Giant pumpkin carving

They do this every year in uptown Gig Harbor but this is the first year we made it. This pumpkin started out over 900#s!

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Toot my own horn

My mom and I used to make my Halloween costume every year; (and by we I mean her with little help from me) but she did teach me the basics of sewing. Since I've had girl's of my own, I've looked forward to sewing their costumes and teaching them the basics one day. Well, Bri's not ready for using the sewing machine yet (she can't quite reach the pedal) but she did help hand me pins and she picked out which color pin she wanted me to use when arranging the pieces. I had fun and although I made many mistakes (zippers are hard!) I got the job done and she loved it. The first pic is the finished product before I hemmed it so she could walk. 

Ha! I figured out how to insert pictures on my phone. Yay. Anyway, this is both girls, Bri in her hemmed Queen's dress and Adi in her hand me down strawberry costume. So many compliments to both while we trick or treated downtown Gig Harbor this year. Happy Halloween! 

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Super excited for the cabin.

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3rd Year Interview

This is a long video but I think it's worth the viewing (not at all biased). I had wanted to interview Brielle on her birthday last year, but just never got around to doing it. After seeing this, I now think 3 is the year to start with the kiddos. The idea is to keep the questions as similar as possible and see how much it changes over the years. I figure we'll do this until they won't let us anymore or they turn 18. Enjoy Bri's 3rd Year Interview.

Bri and the maracas

We went to the scarecrow festival last Saturday and Bri got up on stage with the one-man-band and played the maracas!  She had fun and did great.

-Steve

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Bri’s 3rd Pawty

This girl just turned 3!

So she’s not 3 in this picture, but I just wanted to show you were we started. She’s not even 2 months old in that picture. And look at her now:

3 years old!

I’m pretty sure this is the last year I can pick the theme for her birthday parties, and I chose to base it on the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Helen Oxenbury. Considering she is still talking about the bear hunt, I think it was a success.

Before we could begin the hunt, we had to make sure our hunters were prepared for the adventure. So we filled up on water, trail mix and individually decorated binoculars.

Once we were prepared and gathered together, we were ready to begin the bear hunt. (It was a beautiful day, and we weren’t scared)

First, we went through the tall swishy grass.

Swishy swashy, swishy swashy

Look ant Mia’s concentration while finding a bear print with her binoculars. It’s good to have someone so in tune with nature along on an adventure like this.

She found one!

Through the think, tangled forest.

stumble trip, stumble trip

Cece’s high steppin’ boot really helped her through the tough parts.

Over the deep cold river

Hop jump, hop jump

Lael’s curls gave her the extra bounce she needed to make it over the largest gaps between stumps.

Over the tall, narrow bridge

Shuffle stop, shuffle stop

These kids rocked this part! I was impressed with how fast they flew down this narrow beam.

Even Adi gave it a try

Into the tunnel

Wiggle squiggle, wiggle squiggle

What’s that?!? The bear!!!

We tried our darndest to make this bear the least scary we possibly could, but we did end up scaring a couple of the kids. However, I think they were so upset that we made the poor, innocent bear wear such a ridiculous outfit that they burst into tears. Fortunately, the sadness was short lived and soon the kids were clambering to get their picture with “The Bear”.

And then there was cupcake. The one thing Bri asked for at her birthday party was pink frosting, so that’s what I did.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Random photo dump:

(No live bears were hurt in the course of this adventure)

(Some stuffed ones may have been slightly embarrassed)

Adi’s 1st B-day

So you may wonder why I never posted Adi’s first b-day party. No, I don’t love Adi any less, don’t even joke about that! I just got crazy busy at the beginning of summer! I just read an article about summer’s in the PNW that describe it perfectly. Basically, summer in the PNW is such a short time period that you feel like you need to pack every waking moment with some sort of outdoor activity to soak up the limited sun we get. And this being the first summer I was somewhat able to be active with 2 able bodied children, we did just that. So with our activity level up, and just trying to catch up on life/house things that I hadn’t been able to do while pregnant or with babies for the last 3 years that we’ve been here, I quite blogging. If you look back on our summer posts, if it wasn’t done on the phone, it wasn’t done. And Adi’s party pictures were on the camera, and that’s where they stayed, until now. So here we go…

Although I know not everyone agrees, I am her mother so therefore the expert on her and I consider Adi a redhead (or strawberry blonde if you prefer). To celebrate this uniqueness I threw Adi a red party, even asking the guests (who remembered) to wear red.

Here is Adi with Sister and cousin Elisa, and photo bombed from cousin Owen in the background. Of the five pictures of these 3 (4), not one of them had all 3 (4) looking at the camera. Just a typical kid photo. So I picked the one that Adi looked best since it was her party. Gotta love Elisa’s dedication to wearing red!

Adi did much better eating the cupcake than Bri did. After waiting for me to blow out the candle and listening to everyone sing her a song, she dug right into… the frosting. Not so much the cake, but definitely liked the frosting. (Red velvet cake for the record.)

Good pic of Bri and Grandma.

Adi, hamming it up with Nana. It was fun watching her throughout the party. It seemed like she understood that the celebration was for her and she loved all the attention.

Pretty sure Papa did something to offend the birthday girl in this string of pics. No one messes with Red and gets away with it.

And finally, here’s a good one of Adi and her cousin Bella. What beauties.

Happy Birthday Adi. We love you!