Happy Halloween

Gardner Village

I went with Dani & Jenni to Gardner's Village to check out all the witches. I am LOVING this weather!

Annie & Calvin mezmorized by the witch on the bike in the air

Annie & Addy...that hay can't feel good on bare legs, thus the face.

All the grandkids, again, minus Will who was sleeping in the stroller, and Graham who lives WAY too far away, and Payton who was at school. Notice which one of these well-behaved, smiling kiddos is trying to get to the ground as fast as possible. Starts with an A and ends in D.

Left to Right, Annie, Stella, Calvin, Claire, Oliver, Addy, & Emmy

Pumpkin Patch

We had a fun day at the Pumpkin Patch with Tyler & Jenni and their cute girls (and cute baby Will). You'll notice that Addy doesn't like having her picture taken and when you ask her to look at the camera she will look down or away, so we get lots of lovely pics of the top of her head. I think she gets her stubborn independent personality from her Dad. :-)

We are having so much fun taking this family picture. Exhibit A: The Back Arch, as seen when put in carseat.

Exhibit B: The scream & flail, kind of like the "bend and snap" from Legally Blonde, but not.

Holy Halloween Parties

We have attended 3 Halloween parties over the past 4 days, so here they are from most recent.

The Eberhardt Family Halloween Party at Pops & Sans new beautiful home. (Rather daring to let these wild ones loose with food, candy, cookies, and frosting!)

Uncle Andy holding Misha (my child actually held still without one of us...MIRACLE!), Alex (flexing his Batman muscles), monkey Addy, witch Sami holding cute little mouse Zach, and ninja Cade.

Here's a little better one of them looking at my camera. We had chili, played bingo with way too many prizes, decorated cookies, spent a little while in timeout for going into the living room, and had lots of fun with cousins. We missed Texas cousins Lincoln and Kate, but can't wait to see them for Thanksgiving.

Halloween Party #2 was the Frampton Family Halloween Party. This is my Mom's whole side of the family, which is ginormous. My Mom is the oldest of 8 kids which produced 40+ grandkids, of which 14 are married which have produced 24 great-grandkiddos. So, whose house would fit all this craziness? The Lord's house. We have our fun party at the church and have been doing it for years. It's a lot of fun to see family and see some crazy costumes.

Above is my brother Tyler, who failed to dress up, my hilarious but politically incorrect "brother" Alex, and my Aunt Jane in a blow up maiden costume. It had a battery-operated fan on the side.



Here's our monkey. Notice the enormous briefs in the background. Those would be my cousin Jessica's and her husband Mert's costume and somehow they convinced my grandparents to hop in for a picture. Bummer I didn't get that one.

Hilarious skit by Sam & Morgan

My Mom made this family tree. Each leave is a delicious sugar cookie that has the name of EVERYONE in our family.

Here's part of the crowd.

Halloween Party #3 was at our friends' house with couples from the neighborhood.

This is JD and Alisa as DOG the Bounty Hunter and his endowed wife.

Man in the yellow hat and Curious George (Aaron & Kristy)

Foxy Brown and her Pimp Daddy (Bill & Andrea)

KISS (the costume winners, Travis & Summer)

And Jonathan and I went as Publisher's Clearing House. Jonathan was the Prize Patrol and I was the winner.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

More Pictures

More cute pics of my Kindermusik-hating, tantrum-throwing, 2-year-old that's still for sale.

Grandma's Day

Left to Right: Grandma Cozy, Annie, Addy, Stella, Emmy, Oliver, Payton, Calvin, Claire

My Mom & Dad were feeling adventurous for last month's Grandma's Day. They decided to take all 8 (missed Graham & Will wasn't born yet) of the grandkids to a fun-filled Saturday at the zoo! They only lost Oliver once and he may have shop-lifted a couple of items, but all in all, I think everyone had a great time. I'm sure my parents were absolutely exhausted, but I sure appreciate the day off.

