Saturday

With all my family together last Saturday we had a lot of fun talking, playing with the kids, watching Michigan football (the guys),taking a good walk (the girls), and eating lots yummy food.

Here are some photos from the day:







Here are the finished pumpkins from the afternoon. They look great, but the kiddos weren't quite up for a photo shoot with the pumpkins. lol

2 years

Today is 2 years since my mom passed away. I'm so blessed because my whole family is coming over to my house so that we can be together for the day. I still miss her so much. Yesterday I made her banana bread and cried because I wished so deeply she could come over and eat some with me. I wish she could see our house and hold and kiss Becca. I wish we could just sit around and talk again. And yet, I think I'm moving to the acceptance side of grief. Right after she died I felt I was living in an alternative universe. If you've even seen Back To the Future II it is like when they come back to a different 1985 and they try to go back in time to change the event so they can get their old 1985 back. So much of the world seemed the same and yet there was something so different and so wrong for me. However, I feel now like I've lived in the alternate world enough that I'm starting to make my home there. I still wish I wasn't here at times, but it is life now. I have things to work for and things to be happy about. This past year I've started going back and scrapbooking some layouts from times with my mom. Here are some great pictures of her I've come across.

Poor Jon

He unfortunately inherited not only my allergies but also my asthma. Last fall we had to take him to the med center a couple of times for breathing treatments. So now we have some breathing medicine at home. Fall is back and so is the asthma. Jon is being such a big boy about it.

Pushing the Wagon

I can't seem to convince Becca that wagons are for pulling. Today she just pushed it round and round the house.

Are you ready for some football?!

Fall Sundays in our house have always been football days. Before the kids, and even when we just had Michael that usually meant heading off somewhere where we could see the Patriots. If anyone is reading this and doesn't know my husband, well let's just say he is a Boston sports NUT. He slams remotes and yells at the TV when watching recorded games he's seen 20 times already. He has thrown me from the couch even in one emotional moment.

However, I do have a soft spot for the Patriots for two reasons.
1. I remember listening to the Patriots/Bears super ball game back in the 80s. We lived in Boston at the time and we were at my cousin's house painting like every room with them. There was a TV or radio on in just about each room and I remember the excitement level just draining from the house that day. I think every child in New England was a Patriot's fan that year and all felt the devastation together as they lost.
2. The Patriots are what brought Tim and I together. It was the Patriots heading to the Super Bowl in 2003 that led me to e-mail Tim an I'll be thinking of you message that gave him the courage to ask me out. :)

Well, now that we have 3 kids going out and staying at a restaurant to watch a whole football game is next to impossible. So instead we pay careful attention to when they are shown on TV, which for being far out of New England here, they are actually on quite a bit. We have also been keeping up on the Lions this season too and cheering for them which has been fun. Well, all of us cheer for them except Michael. Michael, who will tell you he "grew up in Pittsburgh" is a die hard Steelers fan. Next in line he chooses to root for whoever is playing the Patriots or the Lions. Boy does he like to ruffle his daddy's feathers!

This past weekend, though, the Patriots had a buy so we found ourselves with a bit of extra time on our hands. Tim took the kids outside to play a bit and they ended up having a blast of a football game themselves:

Big Girl Pig Tails

Today we got all the hair up in pig tails, not just the front hairs like we usually do. Aren't the tails getting long?!!

God Sees My Future

I was totally inspired by the October Shutterbug challenge over at 9th and Bloom - a digital scrapbooking site. You can check the challenge out here.

The challenge was to be selective in what you focused on in a picture, choosing something that may not be the most obvious or normal for the shot but really helps to tell the story. Here are a couple from the challenge:

I love the focus on the kid taking the picture and having the camera in the foreground out of focus.

Then there was this cool one focusing on the raindrops on the window. You can still make out the thermometer but I wouldn't have really paid any attention to the rain drops if they weren't the focus.

Here is the one I took to show the flower blossoms still out in the fall.

All of this inspired me to put together this mini layout too: