This and That

What a weekend. I had a seminar, Mike cut his hand, I completely FAILED at dying a gi top for my costume...oddly the one that's the most stressful is that I didn't dye the gi right, haha! I'm either going to try again or give it up and make one...

Anyway, have a hodgepodge of pictures! There are the last of the beach photos. Autumn and Mike had fun in the ocean. It was mostly too cold for me.

From October 2012

Here's my dolphin photo! I wish I'd caught them just a second sooner.


I have to say, I think these crane things are creepy. They are so tall! We saw one when we were walking on the beach at night, too. I thought it was a person at first. THEN IT FLEW AWAY. /shudder


We carved a jack o' lantern! It was Autumn's first. We did it too early, though, and it rotted. :( We'll do another this weekend!


Autumn's school had baby animal day on Friday. I got some super cute photos of the kids in her class. So much fun!


After school we went to My Big Backyard with Josh.


I think going out without having some down time was a bad idea. I thought so, but I wanted to try in case I was wrong! Poor Autumn got a little overwrought at one point and had to take a break.


Hey, can you tell where she is?


Pop!


:D More to come next week! Visit Passing Pinwheels to catch up on the blogging event I am participating in.

Adventures

Your regularly scheduled blog post will be TOMORROW! I spent the weekend at a seminar and I AM SO TIRED. I would have had the evening to rest but then this happened:


The Papa is fine but he did cut his hand with some pruners and I had to take him to the hospital. He had 4 stitches. Between the shock of him coming in covered with blood, wrapping him up, getting him there, the wait, the drive to the 24 hour pharmacy, and the usually Sunday night chores, I'm beat! Wish me luck on a good night's sleep and please say a prayer for Mike, who may have a painful night ahead. I'll be posting tomorrow, most likely!

On the road and back again

We went to the beach!


After the seminar, we packed up and rolled on out of town. I didn't mention it in my last post because I try not to announce to the world when we're gone. :) That's your public safety announcement of the day! It was so great to get away and do a whole lot of nothing for a week. The weather was beautiful. In the 80's, no rain, only a few clouds. Monday morning we were a little chilly but other than that, everything was perfect! There were so many butterflies, it was crazy. I guess they are migrating for the winter? Really, the creatures were in full force. I haven't uploaded all my photos but I'm pretty sure I have some jumping dolphin pictures. The seagulls just kind of chilled on the beach. They were pretty funny. And a little creepy.


We saw SO MANY CRABS. Both the hermit kind and the tiny white kind. The hermits had seriously pretty shells. Mike and P'd found them mainly when looking for pretty shells on the ocean floor. Autumn wanted nothing to do with the crabs but I thought they were cute.


We looooooooved the indoor pool. Seriously, they had it at like 90 degrees. A little too hot to do any real swimming but so nice. I'm not usually into water much but I think I swam every day. Maybe it'll counteract all the vacation food...


I even participated in some acrobatics. :)


It looks like we tried this back in 2009. LOOK AT AUTUMN. She was so little and chubby. And my hair was red then, too!


Oh! We also went to this little theme park. I love this picture of Autumn and P'd.


Autumn did really great on the rides. We were pretty impressed! But the she really didn't like the airplane ride where you move the wheel to go up and down.


But she made up for it at the little people go karts. Apparently all that Mario Kart paid off for her! It was SO FUNNY, Autumn crashed into something and another little girl passed her. You should have seen her face. She was so mad!! It looks like she's going to be a competitive one.


I have more photos to upload! Until next week!

Don't forget to visit Passing Pinwheels! Check out a guest post from Mike for our 10th anniversary, information about pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day, and the stuff I made for Nanny and Boppa's party!

Another Late One!

I had a big weekend! We had the seminar at the Collierville Arts Academy. I'll post some photos soon. FOR NOW. I have dress up day.


Which left Autumn completely unimpressed. I thought she'd be excited about getting to wear a fun outfit. Apparently, the PTA which sends home MOUNTAINS OF INFORMATION CONSTANTLY hit some kind of goal and the reward was a no uniform day.


She added the hat on her own. :) It turns out she wasn't feeling very well. Autumn had been complaining about her tummy and I thought it was because she had been coughing and her muscles hurt. Aaaaaand then she came home with a fever. No strep or anything because I took her to the doctor for a strep test at the nurse's suggestion. So between Autumn not feeling well and the seminar, I don't have a lot of pictures. Which means...it's time for some mobile moments. :D


I don't know why but Autumn loved this Turkey hat. Ha! She even gobble gobbled around the store. When we were getting ready for the ball last week, I curled her hair with foam rollers and wrapped them in a handkerchief. She was so cute! But also completely uninterested in photos.


And this is just funny.


Oh! And here's Autumn's first diorama! We used some sand and shells she had collected from the beach, one of the aquarium plants Penny gave us, and Autumn colored and cut out fish. I didn't see all of the dioramas but I'm just gonna say that out of all the ones I *did* see, ours might have looked the, um, most homemade.


Ok, I guess we'll wind down with some sleepy ladies!


And,


Ha!

At the Children's Ball!