Kindermusik Kraziness

So I decided to get Addy involved in a couple of activities so that I don't feel like I need to put her up for sale. I thought the interaction with other kids and fun activities would be good for her. Today I took her to a free trial of a Kindermusik class in a lady's basement. There were about 10 other kids Addy's age all behaving very nicely and enjoying the songs and instruments and dancing. What was Addy doing you ask? Addy was the child that was throwing a tantrum on the floor. She was rolling all around until she banged against a wall and then she would repeatedly kick the wall. She was crying and whining and I was mortified. A couple of the other moms said, "It's okay, that's normal for the first time." Liars! The teacher was trying especially hard to make me feel okay, but I knew when she said, "Even if you want to take her down the hall for a little while to see if she feels better..." that was my cue to get the heck out of there. I told her I was going to take Addy upstairs and see if I couldn't calm her down. Let's just say I couldn't get in my car fast enough; there may even be tire screech marks on the side of the road. Luckily, I didn't know anyone in the class and hopefully I will never see them again. But odds are, I'll run into one of them at Walmart when Addy is throwing another fit from having to sit in the shopping cart. I'm really sad because the class was darling. The teacher called me when we got home and said we should come and try it again and then if it still doesn't work, maybe wait until January...or never. So, not only will Addy never be a child model, but she also seems to hate music, instruments, cute songs, and people. Awesome!

Addy's 2 Year Old Pics

You know you've found a good photographer when you have a child who has ALWAYS hated getting her picture taken, is ornery and difficult for the whole photo shoot, and you still get pictures like this. Katie actually asked, "Is Addy a happy child?" I laughed out loud. She really is, she just HATES getting her picture taken. She will purposely NOT look at the camera, NOT sit on the chairs, NOT laugh at the funny Elmo impersonations. There go my dreams for her being a child model. There are a few pictures will some color leaking out of her mouth, that would be the constant flow of jelly beans I had going into her mouth to stop her from total melt down. Thank you Katie & Dan for your patience and perserverance...that's why we keep coming back!

For Sale

2-year-old girl. About 3 feet tall, 30 lbs, toehead blond hair, sparkly blue eyes, endearing gap between her two front teeth. Refuses to wear pants, always taking off diaper. Known to drop to the floor in a fit of rage without a moment's notice, only to recover and immediately do it again. Will not sit in a shopping cart. Often found playing on Mommy's computer, climbing on the counter and opening cupboards, and coloring on tables and doors. Always cries when put in carseat, must use excessive force to overcome the back arch and buckle clips, unless, of course, she's riding in Daddy's truck. Will remind you what color everything is, what every animal says, and will keep saying "rocket" until you give in and put on Little Einsteins. Has a great arm and has been found throwing books and DVDs in parents' faces, leaving marks. Needs a sibling bad! knows the "time-out" routine so well, when you say "Time Out Addy!" her reply? "Two minutes Mom."

On a positive note, she says the sweetest prayers, praying for all of her cousins by name, all characters on Little Einsteins and Backyardigans, and all the animals she can think of, which tonight included a hippopatumus. She has the cutest, nicest, most patient Dad in the world (although he is not for sale and does not come with her) who always seems to know the perfect time to take her for a ride. Is absolutely adorable when she is sleeping. Known to be MUCH better for grandmas, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, and absolute strangers for that matter.

Answers to the name Addy, Cheekums, or Little Farts and will start the bidding at $10.

Alaska 2008

Jonathan has been working in Anchorage, Alaska for the last 2 weeks, so instead of flying him home for the weekend, they flew me up. It is such a beautiful, pristine place. I got there Thursday afternoon and we had dinner that didn't sit well with me. I had a restless night until I finally threw up, twice. It's been more than 5 years since I have puked, since before I was married, so I forgot how fun it is. (Side note: Don't know how you sick pregnant ladies do it!) I spent the next morning in bed trying to plan what we should do and where we should go.

FYI: For any of you future Alaska vacationers, most tours close around September 15th. We were hoping to drive up to Denali National Park and go on the bus tour, but it stopped on the 15th. I called up there to see if it was worth coming and the ranger said that the road was closed 3 miles into the park because it was snowing, so we decided to bag that idea and move onto plan B: Kenai National Park. This was the last weekend for the Kenai Fjords Boat Tour, so we decided to go for it.

