Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, friends! I'm so sorry for being a "bad" blogger lately! I just wanted to take a moment to let you all know that I will have some new posts coming very soon. Life continues to be very busy. Christmas is only 4 days away! The past few weeks have been full with baking, Christmas parties, our Church Christmas Musical (so lots of practices), and the normal day-to-day life as a family. This week is full of time with family and friends, and we fly to WA on the 25th! So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Hopefully I will have a new Post soon!

Who is the craziest guy you know?

Brian Reeder!! He is the craziest guy I know! He is also one of the funnest and awesome. Last month he was in town for a wedding so we got to hang out! Of course, Alex latched on to Brian right away.

Picking Out Pumpkins

This year we kept it simple and picked our pumpkins at The Home Depot.

Rain!

Anna's changing table is right up against the window and she loves to look out! (especially when I'm trying to change her diaper) Yesterday the rains came... and they stayed alllll day long. Anna really enjoyed watching the rain out her window:-).

Alex Is 2 & Anna Has Mastered A New Trick!

With a "Big Boy" 2 year old running around, and a very busy 8 month old, I am finding it very difficult to get ANYTHING done! O.K., well, not ANYTHING, but not much! Thus, blogging is neglected. That said, here are a few pictures of our most recent happenings... Alexander's 2nd birthday "parties", and Anna's new found trick!

Alex turned 2 on September 24th. It was a fun day filled with cupcakes! We had some friends over in the morning- they brought cupcakes... we went to Grandma Joyce's house for lunch and a little celebration with Great Grandma Richardson- more cupcakes... and then after dinner we had to celebrate with Daddy, of course- more cupcakes!

Alex LOVES birthdays!! Oh, and I forgot to mention that he is a pro at blowing out candles! I don't know how he learned it, but he knew: when to blow, how to blow, and he got both candles out on the first blow!

Here are a few pictures from his big birthday party with friends and family a week later:

* * * * * * *

Now for Anna... this little girl is growing up WAY to fast! On October 6th, this is how I found her:

Now she is pulling herself up on everthing. She loves to stand:)!

Anna's got the GIGGLES!

Backyard Renovation

You may recognize the picture below if you've been following our blog since we started it. If not, this is a picture of our backyard about one month before we moved in.

By the time we moved in, most of the weeds had turned brown, and were almost as tall as me! The picture below is the yard after Nate's dad had cleared a good portion of it.

NOW... The REASON for this POST!

Nate's birthday was August 4th, and this year, both his parents and mine went in together to help give him a GREAT gift! They gave sweat-equity, and grass! So... Saturday, August 22nd, the Renovation began! In the picture below you can see part of the yard before we got started. Actually, you can see a red paint line... A few weeks ago my parents came over and my mom helped us design the grass configuration! Here's Nate using the Rototiller.

Nate and his dad working away!

Grandma Enns weeding the side of the house, with Alex:) A good portion of the yard done with the rototiller!

Nate's dad and my dad- ready to get sweaty!

The bender-board going in!

DIRT:) and bark!

Me with the sod roller!

Compost!

And the picture below concludes day one!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, day #2 found me under the weather:(. So I didn't get to do much. At 12noon the sod arrived!!

The next 2 pictures you can see my mom getting everything moist, Alex enjoying it all, and Nate and his dad laying sod!

A VERY dirty Nate, admiring his new lawn!

It was difficult to get a good shot, but here it is, our GRASS! A few weeks of lots of water and babying the lawn, and Phase ONE complete!

We have a lot more we'd like to do in our backyard, but it will be one step at a time. Below I tried to take a picture of our drawing. If you can see it, it includes some ideas of what we'd like to do in the future, including: a patio, stepping stones, the arbor from our wedding, and lots of plants and trees.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, Mom and Dad Enns, and Mom and Dad Richardson for this wonderful gift! We cannot wait to enjoy our grass! We are already enjoying it's beauty. Thank you also to other family members who contributed: Katie Enns, Heidi and Vijay Swamidass, and Chris and Katie Richardson.

Anna Pics

Anna is a 1/2 year old!

Our sweet little BUSY Anna is almost 7 months now! As you can see in the picture below, she is a happy girl. She smiles easily, which melts our hearts! At six months she was in the 25th percentile for weight (weighing 15lbs), 64th percentile for length, and her head size was in the 47th percentile. If you can believe this...She is crawling!! Well it's not quite the real crawl- it's more of a scoot, but if she wants something, she'll get it! Be prepared Mama!

Big Boy Alex!

This is an amazing story that I just cannot pass up.... It happened about a month ago now. Alex seemed to be interested in going potty, so we decided to buy him a little potty to practice on. I found the one I wanted and picked it up on a Saturday... We were gone all weekend, but Monday morning I asked Alex if he would like to go on his potty, and he said "ah huh". He sat on his potty and we waited. Nothing came, but that was just fine. Then, in the evening Nate needed to go to Home Depot, so he took Alex and I stayed home with Anna. (That was nice:). On their way home, Alex said, "pee pee?", so Nate asked him, "Do you need to go pee pee?"...Alex answered, "ah huh". So Nate told him to wait and he could go on his potty when they got home in just a minute. As soon as they got home Nate raced him upstairs, pulled off his diaper, and sat him on the potty... I ran into the bathroom and witnessed Alex going "pee pee" on his potty for the very first time! We cheered and made a big deal of it. Alex was so proud. Then the next day, our friend Kristi was over and noticed Alex grunting off in a corner and told us, "just so you know, I think Alex is pooping." So we asked him if he wanted to go on his potty... at first he said no, but then he decided he did want to go. You will not believe this!... Nate took him upstairs and Alex went poo poo and pee pee on his potty!!! We were amazed! He is not potty trained yet, in fact, we really haven't been pushing it, but he is still interested and not afraid of the potty, which is great news! When "I" am ready, I think I'll get that book about potty training in a day.

Catching Up...Again

Well, I've been trying to play "catch up" on our blog for a while now, and I just keep getting further and further behind! So, I'm just going to do a very brief post, with very little detail, of a few different events.

In the beginning of June we took a road-trip down to So Cal. The main reason for this trip was my big brother's graduation ceremony from Fuller Seminary! It ended up being a very rough trip because Alex came down with something really awful- we still don't know for sure what it was. But we made the best of it. We were able to celebrate with Andrew and family, go to Disneyland (Alex's 2nd time, Anna's 1st!) and visit Nate's sister Christine, and visit our good friends from Hemet- Tim and Rebekah Finn, and their little guy, Ethan.

Then there was Father's Day... This year we were able to spend it with both Nate's family and my parents. We had a BBQ at Nate's parents house and it was a great time of relaxation. Unfortunately I didn't get any great pics.

There has been lots of brother/sister love this summer too.

Then at the end of June we went to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. It was stinking HOT!

And the last event in June was a visit with my long-time good friend Megan, from WA. She and her boys: Max and Jack, and her mom drove down. We were able to spend a day together, playing at the park and then at my mom's house. It was fun to catch up:).