Autumn Time

I'm sure I've said this before but Autumn is my FaVoRiTe Season . . . EVER! The smell of Autumn is my FaVoRiTe smell, I love to hear the leaves crunching under foot, I love the coolness, I loved bundling up, snuggling under a blanket, apple pies baking, fresh pumpkin bread . . . mmm, there are so many things to love!!!

As a tribute to Autumn I bring you a song, it's a wonderful song, I know you know the words!

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It's autumn time. It's autumn time.

The leaves are falling down.

It's autumn time. It's autumn time.

It's all around the town.

It's autumn time. It's autumn time.

There's yellow red and brown.

It's autumn time. It's autumn time.

Bright colors can be found.

Almost done!!

Okay so we are not quite done but we are so close it is certainly worth blogging about. After having my house torn apart and upside down for 6 weeks we were finally able to get things back to some normalcy. We did run out of time this last weekend so there are some things left to do like finish organizing things, caulking and finish a few pieces of quarter round but that is easy enough and will be finished this week.

While we were moving stuff out of the office this tall bookshelf broke : ( But because we have spent enough money on other things there was no way we could afford to buy another one to replace it. Marc said "it's okay we can just stack the books on the floor until we can get a new one." I was not okay with that plan, so on Thursday I spent some time in the morning fixing the bookshelf. Now it is even sturdier than it was to begin with. Yes, I am proud of myself : ) Benjamin enjoyed 'helping' me fix the shelf and put the books back on.

In the office (where most of the damage was) there was a section of wall under the window that had some water damage. We knew about it and stopped the leaking right away which was a few years ago. We were hoping that we could just paint over it and not worry about another fix. Well we were wrong. As I took the roller and ran it across the wall it crumbled. . . At that point my heart just sank into my stomach, now what do we do?! Well after a quick call to my mom we came up with a simple solution. Because it was plaster we scraped off that part of the wall until it stopped crumbling, then took some sheet rock mud and filled in the hole. It took a couple of layers and hours of drying time but then we sanded it and . . .

VOILA we have a patched wall. It's not perfect, but nothing in this house is perfect so it matches just fine : ) We did finish painting around the patched part so we could finish the room. We figured we could easily paint just that little part after the room was back together. So now I have my little sewing spot back!!! YAY!! I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to NOT have all of that stuff upstairs where the kids can get into it every minute of every day!

This is the 'office' side of the room before the computer and filing cabinet was moved back in. It gives you a really good idea about the painting job we did. We left the trim the color it was before (which was the same color as the walls) and then we picked a nice BRIGHT white for the walls. The room it 100 times brighter than it was before and I LOVE IT!

In the bathroom this is the wall where that nasty, icky plaster stuff was that we didn't want to fix with more plaster and we were scared to rip it out and put sheet rock in for a few reasons.

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1. Plaster sucks!

2. There is nothing to attach the sheet rock to

3. If we took it down the rest of the way we most likely would have had to take down more walls to make it work.

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So instead Marc and Dad pushed back what was left of the plaster, and then screwed some boards up there in a very MaGyver sort of way. After that was up Marc put on some wainscoting, some quarter round and a corner piece. After slapping on some paint we think it turned out great! Yes there is still some caulking to do and the light to put back up but hey, doesn't it look good!? Oh and speaking of painting the white on the walls didn't match the new white paint we put on the ceiling so we ended up having to paint all of the white walls in the bathroom again!! It has been a few years so I guess the white did dull but still that was a little annoying. Even with that though, I'm so glad we have some order back into our house, I'm glad we have new pipes and a new water heater. Our next project. . . fix the holes in the furnace room and rip down the rest of the ceiling. But that is gonna have to wait a little bit, ya know until our pocket book stops hurting. ; )

I found some zip-ties for Benjamin and I just love them!! Why?

1. The ties stay one no matter how much he tugs at them

2. He now has a tie for church

3. He looks so grown up!!

And yes, that IS 3 teeth in the bottom you are seeing in that picture. He is 16 months old and now has 5 teeth...they all came 1 week apart. And there are more working there way to the surface. He is having a lot of fun figuring out how to use them too. I gave him an apple slice the other day and instead of just gumming it, I could hear him actually biting into the apple.