I know this is so late so, Monday morning readers, I am so sorry! I've been sick and today is the first day I've really felt human again so here I am with my late post! But this one is a fun one. We went to the children's ball!


We started out the night with a carriage ride! This is what Autumn thought about it.


Actually, she really loved the carriage ride, but almost all the photos I have of her after the horses started moving look like this:


Mike's dad was going to go with us but he had something come up so my mom got to come along! And, after the carriage ride, Princess Autumn was announced by a herald and she met Cinderella. She was pretty not thrilled about that! Too much attention, I think.


Next we got to see the Peabody Duckmaster.


And, of course, the ducks! They were super cute.


Here we are at our table.


And here's the other version of that picture, just because it made me laugh!


I teach at Collierville Arts Academy where they do a lot of other classes. The ballet program did a Snow White ballet and the fencers did a demo. The kids loved the fencing!


Autumn enjoyed it so much she moved to the floor so she could get a better look. Later she whispered, "I want to do that."


After the show, Autumn got in line to get her face painted. She was sooooo excited about it.


Too fun!


Click here for more Children's Ball photos at Passing Pinwheels!

In Which Autumn Discovers Her Latent Gymnastics Gene

Yesterday we got to go to Olivia's birthday party! I think we've talked about Frank and Emily here before. Frank is one of Mike's best friends from childhood and he was in our wedding. It's crazy that we're all grown up with kids and everything, haha. Anyway, Olivia just turned 3 and they celebrated at the Little Gym. Autumn had a good time. A seriously good time. She hung upside down some.


Bounced a little.


Got smushed in a kid and bouncer taco.


But every single time she had a chance, Autumn headed back to her true love: the balance beam.


At first she went across with Mike holding her hand but after that she was all over that balance beam.


It was so funny, on one pass, Autumn totally fell off, bounced off the mat, and hit the wall. I know I shouldn't have but I laughed. She popped up and looked a little disgruntled but then she patted her head and yelled, "I AM OKAY!" Most of the time, though, she trucked on down, leaped off, and then did a front roll down the wedge crash pad at the end! Seriously, I'm going to have to get one for my kids' aikido class.


When she got tired, it was back to the beam for a rest. :)


Somewhere in between the balance beam and the party games, Autumn and Mike played some ball. I got this fun shot of Mike.


:) And the party ended with a hug for the birthday girl!


Don't forget to check out Passing Pinwheels to see what else we've been up to! I'm also hosting a self defense workshop in October. If you or anyone else you know might be interested, check it out!

Costumes, Surprises, and Birthdays, oh, my!

One of the fun things about Autumn being in kindergarten is that I get to be one of the room moms! The other room mom has been taking pictures of the class for a photo project since the beginning of the year so I told her that I'd love to help out because, well, I like taking pictures. Seriously, I have taken almost a thousand this month AND IT'S ONLY THE 16TH.  Holy cow. I can't even imagine how much disk space professional photographer must need. It's really just that there have been a lot of events this month. The seminar, the Japanese Festival, and this!


For 9/11, kindergarten did Community Helpers day. So sweet. All the kids dressed up as some kind of person who does good things for our community. I saw firefighters, police officers, chefs, even a princess! Autumn wore the scrubs and stethoscope Penny gave her for her birthday. But she said she wasn't a nurse because she didn't have the right hat, haha.


The firemen were very nice. Even when I asked them to pose for a photo. :) I also took one of the class. Both photos turned out well so I asked Autumn's teacher if she wanted me to make a thank you card for the firemen (firepeople?) using them and she said yes. Autumn and I had fun doing it! All the kids are going to sign it and then we'll send it to the fire station.


The other big event? We had a surprise party for Nanny's 80th birthday and Nanny and Boppa's 60th wedding anniversary! We had been scheming about this for a couple of weeks--including trying to get Nanny to give us photos! I was sure she knew what was up but she and Boppa were very surprised!




So fun! Autumn has been doing her best to keep quiet about the party and I am so proud of her! We had sooo many conversations about what kidpower calls Good Secrets, so we made it a teaching moment, too, lol. She's seen Nanny and Boppa two or three times since I made the invitations and didn't breathe a word.


I haven't the slightest idea where she got this but Autumn came down carrying this some time before we got word that Nanny and Boppa were on the way.


That is, by the way, a knee high attached! And, for someone who hates noise, Autumn sure had fun honking the horn in her own ear.


Much to Autumn's delight, Tyler &company came in town for the party! I got there early to help set things up and Tyler asked me about every 5 minutes when Autumn was going to arrive! I finally called Mike and told him to bring Autumn on because Tyler was going to implode if he didn't see Autumn!


They were so busy that I never got them to stand still long enough to take a picture together! At the end of the night when Autumn was about to pass out from tired, I asked her to give Tyler a hug or smile next to him for the camera and she was completely uninterested! She barely mustered the energy to drag herself to the stairs next to him and look blank.


So silly. I'm going to post photos of all the things we made! I had so much fun doing my part. For now, take a look at my new birthday hair: click here!

Ok, I can't end with a picture of Autumn looking pitiful...have a picture of her in her ballet outfit holding the really pitiful yet adorable tomato and sugar baby watermelon we picked from our small garden!