extraordinary week

this week has certainly been extra-ordinary!!

last night/today, we got our first real snow of the season. a few weeks ago several parts of the metro area were dusted with some snow but today was the real deal. we have about 6-8" on the ground and lots of low-hanging/broken limbs. it was a preschool day for marianne so by the time i picked her up she was desperate to get out and play in the snow. we bundled up and went out for a bit to throw a few snowballs and run in the deep drifts. george would have been in heaven!!! but we had to enjoy it without him.

marianne's preschool has each child take turns being "student of the week" and they ask the parents to bring in an "all about me" poster for their child. marianne and i have been talking about her favorite things, people, and fun ideas for her poster for a few the last several weeks. this is marianne's week so i put in a couple of late nights to finish it up. when we dropped it off at her preschool earlier this week, marianne was heartbroken that it had to stay at school and we couldn't bring it home. i think i was just as proud of it as she was!

marianne and i got a special treat on monday...after weeks of jerry working long, late hours to meet his audit deadlines for work, he decided to work from home on monday! we all went for lunch together at one of our favorite burger joints—freddy's (very reminiscent of steak n shake)—and marianne had her very first cheeseburger and fries! daddy was the proud one this time. she actually loved it and ate almost her entire cheeseburger...at least she washed it down with milk, right?


this is actually from last week: marianne was building with blocks and built this "pirate ship" (her idea completely) all by herself. okay, well i had to help brace some of the pieces while she stacked the tall sail but otherwise it was all her own doing! i got the camera to snap a few bragging photos and then she started hamming it up...covering her eye with her hand (her pirate eye patch) and saying "argghhh, matey"! i caught a little video too.

alright, so this is actually from a few weeks ago but i forgot i had it and just found it on my phone! we were grabbing a quick lunch at the grocery store cafe on our way home from the pumpkin festival and marianne started dancing to the grocery store "elevator music." a riot. 

movie night

Cuddled up on the couch with my peanut...eating popcorn and watching pooh Halloween movie.

I love this job

I've learned this year how much of a job being a FT mom can be...it seriously is. To keep us busy, productive, and the both of us (M + myself) from going crazy, it takes a good deal of pre-planning and self-discipline which has taken me most of the year to adjust to. I feel like I'm finally hitting my stride...of course just as everything is about to change all over again.

I thought I'd share a couple snippets from our recent adventures. in sept, "circus" was the curriculum theme at M's preschool so we did a circus train craft at home one week. She had a blast with it and I was so proud (of both of us) that we've displayed it in her room.

after music class this morning, we dropped by the botanic gardens and enjoyed ourselves for a couple of hours just running around amongst the flowers, sculptures, and fountains soaking in the beautiful fall weather before meeting up with daddy for an impromptu lunch date. He worked all weekend and late nights last week so we haven't really seen much of him. It was a fabulous lunch on a patio.

Have I mentioned I love fall? it's by far my favorite season. Usually we get a blip of true fall weather here in CO, going straight from summer to winter, but this year we have been spoiled with a few weeks of fantastic cool weather already. i also love halloween and have been on a mission to deck the house with delightfully spooky decorations this year! Marianne + I have been working on some of them so I've included a couple snapshots of what we've done so far.

punkin feztible

i am so happy that fall has arrived and in full force on this cold, rainy saturday. i love a good stay-in-the-house-cozied-up kind of day but i found myself longing for the outdoor fun we had last weekend at The Four Mile Historic Park Pumpkin Festival—or as marianne says "punkin feztible." we met up with our friends, the andersons, while we were there and the girls (marianne and maryn) had a blast. it was such a great little festival—free admission and both free/very inexpensive fun activities for the kids, plus most of the festival-workers were dressed in wild frontier period costume. we panned for gold; spun wool yarn; played tug-o-war; ate apple cider donuts, hot snicker-doodles and kettle corn; explored the pumpkin patch; rode the horse-drawn covered wagon; and although we passed on making a life-sized scarecrow marianne enjoyed filling her own pants with straw while climbing and clambering all over the hay bales.

panning for gold...marianne preferred throwing rocks in her pan and
then dunking them into the water as opposed to panning silt from the
trough. maryn, however, scored several gold nuggets for her efforts.

there was a huge play yard with several games like wooden stick horses,
stilts, and tug-o-war. the girls pulled each other all over the yard...
giggling the whole way.