Okay so I tried for 2 days to upload the video of the kids singing (and doing the actions) to the song "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" and it still won't up load. I'm a little frustrated. I'll try again later. Benjamin didn't do the actions to the second verse but Rachel sure had a great time showing off. : ) I think it's the cutest thing when little kids find a song they love, then they learn the words and actions to them. How cute!! I remember when Rachel was Benjamin's age her favorite song was the Alligator and Monkey song from nursery. Rachel has learned the words to so many songs and loves to sing them no matter where we are. A few days ago I had to go downstairs to get something and Benjamin got sad. So she started singing "Called to Serve" to make Benjamin happy (it's the only song that has worked to calm him down since he was little). It just melted my heart! And today while we were at the grocery store she was walking along side the cart singing at the top of her lungs "Called to Serve." I walked along side of her and just smiled (how could you not!?) and several others smiled back at me. One lady came up to me and said that her last son had gone into the MTC in March and hearing Rachel sing that song just made her so happy! Maybe in her own way Rachel was being a little "missionary" herself. All I know is that I'm one proud momma, I have been blessed with one cute, smart, strong willed little girl. She is defiantly a leader. : )

Here is a video of Benjamin and Rachel being Dinosaurs. Something that happens...quite frequently at our house.

'Pirates' at work

We are finally feeling better after being sick for 14 days so we decided to continue with our patching jobs. Once everything is dry we will sand, paint and then put our house back together. FINALLY!! Don't get me wrong having new pipes and a new water heater has been nice but having my house torn apart and upside down the last few weeks has been a headache to say the least.

The kids were having fun 'helping' us...I use the word help, very lightly. It's a little crazy trying to do house repairs and keep the kids entertained. Honestly though they did really well. They had fun playing, being pirates then when all of that became boring and we found them underfoot covered in mud we turned on a show.

We did get quite a bit done this weekend though so I do feel better :) I told Marc that we would not decorate for Christmas until the house is put back together and I would prefer it be done before Thanksgiving...so maybe that was a little more incentive for him.

Here is a little video of Benjamin showing off his growing vocabulary. There are several more things he can say, point to and more animal sounds he can mimic but he wasn't into showing off that much tonight. Also his favorite song from the Primary Songbook is "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man." Whenever we come downstairs he sits on the couch and points to his head because he wants us to sing it (yes he can do all of the actins too, it soooo cute!!) I tried to get that on video but missed my opportunity, maybe I'll get it another time.

Don't ask...I don't know

There are 2 things I can count on when it comes to Rachel:

1. She can totally be exasperating (what 3 year old can't?)

2. She can sure give us a good laugh!

While we have been sick the last 11 days she was the first one to get better so she has had to put up with a very boring mommy and daddy, thus creating an opportunity to find entertainment for herself. Well with all of the blowing of noises we ran out of tissues so we reverted to the good old roll of toilet paper :) Benjamin got a hold of one of those rolls and un-rolled a major portion of it. We put what we could back together but not before Ms. Rachel grabbed a very large wad and stuffed it down her pants leaving a nice long tail of toilet paper hanging out. I'm not sure where she ever came up with that idea but she loved parading around with it for quite a while. This was a moment that gave us a really good laugh at a much needed time. Man I love that girl and I am proud to call her mine! :)

Happy Halloween-ish

I say Halloween-ish because the H1N1, Pneumonia and Sinus Infections have come to visit right now so we won't be Trick-or-Treating :(

Rachel was getting super excited for Halloween and would ask almost everyday this past month "Is today Halloween!? Can I wear my Fairy Princess costume?!"

Well now she can and we won't be going anywhere, but who says you can't wear the costume at home...all day long? Right?

So today this is what my kids will look like if you dare come visit us...which I hope you don't because we don't want you to get this stuff :)

Rachel is our Beautiful Fairy Princess.

I know her dress isn't very "Princessy" but it is her FAVORITE dress ("Because it's twirly!") and she would wear it 24/7 if I let her. So naturally it became her Fairy Princess dress.

Benjamin is our little Frog Prince.

He is having a ball running around in it right now and you know what he did while we were taking pictures? He said "Cheese!" Clear as a bell!! :) So either that means we take a lot of pictures and ask the kids to "say cheese," or he has added another word to his vocabulary. Which consists of : Momma, Nanna, Do (door), Moe (more), Ma (Marc), Bue (Blue-yes he can pick out the color amogst others too), Yay, Wow, Baby and now Cheese.

Pumpkins

So we finally got around to carving pumpkins for Halloween. Benjamin LOVED getting into the pumpkin and 'helping'. Rachel on the other hand HATED the entire carving process because it was messy! She kept freaking out whenever Benjamin would get any bit of the inners on himself or anywhere near her.

