Fall is starting to Fall into place! :o)

I know a lot of people LOVE fall. Me, not so much. I see the colors of the leaves, and while some people think that is beautiful...I think it looks like things are dying. I see the flowers that I love (I'm a sucker for bright, saturated colors if you've ever picked up on that in my artwork) all coming to the end of their cycle and I find it depressing. Paired with that, is the thought that it is about to become really freaking cold outside!! Ew. Let's face it, the only great thing that come from coldness is Christmas. Around these parts, however, we don't even get snow on Christmas, we get bitter to the bones cold...and then we get snowed in later when we are so done with winter we could cry.

There are a few things I do appreciate about Fall, however.

#1. I get to bust out my hoodies and comfy pants!
#2. We get to "fall back" an hour, gaining an extra hour of sleep. Well.... I guess I don't really necessarily get that anymore. Bummer...LOL

But most of all, this year, my favorite thing about the fact that it's been cooling down and mostly pleasant outside, is the fact that Evan and I have been able to meet Dustin for family picnics in the park by Dustin's office.

We've all really enjoyed that and have made it a weekly event. I love that Dustin gets bonus time to spend with Evan, since he doesn't get a lot of time with him on a typical business day (let alone the days/weekends he's got class and barely gets to see him at all). It has been a challenge to manage time to maximize their time together as well as ours, but I think we are starting to finally make things happen. I'm so proud of how hard he is working at balancing work, school and family time, but graduation day can't come soon enough! :o)

Another thing we've enjoyed doing together is going to our county fair. It was Evan's first fair experience. The goats were really friendly, and he was just on cloud 9 looking at all of the animals!

Other exciting things have also happened. For example, Evan had his first taste of real food for his 5 month birthday-pears. Since he's also enjoyed sweet potatoes and carrots.

He also got his first piece of real mail from Aunt Kendra-

And started learning how to read on his own looking stellar in his comfy outfit that Aunt Tonya gave him. (I love this outfit, not just because it's totally something I would wear, but also because it looks fabulous with his eyes!)

I've successfully survived my first "real" month of being a stay at home Mommy. I love it. The hardest time I had was the first week of school...but since, I've been really embracing it. I've gone through my school boxes and taken out things that I will be able to use with Evan as he gets older, and officially stored away the rest. It was a big step, but I'm so happy that we are able to afford to do this. I've really enjoyed watching Evan grow- and he is growing SO FAST!

Happy Birthday, Dustin!

Last weekend we celebrated Dustin's 28th anniversary of being alive! :o) I had a lot of fun making his birthday "non-cake". Now that I have a little more time on my hands, I am able to do things like that. I called it a non-cake because he didn't want cake for his birthday, he wanted brownies. Brownies alone seemed so uninspired, so I used one of his other favorite treats, scotcheroos, to make a helmet, which sat on a brownie decorated as grass. It was yummy, and that is what mattered!

Evan and I, of course, went out and got him some gifts, among them were cozy adidas pants to lounge around the house in (those were Evans idea since Daddy told him how jealous he was of his comfy pants), a video game, a bears t-shirt, and a wooden box picture frame that spins that I painted, of course, in true Chicago bears style and filled with photos of Dustin at Soldier field when we went in 2008.

The one major thing, however, that Dustin wanted for his birthday was just ONE DAY of not having to do ANYTHING. He didn't want deadlines, or specific places he needed to be, or projects he had to think about. So, we granted him that as well! It was a nice weekend so we blew up Evans pool and chilled out with him....but we got a little toasty and decided to blow up our pool as well. That's where this activity turned sour...all we had was a foot pump. Apparently you can use a wet/dry vac. but we didn't think about this until our very nice neighbor offered to let us use his, but at this point we were already halfway done so Dustin said thanks, but no thanks. Well, we should have taken him up on it....but as it turns out it wouldn't have mattered. We started filling it with water and the sides seemed low, so we pumped some more. By the time we got in, the sides buckled out and started to spill the water out. We had to hold the sides up to keep the water in....not really very relaxing, so we were forced to give up. We never bothered to release the air and by an hour or two later, it was laying on our patio as flat as a pancake. Hmm...we're guessing there's a hole in it. Call it a hunch. The neighbors were outside watching this whole thing, so we were a bit embarrassed and decided to run inside and hide. Fortunately for him, Evan slept through this whole thing and when he woke up, we were going inside, anyway. I was in charge of bringing everything in while Dustin gave Evan a bath. As if we weren't embarrassed enough, I had to make matters worse. As I was loading things back into the house I had to dump the water out of the glass bowl that Dustin had put out for Tango....I grabbed the bowl by the bottom and went to toss the water into the vegetable garden. Not really thinking about how it being wet, and my hand being wet would create a bit of a slippery situation, the bowl went flying into the air and literally BOUNCED on the patio making the most ear piercing sound I have ever heard in my life. In fact, I found out later that Dustin heard it from upstairs in the bathroom. Oy. I don't think we can ever go outside again! The good news is that somehow the bowl lived to tell the story. Impressive. Apparently Pyrex makes a very sturdy product. LOL

(Evan showing off that he knows how to chill "pool-side", no doubt the result of good parenting!)

The best part about Dustin's birthday celebrations for me, is that I win too! We always go out to eat for each others birthday, and we both really love the same places. Dustin picked out Molly Woo's (which is our favorite Chinese restaurant) for his birthday dinner. Yummmm!!! For those of you who have never heard of this place, it's part of the Cameron Mitchel line, so I guess you could call it "high end", but it's really reasonable to go there for an occasional dinner, and it is SO good. I love that I always have leftovers, too, so I get lunch the next day out of the same meal.

Evan also gave Daddy the gift of sleeping in his crib! It was quite the monumental moment after all of the *unique* things we've tried to make him not be afraid of it. Now, getting him to take a nap in there is a totally different subject, but for now, we'll take what we can get!(This picture taken August 7, 2010)

Overall, (aside from the part were we make ourselves look like big doofus') it turned out to be a nice relaxing birthday celebration. Best of all, it was great quality time with our little family! :o)