Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Gang

When Zaide calls to see if anyone wants to go swimming the answer is always Y-E-S! around these parts.  Especially when swimming equals no rules, tons of toys and our two most favorite cousins.



Danger Dave had no problem swimming laps.  Alone.  She also had no problem hurling herself off the side of the pool.  Even when we took the floats off.  Fortunately Auntie Megan was there...

T-R-O-U-B-L-E

T-R-O-U-B-L-E JR.

Maddie continued to hone her diving skills.  The skills that she was so freaked out about learning that we missed two lessons for.  She's awesome at it now.

Most of the flotilla.


And these two goons haven't seen each other in months.  Check out the determination. Neither wanted to lose this race. 

Halloween Party

40+ kids
Candy
Cookies
Yummy Food
Roaring Fires
_____________
=Fun

Maddie and I dressed up as velcro.  We were very convincing. Edit: it was an invisible costume. We just did a really good job of pretending.









Friday, October 28, 2011

Rudder's Day at the park

Ah, the dog park...where you leave feeling like a scalding hot shower is in order.  Am I the only one who feels this way?  The pee caked dust, the excessive slobber...So disgusting.  But so much fun for Maddie, Allie and most importantly, for Rudder.


Yup, that is indeed a pooper scooper she is paddling with.


Waiting patiently for his ball.  Rudder could care less about the other dogs.  He is a dog on a mission. And even more annoying is he has to use the SAME EXACT BALL the entire time so if we lose it in the rough he refuses to accept a replacement.  And if you've seen me throw, or use a ball launcher, you'll know that I have absolutely no coordination and the ball can, and often does, end up anywhere...


 Here's Luc, Sonja's puppy, all grown up.  He is a GIANT.  And a goofball.

Maddie draping her body over a log.  A log that was at perfect "lift your leg and pee" height.

Check out Rudder's tail.  Notice that white paint? Yup, that was from my stair painting project.

Unfortunately after all that running he still has energy to bark at the leaves blowing down the street.

Mama, fall is COLD



I guess we are two peas in a pod

We both were happy when we were behind the camera

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Fall

This morning did not look promising weather-wise but when the sun popped out this afternoon I vowed I'd get to Coulon to take pictures with the amazing orange/red maple trees that dot the park.  After picking up Maddie from school, who was very excited to tell me about her very first field trip to the pumpkin patch, I was feeling optimistic that I'd have two well behaved girls.  I mostly did.  But a few times I thought about grabbing Allie and making a run from the little gremlin in the pink jacket.  It's 7:30 and she's asleep, so all is forgiven now.


Allie has had 2 solid days of "big girl undies" and she, and I, could not be more proud.  Let's keep our fingers crossed that we don't regress.




We met up with Hannah, Calvin and their new baby brother Joel.  I managed to only get a few shots of Hannah...the gremlin required a lot of attention and for whatever reason whining does not get me in the pretty-picture-taking mood.

She was happy as long as she got to hang out on the train tracks.  I was 99% sure the tracks are no longer used for trains but the nagging 1% had me a bundle of nerves and the balancing act was cut short so we could move to safer ground (i.e., a road with cars and a dock about 50 yards off shore)


Miss Allie loved the ducks.  I think everyone in Renton knows she loves ducks.  "HI DUCKS! HI! SEE YOU NEXT TIME DUCKS!"

(anything with wings is a duck by the way)

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

Friday, October 21, 2011

Our latest project

Up and down, in and out, the main entrance for the girls and I (we park in the garage) has been a dark, dingy, dismal space for a very long time.  I finally got annoyed enough with the bare drywall walls, the stair runner that was original to the house and beyond cleaning and the paint-stained concrete floor that I took matters into my own hands and fixed the place up.  I started by making life difficult for myself and mixed all of my similarly colored beiges from around the house (I was trying to use up old paint) and painted the walls.  It's a nice color...just not sure how I'll do touch up.  Oh well, we'll worry about that one when the time comes.  Then I ripped out the old stair runner.  I have pictures of it somewhere thanks to Maddie but I don't know where they are so just take my word on it.  It was gross.  I repainted the steps a nice fresh bright white, and then TWO times frantically raced around the house scrubbing white paw prints from the floors and rugs.  Don't ask me how Rudder managed to walk on fresh paint...twice.  He spent the remainder of the day in the basement after take-two. 

Then we made a trip to Ikea where I promised Maddie she'd get to push her own kid cart.  People, they don't exist anymore.  Too many cart stealers apparently.  (really?!)  But we bought a cable for one side of the hallway to hang artwork and frames to hang our most recent family pictures for the other side.



And then, I covered up that old paint-stained concrete floor with pennies. Thank you very much to my mom who handed me a container with over 40 pounds of pennies in it.  One at a time I glued those suckers down.  After about $1.00's worth I was ready to give up.  But I persisted and love our somewhat wacky result.

New hooks for coats at World Market

Along with a mirror and a giant West Elm basket for shoes.  One of these days we might be able to find two matching shoes for two girls. Maybe. Don't get too excited Zaide.


(probably should have swept up the drywall dust on my purty pennies for the photoshoot...)

But there it is.  Project done.  Maddie got to help, the gorilla glue is FINALLY off of my fingers and the space seems so much warmer and home-like now.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Not my best performance

After a long day of getting new phones last week (think sitting on radio shack's floor for two hours) I rewarded the girls for their awesome behavior (they really were awesome) with a 30 second trip to Lowes (the pumpkin patch) to get our pumpkins.  Neither girl new the difference, although Maddie is going on a field trip to a real pumpkin patch so she'll soon know I totally jipped her, and both were beyond ecstatic.  We bought a pumpkin for Nonna, Sonja, Rudder, Allie, Maddie and Mama.  Sorry if you didn't make the cut.  But feel better knowing Mama's pumpkin is the big fat round one.  And not just "Mama, that's your pumpkin." More along the lines of "And that's mama, and that's..." 

So I continued my lackluster performance and after days of BEGGING to carve pumpkins and wield knives I finally relented and said go for it.  I took three usable pictures.  I'm sure we'll have a take-two on this whole escapade.  Who wants to go to a pumpkin farm with us? 

Also, last year we went to the Suncadia fall festival.  Both Hadley and Maddie refused to ride the adorable ponies they had.  Instead we went on a hay ride from hell.  It was about -20C, windy, and we sat on some gross hay and drove around a paved (dusty) construction site.  Anyhow, since that day Maddie has insisted that she wants to ride a horse.  She loves horses.  And everytime she sees one she calls it Love.  (The pony's name that she refused to ride)  If anyhone's down to make a trek to the country, pay a large admission fee to enter the farm, pay $8 to ride a pony for 3 minutes and watch Maddie chicken out, let me know!





edit: now I do feel bad! She's been talking about Love for TWO years!