It's Getting Colder!

Owen and I went outside earlier today for a little photo shoot of his costume this year. We decided not to bother getting pictures done at Sears this time to save money and because I'm not sure I'm up to the battle right now!! He's so hit or miss these days as to whether or not he's going to cooperate. The costume photos will come later...

The dogs haven't been out in the backyard to run in forever. It's been pretty wet for about a week now and on top of that, Max keeps sneaking under the fence!!! Dave put up an electric wire that runs around the bottom of the kennel. Since then, Max has at least remained captive within that area. We'll do the same on the entire perimeter of the fence next summer, but its not going to happen as planned this year. Stupid dog!! Makes me feel like our $12k was well spent on the fence!!! At least Owen and Daisy are too chubby to squeeze under! ;O) So, anyway, after we were done with our photo shoot, Owen and I played with them for a while. Here's a picture of Owen climbing around in the trees, its hard to see, but around 11am there was still frost on the leaves!!

Skating Day!!!

We finally made it out to the skate rink to take Owen skating for the first time ever!!!! It was soooo much fun. This is how we started out....

Owen was really unsure about the whole thing (his eyes were huge!), but seemed like a natural, the way he could stand up in the skates on the floor!!! Notice Shawnie in the background, that's her getting Dave to tie up her skates. We decided that if for no other reason, the fact that she'd have to go in the men's locker room before each game to have Dave tie her skates was enough to keep her off the Granite hockey team that both Dave and Geoff play on! She cracks me up...Dave has been tying her skates since college, if that doesn't make a good brother-in-law, I don't know what does! ;O)

Here's our support team!! Shawn, Geoff, and Jenna all came out to skate with us. I'm sure that having all of them there was the motivation Owen needed to get out and try it. I was really thankful that they all made it. Owen was especially thrilled to be skating with Jenna, although he never let Geoff get out of sight either.

We started out without a stand for Owen to use to support himself. We tried using a traffic cone instead, but Owen is just too tall for that to be effective. So, this is the method we settled on...or I should say, Geoff and Dave used. He's too heavy for me to support like that for very long!

Here's Owen taking a break in the player's box. That smile was permanently glued on his face the whole time we were there! Definitely a 180 from his original panicked look! He had such a blast and we were so proud of his willingness to get out there and try it, he's definitely a trooper.

Aunt Laurie came to support him too, although she chose to be a cheerleader in the bleachers...you can never have too many cheerleaders!

We weren't on the ice too long before Shawnie talked a little girl into giving up the stand for Owen...leave it to her! ;O) Most of the kids using them, don't need it which is really frustrating to watch. It was a whole lot easier to help Owen with this thing. By the end of the afternoon, Owen was standing up and just had his hands on the bar, it was the perfect height for him. We ended up skating for almost an hour!!!! I figured if we could get him to skate for 20-30 minutes we'd be doing pretty good, but Owen didn't really want to leave even after an hour. He was too exhausted to complain much though. Besides, the zamboni came out about that time and that's really Owen's favorite part anyway! ;O) There's a skating class for 3 year olds that I am going to try to sign him up for beginning in mid-November, but if all else fails, we'll definitely get him signed-up for the December class. He's definitely ready to go. In the meantime, I think Dave and I will make a point to take him out there as much as possible and if I have it my way, it will be cold enough to skate outside very soon!!! We still haven't had any snow down here yet, but it will be any day...I so can't wait!!! In the meantime, pretty much all the leaves are gone and we've had quite a few rainy days, I'm ready to move on!

Our whole day was super busy yesterday, after skating we raced home for Owen to take a nap...he didn't ever go to sleep however, so that was time well spent! Then we headed over to Shannon's house just around the corner for her two littlest's birthday party. Kendall turned one just two weeks before Brady's 2nd birthday...glad it's her and not me!!! We only got to stay for about a half-hour before Dave picked us up and we headed to his game in town. He's only got two games this season that are at a decent hour. So, we definitely didn't want to miss it. Besides, they are on a winning streak! I think this made 5-0. Owen got a big kick out of trying to figure out which one of the players was his dad. He actually did just as well as I do! ;O)
Hope you are all having a great start to your week! I'm home again most of this week and then we'll pick Diana up from the airport Saturday evening. Owen seems to be adjusting well to being at home and his attitude is continuing to improve. I'm hoping he behaves just as well for his Grandma!!

Today...

Owen and I were goofing off at the house killing time before we met Dave and Shawnie in Eagle River for lunch. He was being so goofy, I decided to take a few pictures. About the time I started, Max and Daisy came out of the house. Doesn't Max look regal? He's such a protector and this picture really shows it! ;O) Owen calls this sweatshirt his "flame shirt". He thinks its a race car shirt. Ever since we bought him the movie "Cars", he can't get enough of what he calls "race cars". He even points them out to me when we are driving down the road or walking through a parking lot. I'm not sure what he believes classifies a race car, but it seems to include everything from mini vans to sedans...he definitely keeps us laughing!!

First Day of Fall

Well, while everyone else was celebrating the first day of fall, we were celebrating the onset of winter!!! We've had the termination dust settle on the tops of the tallest mountains at least once prior, but nothing like this!!! Our highs are barely hitting 50 degrees and Monday morning we woke up to frost on the ground. In fact, the frost was still hanging around when Owen and I headed into town around 10 that morning. It's just a matter of time now!!!