Rachel chose the face and shapes for her pumpkin and helped us choose for Benjamin's pumpkin. Marc and I got 1 BIG pumpkin to share between us and I carved out a picture of a wolf. I think it turned out pretty cool. What do you think?

Halloween Treats

So what do you do on a Sunday when you are home with a sick kid and your husband is attending church meetings? You make make Halloween Sugar Cookies!!! I know, I know your thinking: Cookies? Sugar? Sick kid? Probably not the best combination, but hey we needed a little variety from just sitting around.

Rachel enjoyed helping and telling Benjamin what to do.

We learned from our sprinkling disaster last year and did a great job at not spilling the entire container on one cookie. ;)

And of course we enjoyed eating them too!

Saturday is a Special Day

Dad Came up this weekend to help us tackle the many holes that came as the result of getting new plumbing. I would have taken more pictures but:

1. I was busy making more apple butter

2. I was taking care of the kiddos

3. I scared dad so bad when I took this one picture, I didn't dare do it again. (He thought he had hit an electrical line when the flash from the camera went off! SORRY DAD!!)

If you remember my friends and I got 8, 5 gallon buckets of apples for free. Well this last week I spent A LOT of time making 26 pints of apple sauce, 12 pints of apple butter, 1.5 gallons of dried apples and 15 quarts of pie apples. Can I just say I'm all appled out!! I don't want to see another apple for a while. :) Now many of you might be thinking: "Is it worth it?" And my answer is: YES! Here are my reasons why:

1. I know exactly what has gone into my apple sauce/apple butter/pie apples

2. I can look at everything I did and feel good

3. I have saved us money! I broke down the cost of each jar and here it is:

$.55/pint and $.72/quart...deal or no deal?

Drawings

I just had to show off Rachel's cool picture (hers is on the right) that she drew today. She has really come a long way in her picture drawing skills and writing her own name. Her favorite thing to draw lately is people. I love the eyes! They are the best. I was tracing Benjamin's hands and the next thing I knew he laid down with his head on the paper, so I traced it...well he thought that was great and kept laying his head down wanting me to do it again and again. Gotta love the drool marks :)

The Anson 2-Step

Yesterday the kids discovered the music cards my mom sends for their birthdays again and proceeded to dance together. It was adorable!! Looks like we have 'built-in dance partners' for the kids. Now all we need to do is work on rhythm :)

What I have been up to

Besides dealing with plumbing problems, holes in my walls, playing with the kids, teaching a pre-school, and well every day thing I've also been making costumes for our Wards roadshow. I made a Snow White costume and a Prince Charming costume (I only made the shirt and pants for the prince). I had never made anything remotely close to that before, and it was certainly a learning experience. They turned out quite well, if I do say so myself :)

I've also learned how to knit hats, and now I'm addicted. (as if I didn't have enough to do, right?) And today I started making applesauce, apple butter and pie apples with ALL of those free apples I got last week. 1 bucket down, 5 more to go...

Free APPLES

Through our Relief Society we had an opportunity to pick as many free apples as we wanted! Who could pass up on an opportunity like that?

Jenny and Brittany braved the ladders and picked apples from the top of the tree...well most of them anyway.

Benjamin, Shayla, Rachel and all of the other kids loved finding all of the rotten apples on the ground and filling their buckets with them. After a while Rachel decided to go on a "Rock Adventure!" and filled up her bucket with rocks. :)

And of course the kids couldn't wait to eat the apples!

This is the load we left with. 8, 5 gallon buckets full of apples!! Can you say applesauce, dried apples, apple pie filling, apple pies, apple crisps....

Construction MESS!!

So here are some pictures of the construction that went on at my house today for 11 1/2 hours. The plumber came, made holes in my walls and ceilings, made a huge mess, replaced all of the plumbing, cleaned up and is finally home with his family. He had such a long day I hope he sleeps well.

There wasn't as much hole cutting as he thought there would be so that's a good thing. He also said that it's a really, really, really good thing we did this instead of getting central air. When he opened up a few more areas he found pipes that had been leaking slowly for a while, black mold, and a few pipes even broke off in his hand!! Can you imagine what kind of disaster would have occurred if one of those pipes burst behind the walls!? Man I don't even want to go there. So now there is just the re-construction left to do, and hopefully we can get some family help with that. Are you scared yet dad? ;)

A new Investment

*Above: Our old, rusty time bomb of a water heater
*Below: Our new, non-rusty, trusty water heater
*Amount spent: Not gonna tell ya!
* New problem: Leaky pipes...
*Solution: Replace all of the pipes in our house. To do so we get to cut holes in our walls and ceilings...yippee. :/