Goose has a small mouth. So when he lost his top tooth last month, it started pushing his baby tooth to the side. “Make way for the big tooth!” it said!

As it pushed the baby tooth aside, it caused the baby tooth to rotate so that it is now at a diagonal, giving Goose his Vampire Tooth.

Goose has since been telling everyone, even his school Principal, that he has a Vampire Tooth. Most adults don’t know how to take this news and give him a distant, “that’s nice” as Don and I laugh at their puzzled faces. He then runs away, proud of his Vampire Tooth.

This is Scraggy. He doesn’t have a Vampire Tooth but I was told he wanted his picture taken.

Today is our 15th Wedding Anniversary!

I think that’s crazy! Mostly because I can’t believe it’s already been 15 years, but I’m also in denial at having an 11-year-old boy!

The time has gone by too fast.

These past 15 years have been quite the adventure and I’m looking forward to an even more adventurous next 15 years!

<3

Hello! Been busy enjoying the holiday season. I have been having a lot of fun decorating the home for Christmas, which I’ll share later, and getting ready for when the boys have winter break.

In November we got our family pictures done and I’m having the hardest time deciding on which ones to send out, blow up for our home, and use for school photos! They are all so wonderful!

We had the pleasure to get our photos taken by Brittany Wood this year! (She’s my Sister-in-Law’s sister and currently down in So Cal, which I was excited about!) We had such a great experience with her taking our family pictures! It was a lot of fun sharing ideas I had for photo stylings and having her give us directions for other photos taken along the hiking trail.

If you’re in the So Cal area and looking to get family photos done, I highly recommend contacting Brittany! She’s also great with younger kids and babies – which can be understandably tricky at times.

If you’re not in the So Cal area, check out her blog and website for photo inspirations! She also has a FB page for her photography where you can view her latest sessions! I love searching thru photography sessions for inspiration on what to wear and what fun props to use for my photos. Then when you’re ready to be wowed, check her etsy store! She does portraits that are amazing!

I hope they never move away so she can do my pictures every year! LOL!!!

This past weekend we kept it low key. Don and I weren’t feeling the best, so we just enjoyed the move to California cold weather and enjoyed the rainy Sunday. We celebrated by having a pajama day and baking cookies! We’ve been getting some beautiful pomegranates in our weekly fruit and vegetable baskets recently, which sent me looking for some fun new recipes to try. As fate would have it, there was a very tempting Double Dark Chocolate Pomegranate Cookie recipe posted to MADE on the day I started searching. You can find it here: MADE: Double Dark Chocolate Pomegranate Cookies

Having growing boys who are learning about fractions makes it fun for me in the kitchen. They were excited to help so I put them to use right away, before they decided there were more interesting things to do. hehe! Mr. P helped measure and drop the ingredients into the mixer, which I enjoyed because I hate washing shortening off my fingers!

Mr. O was in the background apparently having a really fun time getting all the yummy “jewels” out of the pomegranate. We won’t mention that he also had a really fun time squashing half of them. *grimace* Luckily, I was left with enough for the cookies!

The cookies turned out delicious! The only difference I made was using all semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of mixing 1/2 semi and 1/2 milk because I didn’t have any milk chocolate chips in my pantry – which is kind of odd considering I prefer milk chocolate in my chocolate chip cookies. I will definitely be making these again!

Next pomegranate recipe will be some muffins! Nom nom!

Another Halloween gone! I’m always sad when Halloween is over because I have so much fun making the costumes for the boys, having the house spooky all month, and enjoying fun Halloween events. Then I realize that we have a four day weekend coming up and Thanksgiving break for a week! After a month of no school holidays, it can sometimes be a challenge to make it thru October and makes November very appealing! LOL!

This year the boys were characters from one of their favorite DSi games: Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light

Meet Brandt:

Their costumes were fairly similar, varying in color and accessories. I used a pirate pattern for both since the shirts for both characters looked very similar to what I had a pattern for. But let me tell you, I’m never making two pirate shirts at the same time again! They were labor intensive, to say the least. Lots of pieces to cut out, gathering, and interfacing. However, when they were done, the boys looked pretty cool!

Brandt required a short vest, made out of fleece, and a couple of accessories from Perrin’s Pretend Box.

Meet Jusqua:

Owen was asked countless times if he was Harry Potter. He also told me he was asked if he was Yoda, a Karate kid, or Gandalf. Haha! He was a good sport and didn’t mind telling anyone who would ask or guess that he was “Jusqua, J-U-S-Q-U-A, from Final Fantasy: the 4 Heroes of Light. It’s this DSi game I like.”

His jacket was fun and I think he’ll be wearing a lot this “winter”. The staff was also a big hit. My Mom found the wood in their stash in their backyard and my Dad drilled the hole for me to glue in the Christmas ornament. I cracked a bunch of glow sticks and shoved them inside before hot glueing it to the top. It looked pretty cool as we Trick-or-Treated and helped me keep track of him.

