Pinecone Pumpkins

The twins first crafts.

A few weeks ago I joined a mommy playgroup. Each week we get together either at someones house or the park or on a field trip. This week we went to the local crafting store. I was a little worried about 7 two & three-year-olds having access to paint, glitter, and glue, but it worked just great and everyone had a good time. The owner of the shop, called Crafting Hearts, had it all under control. There was a little table and chair set out on the patio and even though it was a tight squeeze there were no 'painting our friend' accidents.

The kids love the playgroup, they ask all the time to go to their friends house. I'm glad they enjoy playing with other kids, but mainly I'm glad I have other stay-at-home mom friends.

Nathan

I have high hopes for Nathan this year. He has been a 5th grader for about a month now and although it has been a rocky start I think we are going to have a much smoother, calmer year. First of all, I like what I know about his new teacher. She made it clear at back to school night that she realizes the strain too much homework puts on the whole family. Yay! That was the biggest problem last year. Nathan would bring home hours worth of homework every night, sometimes even weekends. I even got to the point where after we worked for two hours we quit and he would just have to have missing assignments. But even that didn't work because kids who didn't finish at home had to stay in at recess to finish. Nathan barely had time to have fun with his friends. So far this year he has been able to finish all his homework within 30-60 minutes. No complaining, no fighting!
I am also very excited that Nathan has found a great friend from class who also lives right up the street from us. They play together after school almost everyday.

Sleepy time

I took this picture of Baylee the other day. Isn't she too cute falling asleep with her hands firmly grasping the swing toy? It made me think of all the cute "sleepy time" pictures I've taken over the years.

This is Alivia at about 6 weeks old, sleeping in her bumbo seat.

Here's Aaron, sleeping right through lunch time.

This is one of my favorite pictures. While we were in the process of moving, I had to put the twins in the same crib, I can't believe they actually feel asleep that way.

After we would put the kids to bed at night, Aaron would sneak out and hide in the hallway.

A Last Minute Vacation

Last Thursday we decided to leave that day for a mini-vacation. We first stopped in Sacramento to visit the newest member of the family. Here he is next to Baylee. Can you believe there is a 5 month age difference?


The kids loved spending time in the pool. Thank you Auntie Lyssa for cleaning out the pool for us!


We only spent one day in Sacramento, but I did get a chance to visit my favorite Auntie, Mitzi.

Here's Baylee visiting with her cousin Blaine, these two are just a few weeks apart. Blaine was showing Baylee how to crawl. She was trying, but just wasn't able to get one knee in front of the other.


More swimming, this time in grandma's pool. The kids were being very brave by swimming with just the arm floaties. I'm going to have to figure out how to get them into swim lessons very soon.


We left town right after this huge fire started, now known as the Station Fire, it's burn fairly close to our town, about 15 miles to the west of us. So far it's just the smoke, and some ash, that has made it's way to Wrightwood. Here is a picture I took from the car on our way back into town on Monday.

snow!

Well, not quite yet. But I love looking at these pictures of the kids playing in the snow last winter. We got hit hard a couple times with up to 5 feet of snow within 2 days. I will definitely be sad when my nice green lawn, and beautiful flowers and trees are all covered by snow.

This is great picture of our Subaru, buried so well you can only see it's side view mirror.