what a sickie sounds like

Elise and Hannah woke up with fevers and other symptyms of general sickiness. Hannah just wants to lay around, having things like gatorade and chicken noodle soup delivered to her. Elise, on the other hand, doesn't understand sick so much and was just a moody bunch of craziness. The best example to sum up our day with Elise was when Lilly was looking at her and just kind of jabbering "poo, poo, poo, poo". Elise instantly started bawling and screamed "Lilly called me poo poo!" Yep. That pretty much sums it all up. And this morning? I am sick. Good times at the Kang house.

It's Autumn time...

I think I figured out some of what made it hard to go to Las Vegas last week. I lived in Las Vegas for about 6 years and I really did enjoy it while we were there. When we moved up here, it amazed me how much I had missed out on by not having seasons. I won't even start about the pumpkin patches that they have to offer there (parking lots with hay bales). I hadn't really even noticed it before, but living in the Pacific Northwest brought out this nature-loving girl who welcomed each new season with child like glee. I find myself excited and just down right giddy at the start of each new season, yet I am ready for it to be over and on with the next one at the end of it.

Towards the end of August, I was so ready for fall. School starting, leaves changing colors, that fabulous fall smell and, yes, even anxious for some rain. (as I am typing, I love hearing the sound of cars driving on the wet roads!) Right as I was settling in for some nice fall weather, we pick up and drive down to summer. I must say, it really put a kink into my fall mode. Knitting season had started, we were back in our school groove and loving the colored trees. As we drove closer to home, I realized what it was all about. It wasn't Las Vegas, but it was the lack of fall. The interruption of my seasonal transition and all of that. And it just feels good to be back home. Home, sweet (dirty and unorganized) home. Its good to be back.

Viva Las Vegas

Just in case you were wondering.....

You now know just how much I love Chris and my in laws.  Or I wouldn't be here. :)  It is a wonderful feeling to love your home so much that you see nothing that compares in beauty for a good 1000 miles.  But family is in Las Vegas so in Las Vegas we are.  

We are heading to see the Blue Man Group tonight, where apparently our seats are in the "poncho section".  Knowing that, I am sure the kids are going to love it.  Later on in the week, Chris and I have a date with the Phantom.  

My favorite part of our trip so far?  Sitting down with Chris' parents, looking through their old pictures and finding out more about them.  That, right there, makes this trip priceless.  Now I have a book to start on when I get home and hundreds of pictures to scan.  Ah, stories to tell.

knitting counter: 2 pairs of arm warmers and one more on the needles.  

an exciting life

today: piano, errands, cooking, part-ay, laundry (while watching Castle and Lie to Me, of course)

tomorrow: find my other knitting needle, school, more laundry, clean, laundry and....laundry?

side note: anyone have a friend that is due soon? (like 2 weeks soon?) Or that just had a baby? I need to try out a cocoon on a newborn and, oddly enough, do not know a soul that is pregnant *and* local.

Keeping it even

The other day, I was talking to Autumn and let her know that I blogged her pictures. Apparently, my children keep score. The immediate response was, "On both blogs?" So now I am blogging on the "other" blog to help everyone keep it nice and fair. (Can I tell you how much I hate that word?)

The hardest thing about these pictures? Getting Autumn to tone down the "I just got my braces off" smiles and to stop laughing hysterically. Autumn recently got her braces off and I have to commend her for being such a sport. (excluding the first trip to the theatre that left in her crying because she couldn't eat popcorn, but we won't count that since I might have done the same thing.) She hasn't touched nuts, chewy candy, carrots (which she actually likes!), whole apples and everything else on the long list of can't haves for those folks with braces. I was constantly forgetting and she was constantly reminding me, in her sweet Autumn way, that would need a substitute.

I thought she rather enjoyed that whole experience, as she was always showing people the new color of rubber bands and what not....until they told her it was time to get them off. She started a count down and told everyone who would listen. And now that they are off? She is just as responsible with her retainer (good thing because I am sure you will all hear about me having to cough up $180 for a new one if she does lose it!) and always goes around with a big, teethy grin, showing off her perfectly aligned pearly whites. It makes it worth it to know that she can have such an unguarded smile, even if she could have had 24 American Girl Dolls instead.

dang

Can I just say that I did not mean to take pictures of her looking this grown up? Next time, I should pull out the pigtails and a lollipop or something. Maybe a teddy bear for the picture?

Yes, she is gorgeous. But she is my baby! My first born in the wilderness, as we like to call her. Sigh.

camera, conference and kids...oh, my!

I know, I am a slacker. But I am a busy slacker of sorts. This weekend was jam packed with inspirational conference sessions, soccer games a plenty (3, to be exact), soccer pictures, a mother/daughter dinner and a birthday party.

Yep. It was so busy that I had to work hard to find time to play with my new camera. (Isn't that awful? Large camera purchases should be followed by leisurely weekends that allow for plenty of time to experiment.) My camera's name? Papa Bear. My old camera was going to be baby wee bear, but Autumn has made me name it mama bear instead. Mama bear is being loaned out to Autumn for her photography adventures, completely dependent on her treatment (or abuse) of Mama. At the beginning of the school year, I asked Autumn to choose a subject she would like to add to our school day and she chose photography. We're going to work on her shooting in manual today. So far, she knows that she likes to shoot wide open as she loves fuzzy backgrounds and she gets the correlation between shutter speed and aperture. Go, Autumn!

On a conference note, I loved it. The only part I heard of Saturday's morning session was a little tender mercy of its own. It came as I was walking the halls with Lilly after she had *intentionally* dumped her kix all over the chapel and had screamed at the top of her lungs. Elder Bednar talked about some of his fond memories of craziness when trying to carry on righteous traditions with his children. (you know, crying kids, dumping kix all over the chapel sort of thing) He compared all of the lessons we teach our kids to brush strokes in a painting that might not seem to amount to much at the time, but how they are all integral to the final masterpiece. We wised up on Sunday and had Chris take the older girls to the 1st session while I took the older girls to the 2nd. It was great to actually get to take notes in the 2nd session and I am going to try my darndest to listen the rest of it again this week to take the rest of my notes. Notes have a way of solidifying things in my mushy little brain. See? Busy weekend.