marianne was desperate to find a small pumpkin that she could actually
pick up on her own. we scoured the entire patch a few times over with
no success. she was so focused that she refused/ignored my requests to
let me get a picture of her actually looking at the camera.

she tried...but it was too heavy!

from the moment we arrived, marianne saw the wagons and begged the
entire time to ride! at $3 for the both of us...who could refuse. i was
thinking of grandpa george the entire time.

it looks like she's miserable but i assure you she had a blast...but to my
complete frustration she rarely obliges my request to smile for the
camera (much like her daddy).

as you might be able to tell from marianne's rosy cheeks, it was a little too warm to be ideal fall festival weather but it got both of us extremely excited for fall and halloween. i broke out my handful of halloween decorations yesterday and we've been working on some handmade paper decorations to transform this home into a haunt!

jesse corduroy

we've been talking to marianne about her baby brother (due dec 10) as much as we can with the unsquashable expectation that she will welcome him with open arms when we bring him home and become instantly attached to him. it's that easy, right? ok, i'm not completely off my rocker—we are prepared for any possible reaction marianne might have to a new baby in the house but i'm sure hoping that the more we talk about him that she won't be absolutely unnerved when the day comes. over the past six months, her comprehension and interest in the subject has fluctuated from curiosity, to aversion, to excitement, and all in between. she's gone with us to the "baby doctor" (as she calls my ob) for the ultrasound appointments to get a glimpse of him and hear his heartbeat. and although he's hasn't been very cooperative in giving the u/s tech very good profile "photos" for us, anatomically everything is looking healthy. our ob even gave us a follow-up ultrasound at 28 weeks to double-check everything to put our minds at ease given everything that we've been through with marianne's kidneys through pregnancy and postnatal. as a side note, i've switched practices and am seeing a completely different ob with this pregnancy and i am loving how amazing, amenable, and responsive she has been about every concern, every step of the way.

baby boy laflen : 13 weeks

baby boy laflen's feet : 20 weeks

in the last couple of months we've been talking increasingly more about names for the little guy—who has taken on the pregnancy nickname 'hank' since we found out he does indeed have a penis (or, at least, a scrotum which is all that we've seen...even so i think it's safe to assume that the twig is there as well). it's highly likely we won't name him until after he's born. which is when we named marianne, mostly because we simply hadn't decided between our top three favorites. but, in retrospect, having the opportunity to meet her got me to a place of absolute certainty that the name belonged to her, however relatively brief those eight hours between birth and naming her. so we're working on names for hank (which we have decided to keep a surprise!!!) and have periodically asked marianne to weigh in. now keep in mind that she chooses rather transparent names for her stuffed animals ("pink meow meow" for her pink cat, "brown doggy" for her brown dog, "piglet" for her pink/white striped pig...you get the picture) so the first option she gave us was "baby brother". makes sense. then, a couple of weeks ago she decided that "princess" was a viable choice. to which, of course, momma and daddy were not as convinced. yesterday, she pointed to my belly and said "that's my baby brother." i figured, while she had brought up the topic, i'd ask her for another opinion on his name. without hesitation she declared that his name should be "jesse corduroy" — no doubt, derived from toy story 2's cowgirl jessie and the bear from the classic children's book corduroy (a couple of her current favorites). hmmmmmmm.........well, i guess if he comes out wearing a cowboy hat and green overalls we won't be able to argue, now will we?

i suppose i'll subject myself now, to a little humiliation. here's the progress on the burgeoning hank belly:

16 weeks

























24 weeks

...and he is going to KILL ME but i cannot resist to post this : sympathy belly 16 weeks

i'll leave you with something genuinely cute...a "kids say the darnedest things" moment:
marianne has been rather opinionated lately. this weekend, i scored a cute new yellow purse for $8 at the thrift store (thanks to my good friend, amy, who is schooling me in awesome thrifty finds)! i've been carrying the same green purse for 6 months now, so i thought it was time for a change and the price was right. sunday afternoon, marianne and i were on the way to a birthday party and marianne (who, from her spot in the seat behind me, has a clear shot of the front passenger seat where my purse rides) asks, sounding rather disgusted, "where's the green purse?"

i told her i changed to this new yellow purse.

"oh."

several moments pass and then comes a quite definite, "i like the green purse."

for what it's worth, i haven't switched back to the green purse...yet.

marianne (right) with the birthday girl, maia

front porch relaxin'

kickin' back + blowing bubbles on this fantastic autumn afternoon.