cute. Like Autumn her second Halloween at Aunt Penny's house which is one of our yearly traditions. As you might already know, Autumn can be a little shy. Ha! So I've always just taken her to friends' houses and close neighbors we know for trick or treating. We've been to Penny's house or her work every year.


Whenever we go to her work, Penny makes sure her coworkers have candy for Autumn. How sweet is that? Of course, it mildly terrifies Autumn but after she warms up a bit she usually gets up the courage to toodle up, hold out her bucket, and whisper "trick or treat." She reserves all her snuggles and enthusiasm for Aunt Penny.


We got to have a short coffee break with Penny. This is a picture of contentment. Aunt Penny, a pretty costume, chocolate milk, a light up ghost...does life get any better at 4 years old?


After we left Baptist, we headed to our next yearly destination. We always stop in to see Stephan and his mom on Halloween. I love Stephan's mom and I'm so glad I've gotten to know her since we moved our office to her spare room. Seriously, she tells stories about a life and time that's like a book to me. I didn't get any good photos of them this year because Autumn absolutely did not stop moving the whole time. Stephan let Autumn hold Zoe's leash and walk her around the kitchen. Which she did over and over again. And when she wasn't walking Zoe around, Autumn was climbing under the table and around things following Annabelle!


On the way home, we stopped and picked up a bouquet. Penny got me a bouquet a month card and I wanted to wait until the end of the month to get it since Mike had given me anniversary flowers (yay, Mike!). I asked Autumn to pose in front of the display but she wasn't having any of that after all the socializing I had her do.


This lady drove up and was talking to Autumn in this high pitched voice about how cute Autumn is. I caught this reaction. Hilarious. Fortunately, she hid her face in the flowers next so the lady caught that Autumn is kind of shy. Antisocial. Whichever. Ha!


After a needed nap and recharge, we headed over to Ridgeway. They do a really great fall festival every year. I also love getting to see all the people we know there because, seriously, the Ridgeway folks are some of the nicest, best people I've met. I know many of them have been praying for us, sending us notes and, most importantly, supporting Mike's parents in the last 5 months and this was the first time I got to see most of them since we lost Garrett. After eating and visiting (you can be sure to find all of our friends and Mike's parents friends in the food and hospitality area! It's their thing!), we headed to the games. Autumn loooooves this plinko game.


Ok, how adorable is this? The photo was kinda blah because I'm still terrible with taking photos in the dark so I processed it with a 70's style coloration. For some reason, this picture just seemed to be asking for it.


Here she is with Nanny and Boppa after they gave her a couple flashlights and made her NIGHT. Seriously, the kid loves flashlights. She has one in every room. And her closet. For when she needs "a quiet place."


And that was our cheerful, social halloween! After we got home, Mike handed out candy while Autumn and I visited the neighbors and then a very, very tired Princess Presto went to sleep and dream of dogs and dances and lights and candy!

CAPES! SUPER POWERS! MONKEYS! It Must Be Halloween!

I LOVE HALLOWEEN. I am so excited about tomorrow. Candy? Costumes? Parties? Friends? What's not to love?? Remember Autumn's first halloween?


Dawwwwww! I was a little worried that I'd be sad at Halloween because I had already planned Garrett's costume (I don't know if I would realllly have done it) but, really, I've had such a good time with Autumn this year that it's only been a little bittersweet. The counselor tells me this is good.

SPEAKING of things I thought would be sad...we had our family pictures last week with Elizabeth Wiggs. I will post more when we order our photos but check out her blog post: YOU WANT TO CLICK HERE. They are so wonderful I cried. And three other people emailed me to tell me they cried, too. That's how great these are.

Back to Halloween, though, last week I posted a picture of Autumn I loved. Well, I'm still practicing my photography but I am also learning some new photoshop techniques. I played with this one some. Original here.


We went to Funnybones at Mullins United Methodist and had a really good time. Mullins has this little graveyard. I know this might be weird, but Mike and I have always found graveyards interesting. Even when we go to Garrett's grave, we end up looking around at dates and gravestones, many of which are works of art. This one's no different. Autumn and Ella went through the graveyard to get to each other when they ended up on opposite sides and I thought that the contrast between the girls and the graves was fantastic. (If you read my other blog, you've seen this).


I aged the photo and added the color back in using some actions to get the Halloween-y effect. I did the same thing to this one. I wish I'd had a wider lens to catch more of the graves on the left of the photo.


Anyway, that's it for photoshopping! From here on out, it's just me and my camera. :) One thing that made the event more fun was that Rob, Elyse, and Micah from our community group came with us and then joined us for tacos afterward!


Autumn and Micah didn't have many of the same interests because he's less weirded out by people than Autumn can be, haha. Autumn wasn't really sure what she thought about all the hubbub and I was going to take her to the benches to take a break and get used to everything when she ran into one of her favorite people in the whole world: Ella.


So sweet. By the way, here's all of Autumn's costume. She's Princess Presto! This is the only photo that really came out well because I picked a bad spot with patchy sunshine. The costume is kind of cobbled together but Autumn seems to love it. She wore it at the festival and to both of her days at school! Usually she wears a different costume every event the week before Halloween.


Who is Princess Presto? She is a Super Reader with the Power to Spell!


To make the costime, I took a princess dress she already had that was falling apart. I repaired all the torn seams and then I added that flounce thing. I used green ribbon to trim the edge and to make the belt. I used fabric paint for the purple her wand, belt, and crown. I also made the cape a tearaway cape! Have you seen the Incredibles? NO CAPES! I knew she'd be playing on inflatables and, well, playing so I didn't want her to have the cape tied around her neck. Plus I hate stuff around my neck so I assume no one else likes it. The cape attaches with velcro to her shoulders. She wants to use the cape all the time, though, so I'm going to make a velcro held tie so she can wear it just whenever. Fun! Oh! And of course we had Princess Hair™.


