Max

Max decided to walk across the kitchen floor today! Yeah Max!!!!

San Fran Zoo

We dropped Jared off at the SF airport a few weeks ago and decided to head to the zoo by ourselves. It was quite the adventure and I was feeling VERY brave and my kids really are pretty good - we had a blast! Unfortuantely, not many pictures were taken as I was juggling my three kids, thus, no spare hands for the camera. I wish I had someone take a picture of me at the end of the day, with Pearl and Sam in the stroller and Max on my back trudging up the hill back to the car. Someone even commented... "got enough kids?" Why, yes, I do, at the moment!!!

These pictures were taken towards the beginning of the day, when I still had the energy to get the camera out.
They had these bronze statues of animals all over the zoo that the kids could climb on. They loved it!
They had a childrens zoo, and one of the attractions was the family farm experience. They just walked around with goats and sheep and fed and petted them. It was really cool.

Max liked the goats... I think the goats liked the everpresent stroller crumbs.
Ok, maybe he didn't like the goats. Maybe he knew they were after his crumbs... he likes to save those for later...
We missed you, Dad, but managed to have fun on our own!

Happy Halloween!

We went to Grandma Weir's tonight and did a Halloween photoshoot. It was pure madness. There was NO WAY we were going to get group pictures, not even sibling pictures. There were three moms working like mad to get the kids ready for their pictures, then they would send them to me, and about five seconds after I took the picture the costumes were off. Seriously. I am one grateful photographer that I at least got a good shot of everyone. Phew! That was a lot of fun!

My three spooky kiddos

Annie's bunch

Mara's girls


and Jayson's little girl.
Yes, they're all adorable, and yes, they have so much fun hanging out together and yes it is CRAZY when we get together! I'm kind of surprised that my mom doesn't tell us to just go away... I think she likes her grandkids, though:)

Paci

Paci war has begun. Actually, it's not really a war, it's just sudden and total removal of the paci.

Max is not happy with me. Now he cries to go to sleep and his naps aren't very long. But, look at those teeth. Yup. They were in dire need of intervention.

Can someone run a hip intervention on me, please?

Froggie.

Last night at Grandma Weir's house, Pearl and the grandkids spent a lot of time with a frog they caught. They made a house and a pond with an island and even caught a companion. Pearl is feeling pretty good about this because she's being so nice to the poor frog who had a splinter (bark?) on his poor little leg.

So, this morning, she gets going making a frog house again with random stuff on the porch (I'm embarrassed to say there is a lot to choose from...). She looks through the garden for a frog, but all she sees are lizzards and a snake (she thinks it was a snake, I couldn't find it...). So, I take her under the house to the cold cellar (yes, our house is 110 years old) where the frogs like to hang out. So, she catches one, removing it from it's preferred environment and taking it to her "froggie rescue" shelter. While I appreciate the irony of this, she certianly does not. Of course, it hopps blithely away at first chance, and Pearl is sad. 10 minutes later she comes to me crying because she just realized that she wasn't being nice, she was being MEAN because she's actaully TRAPPING them! I try very hard to choke back my laugh, hug her and tell her yes, they already had a happy home, and convince her to move her habitat under the house. Silly girl.

Her other bit of logic today... "mom, I can be a vet, because even mean animals will be nice to me when they're feeling sick." As I don't think theres a chance she'll actually become a vet, (come one, she's a natural born dietician, and with her aunt and grandma both dieticians, she doesn't stand a chance) so I didn't bother to go into that one...

San Francisco

We had to drop Jared off in San Francisco today so he could fly away from us to Asia again for a few weeks. I decided to be brave and spend the day down there with the kids... more about that once I actually download the pictures.

Here is a video of my favorite part of the day. We spent about an hour at the beach, and the sand was nice and wet, so I was making buildings with the boys and they were having a blast knocking them down. Max was so funny, because he wanted it to go down, but he didn't want to be the one to do it (I'm guessing he was worried that I was serious when I said "Don't knock my castle down!!!!"). Then, when it did go down, he was so tired and slap happy that he laughed hysterically. I got a few looks:)

School Pictures

So, I know, I'm totally a blog slacker. I admit it. But, tonight I had my good friends Sherri and Tami come bring their kids and we took school pictures. They think I did them a favor, but there's no way I would have washed and dressed all of the children if they hadn't been coming. And I really needed to get these pictures done, since I boycotted school pictures. (seriously, they never turn out well anyway...)

So here they are. Pearl is in second grade... so crazy, she'll be 8 soon... and every time I look at her mouth I wonder again where on earth she is going to fit all of her permanent teeth...

Sam is in his second year of preschool. I look at him, and think, oh, only one more year before kindergarten! Then I feel a little bit sorry for Mrs. Dyer...
Just look at those green eyes! I'm so glad he got those from his daddy!

And, we couldn't leave Max out, though he was a little on the fussy side... I'll get him again when he's in a good mood. He's now 14 months old and so close to walking we all can almost taste it! How nice will it be for him to have clean hands every once in a while?

Love all my blondies!