Owen seems to be doing well without daycare, so far anyway. His attitude is definitely improved significantly already and he's being much more independent. With Owen and I both being sick for most of the month of September, we got into a bad habit of letting him watch t.v. and movies all day long. Not any more!! My goal is no more than 2 hours a day, he hasn't even seemed to notice! In fact, I think his last movie was over the weekend some time. Now, if he'd just take a nap, we'd be doing awesome. He has sat in his room for up to 3 hours keeping himself amused and fighting sleep. I don't know what his deal is, but it seemed to start when he switched into the 3-year-old classroom at the beginning of the month. He still NEEDS a nap and so do I! ;O) So, I'm still pushing for it. I may have to start putting him to bed in our room just to keep him away from all of his toys!! Or better yet, make him run laps!

Hope you are all doing well. This was a success of a post as I figured out how to download my photos off my camera and both crop and re-size the pictures!!! I still would like to have Photoshop, but hate to spend the money right now. Thankfully, Mac has something with similar editing capabilities, just not as advanced. But, it will do for now! ;O)

What a Month!!

Hey people!! Sorry it's been so long since I last posted. It's been kind of ugly around here lately. Our month started out with me having a whopping head cold that knocked me on my butt. I did manage to drag myself out with Dave and Owen Labor Day weekend however, for our annual trip to Hatcher Pass. It was an amazing day and we were thrilled to make it there before they closed the mine down for the season!!! More about that later...our month continued with Owen getting the stomach flu the following Saturday and I followed suit the next Friday after Dave took off hunting for the weekend, of course. Thankfully, Shawn took care of Owen and I Friday night or else we may not have survived!! ;O) To top it all off, my laptop crashed and took with it the last 3 months of photos that I failed to back-up. I was devastated!!! Dave took it in to a computer fix-it place and they were able to recover my hard drive, although, it wasn't worth the cost to try and repair my computer. Therefore, my posts may be farther and fewer between. I have to use Dave's Mac and I am a slow learner. In the meantime, I have no Photoshop to edit the pics either, so what you see is what you get until I master this machine and get the Mac version of Photoshop purchased and installed...I'm already having withdrawals!!! I had no idea how much I used Photoshop!! Of course, in the midst of all the chaos, we made the decision to pull Owen from his current daycare. We may have been a bit rash however as all of the good preschools have waiting lists anywhere from 3 months to 1 year. We were lucky enough to end this week with a phone call letting us know that he will be placed in my first choice school as of November 2nd. Thankfully, Dave's mom is willing to come up and cover us for the next month so Owen doesn't have to transition into a second daycare to tide us over. I am so relieved that it has all fallen into place. Now, just keep your fingers crossed with me that this school is all we are hoping for!!!! If it works out, he can attend kindergarten there and hopefully, the school district will allow him to transition into first grade a year earlier than he would have been allowed otherwise due to his birthday missing the September 1st deadline for enrollment. We'll see though, I have no idea how it will all work out in the long run.

On to the pictures from Hatcher Pass...we could not have asked for a better day!!! Owen was such a pill to begin with, we thought we'd have turn around and go straight home. But, he warmed up to being outside and hiking. We even had to promise ice cream to get him to quit climbing up the hills!! ;O)

See the grassy hill behind Dave and Owen? Owen climbed that entire thing with little to no help, starting with the boulders at the bottom!!! It's hard to see how steep it is, but to give you an idea, Dave had to keep his hand on Owen's back to keep him from falling backwards as Owen literally crawled on all fours to get up that incline. Dave and I didn't really intend to go that far, but Owen was loving it!

We have had the absolute best fall weather I can ever remember this year. It has been amazing blue sunny skies as the leaves slowly change. Usually, fall kind of happens overnight here and within a week, the leaves are completely gone. But, not this year!!! The termination dust did hit our mountain peaks on the first day of fall and it has been creeping down towards us ever since. But, I don't think any of us can complain this year!!! For now, we are enjoying it despite our highs in the mid-40s!! Hope you all are having awesome weather as well. I'll try to post some more of my recovered photos in the near future, don't give up on me!!

It's Fall Y'all!

We are definitely in the full fall swing here and its been amazing!! We've had our typical days of rain, but with lots of sunshine between, so we can't complain. Owen has become far more cooperative in taking photos lately, now that he kind of gets what I am doing. So, he and I did a little photo shoot in the backyard Thursday night. We are so loving having the yard fenced in...Owen and the dogs have gotten better about staying closer to the house, so that makes it easier to throw them out there more often! Here's his "cheese" face again!!
Picking cranberries....

Max is totally digging the running space and gets real depressed on rainy days when we won't let him out to play. The dog literally roles in the mud though!!!

This shot was taken right before Owen bent his leg up and smashed this super beautiful mushroom!!! Can we say all boy!!!

Cheese!!

Dave and I had our backs to the kitchen watching t.v., when I turned around this is what I found...Owen was silently eating the Mickeys off of the leftover cake. Shawnie brought us these Mickey sprinkles for ice cream sundaes a while back and I added them to the cake for a little color. Owen has just recently discovered Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the other Disney characters and loves them. As a fan, he apparently felt it was his job to sneak up on the cake and eat every Mickey sprinkle. He was quite pleased with himself when we discovered him. This is his new "cheese" face, you pull out the camera and he says cheese with this horrible look. I hate it!! I'm hoping he outgrows this face soon!!!