My amazing sister...

I think all my sisters are amazing, but I was reminded of the talent of one sister in particular yesterday. She is an amazing cook-inherited from our mom I'm sure, and has used her talent in so many ways. She currently works for a lady making cakes of every kind. She decided to enter this cake in a competition and she took Silver! The pictures hardly do it justice, but holy smokes! Pam-You're amazing!

That's Pooky!

Me, my sister and sister-in-law all took the kids to Grandma's for a trunk or treat. This is what we have, from the left to right on each row: Cael, the Fire guy, Henry, the workin' guy, Daisy, the chicken, Jordan, the Bee, and Ella the Monkey. So much fun seeing all of them dressed up, however, we were quite outnumbered. The adults often took turns of holding two children while eating dinner. The trunk or treat was a blast. I'm sure we wore Grandma and Grandpa out in the process, but what memories are made easily, right?
Oh, and as for the title of this post-that is how Henry says Spooky. As in-pooky mountains. We love it!

Cheeks!

Ella has managed to come up with a plethora of new faces for us in the last few weeks. This is just one of them.

I'm trying...

I am currently trying to get myself in the mood for the holidays. I want time to be excited for them, not wait until they are the day after tomorrow. Usually, it is not such a terrible task for me. Ask Phil--I am usually listening to Christmas music and watching Christmas movies long before Halloween rolls around. This year is a completely different story-its almost making me sad. I cannot seem to get into my groove. Too many things on the brain I suppose. But I LOVE Christmas. It is by far my favorite holiday for many different reasons and I love being excited for it. I am starting to pull out my favorite holiday music-the decorations can wait a few weeks. But I am determined to get all my shopping done, decorations up, and be in a jolly mood before December 1st.

Cousins....

We took our cousins' pictures a few weeks ago. Their liitle boy is a week older than Ella. So we took their picture.

Getting so big...

Our little Ella is getting so big. She is four months away from being one-and that is just weird to me. She's too bald to be one yet. Just kidding. I was looking back at some of the pictures that we took in the hospital. I really need to scrapbook all of that before I forget it, because I will forget it.
She is almost crawling. She tries so hard to go forwards, but she goes backwards instead. Kind of funny until she starts screaming at me like 'stop laughing and help me!' She is so much fun and I'm so grateful to have her and be able to stay home with her.

Fall is here!

Well, can you call it fall if it has already snowed? I don't know. I love this time of year though. I think it has become my favorite. Maybe because it is closer to Christmas and Thanksgiving? I'm not sure. So last Friday, I was in the mood to do something fun. So we waited for Phil to get home, then we went to Gardner Village. So much fun. They are all decorated for Halloween and it was fun to walk around.

Catch up time

You can skip this if you please, but Ella is getting soooooo big. I have to post pictures just because it is fun to see her progress!

She is also getting very good at looking right at the camera.

I feel like...

I was dropped off the face of the earth? I guess? Who knew that being without the internet could be so terrible? Not just for the fun stuff, but the every day stuff that I do? Check the bank account, pay bills? Honestly, the last four weeks without the internet have felt very long. What did we do without it?
Well, we are moved into our house. So much fun. We are really liking it. This month was definitely a busy one. We moved in on the first, and we had the long labor day weekend to get everything at least put in the room we wanted it. I won't lie, I have one room downstairs that is still hairy, but I figure if I haven't had to scour it looking for something, it must be things that can wait. But I will get to it. My mom was the biggest lifesaver today and came all the way up here just to watch Ella so I can something done. It was wonderful. I didn't get everything done, but enough to make me feel not quite so unorganized. It would have been done a long time ago-but one of my favorite things about this house got in the way...

Between all the batches that me, my mother, and sister did, we got over 100, yes 100 quarts of peaches and 21 pints of pears. We didn't pick them soon enough, so we lost a few. So, that has kept us busy. And those got finished up just in time to do the grapes! Which I will be juicing. Hopefully they turn out as good as I imagaine them to be.