Caught up on Life

I have done it! Completely caught up on all my photos and everything! Yipee! And not a moment too soon. Emily turns four in two days and her birthday marks the most chaotic 10 weeks of our lives. In these ten weeks, we will manage to cram Emily's birthday, Thanksgiving, Daddy's birthday, Christmas, Mommy's birthday, New Years, and K's birthday. Yep, nothing happens for the rest of the year! :-) (Well, except our family day - the day Em came home from the hospital).

So in cleaning out the camera for these events meant I came across some pictures I have no idea how old they really are.  Nana and Poppy Erickson...

This is my Grandpa.  He lives in Ecuador so we only see him once every couple of years and this, clearly, is the year.  :-)

So, when we did the letter P, we decided it was necessary to make pumpkin pie from scratch.  Since we had pumpkins from the pumpkin patch already, we decided to try with those.

Other than the obvious fun with texture, it was an epic fail - the pumpkin never even got soft.  So, we all agreed that we should always obey the recipe.

We did get some yummy seeds out of it, even if Em and I are the only ones who like them.

Yes, Emily.  Em has been really branching out in showing her advancement into the fourth year of life on this planet.  It is incredibly challenging to train her since she seems to take a very long time to even figure out what it is you are disciplining her for (no matter how many times or ways you can think to explain it).  Then, once she understands, she still has the normal amount of time from every child where they must decide if they agree or not.  It takes a long time.  K was practice, Em is the test...sort of like a final.  Between the stubborn and the whine of two four year olds, pray for this mama!

I get this look all day long!

So, having changed our ways, we attempted pumpkin pie again.

While it cooked, we had puppet shows with our puppets we made in school.

I took a pic with K because I was sure she would hate the pie (as it is something new) and this was the only pic I would get of her.

Em, of course, loved it.

To my surprise, so did K!

Although this is not an uncommon occurence in our house, Sammy did milk his sick days with the girls.  He is better, by the way.  I have not taken him running yet but mostly because I am gun shy, not because he can't handle it.  When his meds are done, I will think about it.

We always hit the after october sales to resupply our dress up bin.  We still have several good dresses so the girls got to pick only one this year.  K has worn hers every day since we got it.

Such a cute pic!  If only Mom had noticed she hadn't removed the tag yet!

Umm, confession time...yes, we did it.  I think it's a combination of Dad's love of Christmas and our rebellion against october 31st that drives us to decorate earlier and earlier each year, but whatever the reason, we did it again.  With sleigh bells and chestnuts melodiously filling our house, we set up just the living room.  So that means the Christmas tree (yes, it's fake, we have a thousand allergies!).

Em decided that banging fragile glass balls on the side of her head was a good idea.

And the village...that's it, I swear!

I did forget to mention that the guys went fishing on the Sacramento River while we were up in Redding on our vacation.

They each caught a salmon about this size!

And this was the panorama from M's phone of the water level in the lake.  Just neat and creepy all at the same time.

Well, officially this catches me up.  Yipee!  Have a wonderful couple of days and I will post most assuredly on Em's birthday.  God Bless!!