best buddies

these two truely are partners in crime best buddies. it's really been nice with afton in school for rayna and malachi to play a lot more together. chi naps for a good 1 1/2-2 1/2 hours of afton's 3 hour block at school, but the rest of the time, they're fairly inseperable, and usually super-sweet too! they love giving hugs and playing with babies (real or doll), and i love it!

and did i mention how they work together and help eachother? cute as could be!

ps, that's frozen chocolate chip cookie dough

and even better, they're sharing!

a few little things to make you smile

reading :) she's been "reading" for years, but only recently has she started really reading! it's so fun! and she's so smart!

evidentally, there's still some sleepwalking going on in our house! this is what i found as i started up to bed one night last week... i'd heard her get up to go to the bathroom, but evidentally when she was finished she couldn't find her bed!

crazy hair day at school yesterday... it's in honor of drug awareness week



there's just something so very, very lovable about this cheesy grin!



dress-up day at the library... though for halloween she wants to be a scary witch...



i got kicked out of my own bed one saturday afternoon at nap time :( but it's still cute ;)



and here's our favorite little daddy, all decked out for church :)



malachi LOVES shoes... all kinds. the girls' are big enough to be easy to put on, and small enough that he can still walk.
these have the added benefit of being tap shoes and they make a LOT of noise on the tiles--hooray!



horse apples!

many of you may not have heard of horse apples before, (they're also evidentally called osage oranges, though i just learned that one a little bit ago), so this is a horse apple: they're from big trees, and they smell rather okay (at least they don't rot too fast), so we collect them from a house along our walk from afton's school. they make great toys, and we love them. that is all. ;)



please excuse the binky, he had just woken up from a nap


there's not too much sound in this video, but you can see that despite out postage stamp sized backyard, the kids still find plenty to do to play with these little balls. (and despite the fact that they have a million other balls they play with too... these are new and therefore far more special)

clearly, we love our horse apples.

crocheting gone crazy

so i've never been really very humble about my crocheting (though i have occasionally been humbled by yarn). but i'm really proud of how these dresses turned out! hopefully they'll fit for a long time too, the pattern's pretty forgiving, though i'm worried that i made rayna's shoulder area too small and it won't lsat for too much longer... we'll see!

these were some experiments with crocheting thread (as opposed to yarn) 



they like spinny-dresses



rayna's turn




so you can see the pattern a little better, for those that are interested




my other recent past-time, doily plate mats (not really place-mats, just for the glass dinner plates :)



and just cause i started with this one, i made this dress for a friend's baby, and i thought it turned out pretty good, it just took a little longer than i'd hoped, and it was smaller than i planned on too... go figure!



and the baby dress showing off the skirt

 i think i'll stick to yarn again for a while! but i am taking requests ;)

school days

recently afton had picture day at school... me being cheap (and hello, this is pre-k, not graduation!), i didn't buy the school package. i did however take a couple pictures that morning before sending her off to school for the day. these are a couple of my favorites:

and since rayna didn't want to be left out, here's a few more of my favorites:

and that afternoon, they were playing school, afton's the teacher "cause i know how now cause i go to school" i liked the hello-kitty-school-desk-tablecloth-thingy :) and all the books lined up. malachi was being troublesome, so he got religated to the bumbo, which he's far too big for, and which worked to keep him seated approximately 2 seconds (aka, just long enough for the picture... he sure earns the nickname

"Trouble!!!")

most of the time it was more like this:

and on a completely unrelated note, for those that expressed interest in our grilling experiments, here's a couple more:



the bread was great, we loved it, we were hoping the broccoli would be similar to roasted, it wasn't as good. we'll probably stick to roasting it in the future the only trick with the bread (and most veggies) is to brush a little oil on them so they don't stick. we used olive oil on the bread.

arboretum, part 2

cinderella's coach, it was hitched to a topiary horse! and the seats were "spark-ly"



he was trying to climb up there, but the pumpkins on the sides weren't helping him, so i boosted him up for a picture




we loved this gourd, looks like a giant pear! (she's pretending to take a bite)

 

a couple of the pumpkin houses had these cute little mobiles

 

what can i say?! i love this one, and it's not even posed!

 

happy kids!

 

rayna wanted to take some pictures, and yes, i was there too ;)

 

again, just to show off some of the other gardens, i thought the whole place was simply lovely!

 there were also fairy tale castles up for the summer, and those were still around, so we had to visit some of our favorite castles, don't worry, i won't post too many of those... cause i didn't take as many this time ;) 

and we did manage to run into afton a couple times on her field trip ;)
this was at the beauty and the beast castle

and rapunzel's tower, where we had lunch

chi too!