Opening presents…

Cocoa, Copper, and Murdoch. Apparently girl dogs’ names start with a C. Murdoch felt left out.

Hugs…

Smiles…

Skating…

Me and Josh

I’ll try to be better at taking and posting pics of the kids, but no promises. If you haven’t found me on Facebook yet, try to find me. You’ll see many more pictures of the kids on there than you will on this blog.

The pictures below were taken by Jamie ‘Savage’ Anderson earlier this fall.

Josh and I have been nursing some head/chest colds for the past two weeks. Neither of us remember ever being this sick before.

I’ve harvested produce from our raised garden beds. The carrots seemed to be the cream of the crop this year.

We’ve been making lots of apple-y recipes lately. I’ve had three different people give me bags of apples in the past three weeks. We’ve made apple cake, dehydrated apple slices, and apple sauce so far. We only have about a bag of apples left now.

One of my coworkers got married and we got to bring the kids to the wedding. It was the best wedding ever to bring kids to…the ceremony lasted only just over 2 minutes.

My little brother, Corey, came to visit again. He was transitioning jobs and got to stay with us for a week or so between jobs.

The kids really miss him. And me too.

We bought a lovesac for our reading area downstairs and the kids love it so far.

And knowing that winter is coming, we’ve been trying to spend as much time outside as possible lately.

Leah is becoming more friendly with the camera, and she is growing up too quickly.

We had a rummage sale, our first ever, and Leah was a huge help. She kept finding stuff from the sale to wear around.

Raleigh started preschool again and so far he says that he has four friends…Ayden, Louie, Sophia, and I forget the fourth one.

If you’re on Facebook, I suggest friending me, because then you get lots of pictures and videos of the kids more frequently.

Until then, please be patient with my infrequent postings here.

We’ve been harvesting some carrots and other produce from our raised garden beds.

We’ve been landscaping a bit too.

The kids have been eating the produce from the garden.

And they’ve been eating other things as well. The next three pictures were taken at the Cobber corn feed this year.

We’ve also been visiting parks, a lot.

We spent it with my family and had a blast! Friday night, we enjoyed grapes on the beach.

Leah practiced her sour-frowny face.

…and she pointed out the boats to us.

Sam and Raleigh had fun playing with letters on Grandma’s fridge.

Leah was stung by a mosquito on her eyelid…and…it swelled up a bit.

Sam had fun squirting fish.

Raleigh had fun pretending to drown…ok…he just threw his hands in the air and it seems like he was drowning.

He was actually fine.

Grandma took her favorite spot…in a floaty…on the lake.

Tyler snorkeled and Raleigh splashed him. What? oh, really, you don’t need a play by play of all these photos, fine, suit your self.

I can’t not comment on this one. OMG look at her eyelid!! And those yummy yummy black olives.

And these weirdos seem to make it into a photo. We’ll have to instruct Jed the bouncer guy to not let people like this get close to us anymore.

Pssst… we really don’t have a bouncer named Jed. In fact, we don’t have a bouncer at all.

DJ risked life and limb to jump off the dock.

and he survived.

Phwew…it was a close one.

We were semi-successful in getting a picture of all the kiddos at once. My brother’s kids seem to know when to smile. Leah, however, has had the camera stuffed in her face too much and has built up a defense mechanism that automatically turns her heads away when the shutter opens.

Grandpa capped off the weekend with some fishing advice for DJ and Tyler.

It was a great weekend.

My kids (see above) are also having fun playing with the hose (see below).

I had my fancy camera out (it’s really 6 years old now, but I still think it’s fancy) and actually took some cool pictures of the water coming out of the garden hose. It looks like really clear ice.

I also took some goofy pictures.

We’ve been incorporating craft time into the kids’ daily routine more and they love it!

We spent the Saturday before the 4th of July at Erika and Joel’s house and Adam’s parents brought kiddie fireworks (snaps, pops and the moving tank, etc.) Adam and Leah don’t like loud noises, but Raleigh and Chelsea didn’t mind them.

On that same Saturday, we all went for a walk to Island Park and found that they had just installed the largest playground ever. That was a nice surprise.

Leah liked the diggers.

We found some of Erika’s old toys from when she was younger. The cabbage patch doll’s jersey seemed to somewhat fit Raleigh.

Raleigh’s been dressing himself again. He was trying to look like Link from Zelda. But I think he looks kind of thuggish.

Leah drew on her face this morning. Josh took advantage and had her quote a line from the Joker (See the video link at the bottom of this post).

We also had Belgian waffles this morning. They were delish!

Click on the link below, if you’ve seen Batman: The Dark Knight. This is Leah’s impression of the Joker.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=601930410217

Leah practiced jumping in shallow water, while Raleigh built a sandcastle.

We found some old dandelions along the way and the kids had fun blowing away their seeds.

We took time to pose for some pics.

And we conned the kids into running fast down trails.

Over all, it is a really nice state park that is less than a half hour away from us. We will be returning there this summer.

Anyway, back to the pool…As you can see, Leah surely loves it.

And, it turns out that Murdoch is not afraid of the water at all. He’ll stick his whole face in the water to try to get a toy at the bottom of the pool.

While Leah and Murdoch are having fun in the pool, Raleigh and the neighbor kids are having fun shooting each other with water guns.