The morning started off cold and rainy. We were a little nervous that we were going to spend the next 6 hours on this boat not seeing anything because of the clouds and rain. Boy, were we wrong!!

As the day progressed, the clouds cleared and the sun came out. It was gorgeous. We saw lots of wildlife: mountain goat, black bear, bald eagle, sea otters, seals, dolphins, and the highlight...whales! Guess who spotted them and got the captain to turn the boat around and head straight for them?? Jonathan! He even got a free candy bar from the staff for having such great eyes. (Thank you Lasix) This is a picture of the scenery while we were looking for whales.

There was a pod of about 10 shamus. They would come so close to the boat, it was awesome. You can see one under the water in the picture above if you look closely.

I'm so used to seeing sea life at Sea World. It was such a different experience seeing them in the wild. The captain turned off the boat. It was silent around us and we just watched these whales swim around, blow out their spouts, jump, etc. It was worth every dime.

Here's my cute man. In the background is the Aialik Glacier.

Aialik Glacier, getting closer.

Aialik Glacier, really close, but it still looks really small. It was so huge! We watched some huge chunks of ice break off and fall into the water. I felt like we were on the Discovery Channel.

Here are a bunch of seals hanging out on the rock. I really tried to get good pics of the other wildlife, however, my camera couldn't quite focus well enough. We do have great video if you're interested. :-) (Can you tell we don't get out much?)
So here I am with my new BFF Molly that I met on our boat tour. I was commenting to Jonathan on the ride down to the harbor that I was surprised there wasn't more Palin-mania in Alaska. Not a lot of signs, bumper stickers, etc. So when I saw Molly's kids who were decked out in McCain-Palin sweatshirts, pins, etc. I asked the obvious, "So, you guys Palin fans?" Come to find out, Molly is Sarah Palin's sister! We chatted for a while. Her ex-husband is the highway patrol trooper that Palin is being investigated for trying to fire. She told me the whole story and said how the media doesn't even have half of it correct. (shocking!) She told me some stories about Bristol (the pregnant one) and a cute story about Piper, the little 5-year-old. She said that before the VP debate, Sarah asked her daughter Piper to pray for her. "Why?" Piper asked. Sarah said it was so that God could speak through her. Piper's response, "Isn't that cheating?"

Jonathan was embarrassed when I asked to take a picture with her, but I did it anyway.

This was the beautiful town/harbor of Seward where our tour returned.

Sunday morning we watched conference in our hotel room on my computer. I love technology. We decided to go find the Anchorage Temple. It took us a little while. (FYI: Don't use maps.google.com for directions in Alaska--everything was SO WRONG!) We finally turned into this big stake center and the temple was just tucked away in the corner of the parking lot. It was definitely the smallest of the small temples that we have seen.

I put the camera on timer and told Jonathan to make a funny face. Hmm.

We went into Costco in Anchorage to pay homage for my Dad, the Costco King. When we walked in this man and his wife were sitting at the food court table with their cart full of M&Ms. Jonathan and I both made comments, we thought were under our breath, but when I passed by him, he grabbed my coat and said, "If you were wondering about all these M&Ms..." He went on to tell me that every trick-or-treater that comes to his house, which is the last house on a dead end lane, gets a huge 3lb. Costco-size bag of M&Ms!! You better believe I asked for his address! He said they spend $400 and they've been doing it for years. He had great stories about kids' reactions to receiving the huge bag of candy. Can you imagine? I, of course, asked to take his picture. He handed me his card, on bright yellow cardstock that said:

Paul Bierman

A Regular Guy

Serious about having fun.

We need more people like this in the world.

We finished out our trip at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center where they take in hurt or injured wildlife and nurse them back to health. Here's my buddy Bullwinkle.

This is a wood bison. It didn't move. I thought maybe it just a cardboard cut-out or something. Until the stampede of bison came charging up to the fence (luckily) to get some hay.

All in all we had a great time. It was definitely cold. We definitely want to go back. Jonathan LOVES this kind of stuff and wants to see Denali bad. Thank you to our parents who tag-teamed Addy so we could have a nice time, just the two of us.