Back to the festival...Miss Roxie came, too! She wasn't super pumped about it. She did eat some sour straws and that was some funny stuff!


Three luau ladies and a Princess Presto! And she IS Princess Presto. Another one of Autumn's friends came up to her in a similar dress, almost the same really, just not doctored up, and said, "we have the same dress!" Autumn goes, "No. We don't. I. Am. Princess. Presto.


Here we are!


And, of course, I had to include this because I thought Autumn's face is hilarious.


That is some seriously emphatic smiling!

Happy Halloween! I'm sure there will be more Halloween Happiness next week!

Zoo Day!

What a week! We've been busy bees. I'm going to catch up with the rest of last week's post because there's going to be a lot to blog about with halloween coming up! We had a super fun time at the zoo last week, though. It was a beautiful day, just warm enough to be nice, so all the animals were out and about. This little guy was the first one we saw.


We just missed this guy. We saw him jump up and I thought the way he was sitting was pretty amusing.

From October 2011

This started out as a cute picture but then Autumn spotted the otters, hahaha.


I could seriously watch them play all day. If I were a bzillionaire I'd have an otter house.


Autumn was completely unimpressed by the pandas. While I was ooh-ing and ahhh-ing over how cute this panda was, looking like Winnie the Pooh kind of, she was looking up at this sparrow in the rafters going, "MAMA LOOK AT THAT BIRD UP THERE HE'S SO SILLY."


How fun is this?


Papa had to do a little extra carry duty this trip. It was the first time we went to the zoo without a stroller. She's such a big girl!


Intensely concentrating on the sea lion show.


Autumn was pretty wiped out because she went to bed late due to camping and then woke up with the sun--seriously, we have black out shades in her room because that's her thing. So we missed doing the petting farm area and the monkeys but we still had a great time! We did have to stop in one place....


Flamingos! This is one of her obsessions. She stands on one leg "like a flamingo" a lot so I was glad we were able to pass them on the way out. :) Funny note: sometimes she calls mangoes flamingos and it takes me a second to figure out why she wants eat a flamingo. You can imagine my confusion the first time she did it.

Here we are at the end. I wonder where my eyes went. I look like Ling from Fullmetal Alchemist, lol. Autumn appears to be...roaring?


And P'd came with us! He had never been to the zoo with Autumn! How did that happen?


Here's a preview of our next post! (also, it took me a minute to realize that wasn't my thumb in the top corner or something--it's her wand. Duh)


Don't forget to visit my other blog! Lots going on there! Today we had a photo session with Elizabeth Wiggs and she took a picture I am going to use for my banner there...I can't wait to see the photos!

Weekend Grab Bag: Peanut Butter, A Broken(?) Toe, and Camping

I have a ton of pictures from this weekend! I think I'm going to have to split this post but let's get started and see what happens. We will begin with last night.

Some of you guys have seen this picture on Facebook. It's been in the news that peanut butter prices are about to go up and, seriously, Autumn eats a lot of peanut butter. I don't know what we'll do if we ever have to go peanut free for her school. I knew Mike was going to get some extra jars from Costco. Thing is, it wasn't a couple...


Autumn is thrilled as you can see. She survived standing on the counter (with papa standing close by) but when she was helping Mike put away the jars, she TOTALLY DROPPED ONE on her toe. I don't think it's broken but after consulting Aunt Nurse Penny, she's definitely going to lose the nail. We're treating her with RICE, snuggles and pain relievers.


ANYWAY, Friday night and Saturday morning were much happier for the little miss although tomorrow is going to be sad for her because if her toe is still as bad as it was today, she's going to miss a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. If me accidentally bumping her foot sends her into a spiral of sadness, I don't think tennis shoes and lots of little kids hyped up on sugar is going to be a great idea.

Hopefully she can console herself with memories of...CAMPING!

She's been alllll about camping. I don't know what first put the idea in her head but she's been checking out books from the library about camping and "planning." What did she want at her campout? Thursday she told her Spanish teacher: "When the sun's awake, I'm going camping and we're gonna have a fire, a tent, sleeping bags, marshmallows, sticks, dirt and rocks." We managed to get all of that at Lainey and P'd's house on Friday night!


She wasn't super impressed with toasted marshmallows. She did not like burned ones. She did not like warm not burned ones. She did not like smores. I am guessing she would also not like green eggs and ham, Sam I am. I like smores and marshmallows (but not green eggs and ham).


I'm pretty sure this was some dramatic writhing over marshmallows.


We did have a minor casualty. Mike stabbed himself in the finger trying to get his chocolate and marshmallow onto the skewer together to toast over the fire rather than just putting the hot marshmallow on top of the chocolate bar.


This is the face of happiness.


She had her books, her ladybug light, her ladybug pillow pet, the sleeping bag, Tinker Bell tent, Tinker Bell pajamas, Tinker Bell book, Tinker Belle blanket, Belle necklace, Hello Kitty socks, aaaaand some water. As much as I despise the word glamping, this probably qualifies. The ladybug light provided some extra "stars," so there was that.


View of the fire from the tent.


A quick, comfy read before sleeping.


I was pretty surprised, she slept all night with no problems. I really thought I'd be ending this blog post with a funny story about Autumn hearing locusts or crickets and Mike and me having to haul her inside to calm her down! She did, of course, wake up at the crack of dawn which wasn't a huge deal because I was freezing and we had to get up to get ready for the zoo! But those pictures will have to wait...tune in next time!


We saw an ostrich and its eggs. I think these things are terrifying.