Meet Upset Dog:

Yeah. He’s not from Final Fantasy. He did not like wearing his costume.

Finding time for myself has always been a challenge for me. The time to tell myself to go out and take some healthy time is okay. That’s it’s okay to take 30 min, or 40 min, to take a walk, ride my bike, or (try) to run.

This week, that starts.

Exercise for me starts today.

I have a goal in mind that I want to reach. Nothing drastic. I’ve never had the body type to be really slender. I come from farm stock and have a strong build – something my Perrin inherited. Rawlins are strong, not slim, and that’s okay. Being slim doesn’t have to be my goal. Strong is my goal. I don’t need to be in single digit jeans. Doubles are okay, I just want to lower that number.

So this week I start putting more effort into my morning to make time to start a healthy habit. I owe it to myself and to my family.

The picture is from my morning ride yesterday. I take Sammy on a 1 mile run each morning. He has a lot of fun running along side my bike and I enjoy feeling the morning cool on my face.

Yesterday I did 1 mile on my bike in the morning, 1 1/2 miles on my bike in the evening.

Today I did 1 mile on my bike in the morning and 1 mile walk/jog in the morning.

And it didn’t kill me!

Goal for the week – three more morning bike rides, 1 more morning walk/jog, and four more evening bike rides.

Go!

I finished my Halloween wreath just before October started, then it took me longer to take a photo of it than it did to make it! Haha! I’ve been enjoying all the inspiration found on pintrest, and fell in love with the yarn wrapped wreaths. I like the look of the texture from the yarn combined with the softness of felt! Since I already have a Christmas wreath, I decided to make a yarn wrapped wreath for Halloween.

I used a styrofoam wreath form, hot glue, and yarn for the base. To make it easier on myself, I cut a couple yards of yarn to wrap around the wreath form at a time. I simply secured the ends with hot glue from the back of the wreath. Since the form is white and my yarn is black you could see holes after going around just once, so I did a double layer of yarn which is what I’m guessing most people do when creating the yarn wreaths. I then made several felt roses, varying the size of them by how tightly or loosely I rolled the felt. The bow was attached and it hung on my door with no spider for a few days. I thought it needed one more touch so I stopped by Michaels and found that pretty spider pin! The perfect touch!

Now I have to restrain myself from just sitting and making felt roses. Those were fun!

A couple of weeks ago we had family baby shower for one of my sisters-in-law. She’s expecting her first boy and I thought it would be nice for the girls to get together, go out for dinner, and leave the kids at home! Even though it wasn’t a big family and friends shower, I still wanted to do some cute favors. I found some yummy chocolate dipped short bread cookies at my local Costco. I put them in individual cellophane bags and put two in each favor bag. Then I had fun decorating the bags! I love the little pennants and flags I’m seeing everywhere, so I took that bit is whimsy and made flags for our names. I used lollipop sticks and secured them to the bags with twine.

It was such a fun night eating at Olive Garden, visiting, and watching Tiffany open her presents for little Dylan! We all learned that time with just the girls is so much fun and hopefully something we can do more often! All the Dads did such a good job watching the kids that I think we could pull this off more than once every 14 years! LOL!!

I needed a break from the cabled scarf for sanity’s sake, that meant doing a crochet project! I thought it would be fun to make a bacon scarf and after searching online for a pattern I decided to just wing it.

It’s a simple ripple pattern and was a rather quick project to finish.

Now back to the knitting project!

Been a little crazy with school back in full swing, but I’m adjusting to having a 4th and 6th grader pretty good – considering I’m in denial about having a 6th grader!

This is a picture of my current W.I.P. (work in progress). After finishing a crochet project, that I’ll share at a later time, I decided I better work on a knitting project so I don’t forget anything! The only fancy skill I have with knitting is cables so I really don’t want to forget how to read cable instructions! I started this earlier this year and got so frustrated with it that I stuck it in a box deciding I needed a break from it. I only had three complete rows of cables done. Apparently I really needed that break because now I’m really enjoying the pattern.

This is easily the most complicated pattern I’ve attempted so far. Click to see Ravelry link.

I had to write out the entire cable panel directions in my notebook so I wouldn’t mess up and I have my trusty sticky note that follows my progress as I mark off each row. It has taken me a lot of work to get that far, but I’m getting faster at the pattern and as long as I’m not watching anything too engaging, or trying to hold a conversation, I do just fine! Hahaha! (A couple of people know what I’m talking about! I’ve gotten good at putting the stitches back on the needle so I can redo my mess ups!)

This scarf is a long overdue promised gift … I’m just hoping to have it finished before October! Wish me luck!