Philbur's Progress

When Phil was here I kept wanting to call him Philbur. Why? Well because I call Will, Wilbur. They're practically named after each other. :) Check out Phil's progress on the house.

http://www.rockyriverfarmhouse.blogspot.com/

Ha ha. I love Phil's stance in this picture. :)

Batter Blaster

Have you seen this in the store and was curious to try it? Let me save you $5.00 (or $2.50 if you're like me and got it on sale). Now, Adam has a flair for the dramatic, but in his own words he says it tasted like carcass. Sooooo, I guess we won't be buying that anymore (as if he knows what a carcass tastes like). I kind of hoped the kids wouldn't notice, but Will who eats anything but carrots immediately spit it out and continued to spit afterwards while making motor noises. Yes, thank you Will. I get it. Someone seems to be taking after his daddy.

Now, if you're thinking, "Oh no! What will we ever do? How will I ever make pancakes now?" Don't worry, I wouldn't leave you hangin'. This is something that will blast your batter.

Swedish Pancakes: thinner than regular pancakes, thicker than crepes.
4 eggs
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
2 T. sugar
3 T. wesson or vegetable oil
salt

serves 5

Fashionista

It poured down rain last week and Greta insisted on wearing her sun hat in the rain so she wouldn't get wet. Looking good g-friend!

Mama Llama and Keeks McGeeks

My mom came to town! Here are some pictures from her two week stay with us. We miss her already! Us in our 1 dolla hats at the Nascar race. I'm showing an M&M to showcase my mom's lovely yellow hat. It was freezing at the race!

At our usual daily visit to the house

This lady was nuts for some nuts. Seriously, her and Greta were so hooked on picking up all the pecans, I could not get them interested in anything else. Even later when I borrowed Mom's green vest, guess what I found in the pockets? Nuts.

One night, thanks to my friend Rose, we went to a fashion show, dinner and auction! We had such a great time.

Dad R. lent us his snazzy Volkswagon CC for the night and we cruised in style.

We laughed so hard till there were tears streaming down my face about my shoes that my mom borrowed for the night. I hate them because they always slip off my feet and of course they were even worse for my mom's feet which are smaller than mine so she stuffed them with tissues. We were already so out of our league at the richy-richville auction and here's Mom rolling in with toilet paper hanging out of her shoes.

My mom comes in at the perfect time each year. Just early enough to celebrate Will's birthday on the 15th and then to celebrate mine 10 days later. She made me a delish chocolate torte.

We went to the "punkin" patch.

And the Greenville Zoo which was 1.5 hours away.


My mom totally got Greta hooked on the cartoon, Wonder Pets, that Finn likes to watch with Kiki too. Mom and Greta would sing the intro song and end with, "Gooooooo Wonderpets!" I love this picture of them. They look alike in it to me.

Mom some work over at the house and was proud of all her sheetrock-ripping-off that she did in the hallway.

Our last night together, we went out to eat, just the two of us at the Cheesecake Factory and had a great time. We were on a short time limit, but it included splitting an appetizer (avacado rolls-DELISH!), dinner and ordering cheesecake to bring back home.

Love you, Mom! Come back soon.

My Baby is ONE!

Will turned 1 on October 15th! He is such a gift from God and I thank God every day for him. He just lights up with a giant smile to whoever gives him attention and makes you feel like a million bucks. I pray he has that effect on people throughout the rest of his life (except girls :)). He is a good eater, a good sleeper, a cuddler, a wrestler, a giggly baby, a dare-devil, and LOVES his sister. He's low-maintence and easygoing except when he wants to walk or is being buffaloed by his sister. He loves to play wrestle with his daddy when Adam gets home from work and will butt his head against Adam's. He can wave bye-bye, say uh-oh, mama, dada, thank you (or give the inflection at least), and his sweetest word, hi, which he says over and over, hiii, hiii, hiii. Here are some pics from the day of his birthday that we celebrated with some very special people in his life.

Keeks flew in the night before from AK to wish her favorite youngest grandson a happy birthday. She bought some snazzy boots too for the birthday boy.

I don't know why, but I was a mean mom and set up Will's one year check-up on his one year birthday. That was a mistake after all those shots and having to squeeze his finger for 2 minutes for a blood sample. Longest 2 minutes ever. I'm sorry sweet boy. In better news, Will is 90th% in height and 10th% in weight (19 lbs, 11 ounces) and healthy and smart.

How big is Will? SO big!

I made these little owls out of cocoa krispie treats, candy corns, mini oreos and M&M's. Of course we had WAY too much food, but I had two ideas I wanted to do plus leftover rice kripsie treats and pumpkin cakes are never a bad thing.

Greta loved the owls so much especially the candy. She thought she was so clever eating the eyes and nose off of one owl and switching plates with her Poppy Renstrom saying, "Dat yours Poppy" pointing to the half eaten one.

Shout out to Harris Teeter (or as my mom likes to call it Harriet Teeter) for the free balloons. Betcha wondered why I walked out of the store with no kids and 4 balloons eh?

Happy Birthday Will! We love love love you!

1st Haircut

Big boy turns one and he thinks he needs to go off and cut his mullet. He's also asked us to start referring to him as William. Pssshhh, think again Bubbalicious.


Here is the before picture.


While my dad was in town, I asked him to do the honors. How hard can it be when Will's got a lollipop and ice cream being shoved in his face?

Love this pic. :)

Oops. Snagged a hair.

