A little bit chilly.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, it rained. A lot...for 2 days almost straight-thru, which is a super-rare occurrence here. I was soaking it up...no pun intended! It almost truly felt like fall!                                      Saturday morning we bundled the kids up (it was cold! At least in the 50s...) and went out into the yard to play kickball, which was of course super fun. Once we finished, Blythe was "brr-ing" (that's "cold" in Blythe-speak) and Pax was, well, not boiling hot; so they asked if they could have hot cocoa in front of the fire. An easy request to grant, since our fireplace is gas...and they loved it.

Although, if you look closely you can see that neither one has socks on. You can also see that Pax put on shorts after coming inside...so they couldn't have been THAT cold :)










....toasting his fingers....
since Blaise was outside with Daddy removing a dead palm tree, I took the time to actually grab the big camera and snapped a few shots, instead of using my phone. Some things just need to be documented well.















Hot Cocoa simply tastes better when you drink it out of pretty cups in front of a blazing fire, don't you think?
So thankful we get to make memories like this with our kiddos.

A little bit of fall

What do you do when you're used to beautiful, chilly falls in Colorado-but are surrounded by cactus?

                                                  Drive up to Prescott on a Saturday whim,

 and find a random fall fair at a farm, complete with pumpkin patch, just waiting for you to discover!
Be sure to go on the hayride, pet the horses at the petting "zoo", and watch your husband drool over turkey legs-but decide that $8 is too much for a turkey leg.

 Let your Small Son ride on a cool barrel-pulled-by-tractor ride (hey, it's like a train!) and watch him practically jump out of his skin with excitement...

 ...and then let him get his face painted for the first time, to cap it off (I drew a heart on B's face with these cool wipe-off-oil-paintesk crayons we have when we got back to the car...wasn't gonna pay the $3 for  her. Sorry Little Bit-but you were pretty excited, anyway!)

And, of course, take the obligatory family picture on the hay bale, in which your children look like you dragged them there by their hair.

It was so much fun-a little cool, which was SO nice. AND after that? We continued on to Prescott, where we met up with an old friend of Adam's that we discovered had moved there in July with his wife...Adam hadn't talked to Paul in close to 2 years, and randomly emailed him to reconnect the day before...surprise!! he and his wife are now living in the little town we were planning on visiting the next day anyway. God's cool like that...He loves to show us how much He loves us through harvest carnivals and long-lost friends. So refreshing to these transplants who are still getting used to the fact that it's 97 degrees in the middle of October.

Just in time.

It's cold and rainy today, for the first time this fall...snow's in the forecast for tomorrow. Looks like I finished the kids' new winter hats just in time! FYI, for those who crochet or care...the rose on B's hat (which, I must say, is my FAVORITE of all the pattern I've tried for flowers...) was super easy to make-crocheted in a strip, then wound and sewn...love, love, LOVE it. Pax's hat is the same colors as his daddy's-he wanted it that way. And when he puts it on, he looks uncannily like Adam's mini-me...

Thankful Thursdays

Thursday again...what a quick week! Thursdays are fun...since Adam has the day off tomorrow, it's like our Friday night. So this week...

1)I"m thankful that I get to hang out with my family tonight, no plans...never know what we'll end up doing, and it's great! Might end up with friends, might rent a 99 cent movie from City Market and stay home. Just thankful for a little quality time with the fam!

2) For change. It's sometimes scary, and being in limbo is a hard place to be patient in...but I am thankful for it because it means I am truly listening for my Lord and Savior as He directs our family, and obeying.

3)For the chance to go to my parents' for Thanksgiving. It's been several years since we've gotten to go to the front range for Thanksgiving, and getting to spend this day with lots of family-aunts, uncles, cousins, nephew, parents....it's so busy and crazy and FULL and I can't wait!!

4) For the wonderful new (to us) car that will get us to Ft. Collins. I don't even have to think about wether or not it's reliable...so thankful for peace of mind!

5) For Ashley Desko and how much she loves our little boy. Knowing that she will be at our house tommorow night, playing and loving on Pax, makes my date night with my husband even more enjoyable.

6) For the blessing of a gift card from a very generous family who is helping to make our date night tommorow possible!

7)Beautiful late fall days.

8)Special holiday flavors being back at Starbucks and Baskin Robbins. It's a silly little thing, but I'm thankful for it because it makes the holiday season seem to start even earlier...and I love this time of year!!

9)That my son is finally sleeping through the night with absolutly no wake-ups. It's been a long road, but God has given us Grace for this season, for which I am also very thankful; and, like everything else, my little boy did it when HE was ready to do it.

10)That God created me as I am. I am still learning what this means in many ways; but I am so thankful for the way God created me. And that He created me to compliment to my husband, my friends, my ministry, my family...I bring something to all these areas that no one else can. For a long time I felt "weird" or "different"...now I am so thankful for it.

Fun at the Durango mall, harvest carnival, and football game...whew!

Last night was a fun whirlwind for us! We started by dressing up and going to the Durango mall, where Pax "trick-or-treat"ed for the first time ever. I made him a turtle shell and he wore his green fuzzy pjs, and he was absolutly adorable! If I do say so myself...anyways, we had fun walking all over the mall and seeing everyone. Pax was a bit overwhelmed at first, but warmed up quickly. We even entered him in a little costume contest...Jerome, Katrina, and Violet (Adam's brother and our oldest and youngest nieces) met us there. Pax wasn't too sure about Uncle Yay-Yay, since he was dressed as Sylvester the cat and Pax couldn't see his face, but once he heard his voice he figured it out. He tried to crawl into Violet's stroller to hug her (see the pics-Pax is exactly 1 month older than she is) and she kept looking at me like "is he really doing this?" he loves her...tries to wrestle with her like he does with Adam. The little princess likes him at a distance, mostly. He's a bit too in her face sometimes :) So we trick-or-treated with Hannah Montana for awhile, then headed out to Bayfeild. A good friend of Adam's is the youth pastor at the foursquare church out there, so we went to see them. Their little girl is 2 and calls Pax "sugar" all the time; their little 3 1/2 month old boy was dressed in a robe with a shower cap on and was pulled in a wagon filled with white ballons--he looked just like a little old man in a bubble bath! I wish I'd gotten a picture of him! Pax loved digging for "treasure" and "fishing" for ducks there, but we didn't stay too long. We had to get to the DHS football game! It was cold, and the team was loosing horribly, but we saw some of our students and Pax was pretty impressed with it all. he kept saying "wow! wow! Wow!!" and pointing at everything. All in all, a fun night! AND we went to the court house yesterday, took our ballots home, and spent some time filling them out. We dropped them at the courthouse yesterday evening before all of this, so we've voted! No lines on election day for us. Yay for early voting!!