Sometimes when we ask, "How big is Will?" he poses by flexing his muscles instead of putting his arms over his head.

Sweet handsome boy with his new haircut in his new birthday p.j.'s from Aunt Bridge.

Smile

This picture just makes me smile.

Halloween Festival

Our church doesn't have any fall festivals so this year we decided to participate in our new little town of Harrisburg and attend their Halloween festival. I had seen on the cover of a magazine under the title of "Easy Halloween Costumes" a little girl dressed as a pirate. Greta has been really interested in dressing up with any of my clothes and I thought of my shirt that would be perfect for Greta to be a little buccaneer. A couple of Grammy's red scarves later and little black leggings given to her from Aunt Pam, we had a complete costume a couple hours before the festival.

Will was going to be a parrot so here he is with his manly-man leggings on. Adam participated in a little dress-up at work with 4 of his co-workers where they all dressed up like their quality control manager. They all wore a pastel pink shirt and black dress pants complete with a mask with his face on it. He just shook his head when he saw them all dressed up and then gave them a hard time, but Adam said loved it. :)

It was so fun for my mom to see the kids all dressed up in their Halloween costumes. She left Saturday afternoon so it was nice that the festival was on a Friday night so she could attend this with us.

Soon after we arrived, they announced a costume contest and whoever was interested to line up around the building. We stood in line for about 15 minutes as they announced all the little kids and their costumes. They're were a LOT of people at the festival and the age groups were split up from 0-7 and then 7 and up. Here we are getting announced on the stage of the old Harrisburg post office.

I made Will's outfit beginning with a red Walmart hoodie and sewing feathers on the sleeves and an orange felt beak on his hood. Here's my sweet buddy complete with his rubber glove talons. ;) My mom gave me that idea and it was a hit! He got sooo much attention and one lady even asked to take his picture.

The pirate and her parrot.

I tried to perch Will on her shoulder for a picture, but Greta just looked at me like I was crazy. I think she's still questioning his manly man tights at this point. Or rubber gloves.

Greta and Kiki getting ready to go fishing at one of the games. This kind of shows a portion of the crowd that was here too.

While waiting for the judges to decide the results from the costume contest, we continued to play games and just listened for them to announce our names over the mic for us to come collect our prizes. ;) When they finally decided, they started announcing all the winners. 3rd place: not us, 2nd place: not us, 1st place: not us. At this point, we started walking around as they continued to announce a couple bonus prizes. Funniest costume:Oompa Loompa girl, (she was cute, I'll give her that), Scariest costume: don't know, don't care. Now we just start playing "throw the hoop over the octopus' head" game and stopped listening because I thought they were going to wind down the festivities anyway and wanted to use up our tickets before the kids got tired. Well, no sooner had Greta thrown two hoops that completely missed the octopus' head did we hear over the mic "The pirate and the parrot!" I had no idea what prize they had just announced, but you better believe that I grabbed Greta's hand and with Will in my arms we marched right back up those steps to claim whatever we had just won. I even asked the announcer as we were getting up there, "What did we just win?" and she announced again in the mic, "The best costume OVERALL!" I was SOOOO excited! Once again, living vicariously through my kids as I did my best Ms. America wave and proudly accepted my, our, their golden pumpkin trophy.

They have no idea what's going on and I'm on a total high. This is getting ridiculous. :)

The trophy weighs about 3 ounces more than air, but we will proudly display it for all to see.

The one thing that Greta could appreciate was her Frankenstein bag filled with candy that she sorted out in the morning. That girl loves her candy!

Carving Pumpkins

Funny enough, I don't have a finished picture of this jack-o-latern, but just imagine good 'ol regular triangular eyes, nose, and toothy grin. I did however take a picture of Greta's creation that she made on the other side.

Pretty good huh? Thanks to Grammy's pansies sitting nearby, Greta apparently decided if she couldn't use a knife, she might as well use something else within reach to decorate. I've never seen her draw any eyes, nose and mouth before, but we're getting warmer!!


Show me your teeth Greta! Another side note of this age: She spanked the pumpkin and told her to "obey Della (Greta)". Ha!

Trick or Treat!

I love living vicariously through my kids. Whether it be an excuse to jump in a bounce house, build towers at the LEGO store or what we did tonight, trick or treating, I think I was more excited than they were. :) My precious little parrot. Don't you just want to squeeze him?

My sweet pirate giving her parrot a kiss.

Ready or not, here we come!

First stop, Grammy and Poppy's house. Okay, so we walked out the garage door and knocked on the front door. First (and best) guests of the evening.

It was raining pretty steadily when we started and continued to downpour from there!!

I held an umbrella over the kids heads as we walked, but I had to snap this picture because it was cute seeing Will with his wingspread over the sides of the wagon.

First stop, Wicked Witch of the West's house. She had the most decorated house on the block with the whole Wizard of Oz theme. Very cute, complete with the yellow brick road and Dorothy's basket filled with candy at the end.

It started raining REALLY hard and Grammy came and rescued us in her car! We had only made it to two houses by then!

Kids feeling like big stuff not in their carseats. :)

Pulling back into the driveway and admiring my amazing pumpkin. :)

We didn't let the rain spoil our night though. As soon as we pulled back in the driveway, we got into our car (with carseats :)) and went out for ice cream instead!

Happy Halloween!

Up to No Good

Greta wanted to play with a bag of feathers the other day as I was crafting so I opened it and told her not to make a mess. Hmmm...I guess I should've seen that coming.