a REAL snow day

The day before we left Utah, we got the kind of "snow day" that we had been hoping & wishing for:



















Our smartphones might downplay it as "flurries" but it was plenty substantial to us!













The girls were SO excited.  Me & Jesse were too!  They woke us up just like on Christmas...... they were up before anyone else and they came downstairs in hushed & ecstatic voices & begged us to look outside and get up! get up!  it's snowing!!!  It was so pretty and they couldn't wait to get out and play in it.










Arissa & Mallory risked frostbite & hypothermia and played in their jammies.  


Judging by Mariah's emotional outburst at the temperatures the last time we were in the snow, we figured she'd better borrow some proper gear:








She looked all puffy & cute.

Even so, she went out............ & came right back in.  :)

Arissa made a snow angel, and walked around in the yard & noted that this freshly fallen snow was a lot different than the icy, packed snow we had been in earlier in the week.

Mallory stayed out the longest, jumping on the trampoline in the falling snow, unfazed by the cold. 









By the afternoon it was sunny skies again and by the end of the day most of the snow on the ground was gone.  It was an awesome thing to wake up to!

teacher gifts

These are the gifts the girls gave their teachers this year:




(I didn't want to add any ruffles or bows on Arissa's --well, I wanted to, but I chose not to-- because her teachers are men)








The girls had fun making them, and much more fun delivering them and seeing their teachers' reactions.  :)

I wish I could be as on top of things as the girls are.

By the beginning of november they had selected and wrapped a birthday gift for me.  And Christmas gifts for several others.  All by themselves.










I think I know what my gift is and after I open it, if I'm right, I'll share the story that goes along with it because it's super sweet (not the story but the fact that the girls remembered it and recalled it when choosing a gift).









I had been dying to cook something with pumpkin, so when it was pouring down rain one Saturday that's exactly what we did.

We made pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.









Soooo yummy.  I've made some other pumpkin cupcakes that were bummers but these were pretty close to perfect.


We managed to time things out and "celebrated" 11/11/11 11:11 this year:







You get some pretty interesting expressions when you ask them to stand there, all ready a few minutes early and watch the seconds pass by.  Especially when they're so close together.....inevitablly part of someone touches part of someone else and all hell breaks loose!
We also celebrated 9/10/11 12:13 but I gotta locate those photos.  :)

A perfectly lovely day at the pumpkin patch, for a total cost of $3.

Gotta squeeze all these fall/pumpkin-y/halloween-y posts in before December comes and they don't fit!




We took a trip to the pumpkin patch in Bonita.  It's not the biggest, most elaborate patch in San Diego, but it's fun & it's quaint & it's close........& it would have been free except they extorted $3 out of us to let the girls run wild through the corn maze, which Mariah got lost in and sat down and cried for 15 minutes.  :(



The pictures speak for themselves!
















Tractor ride!


























Interestingly, we did not purchase any pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.  I got those on sale @ Sprouts, for $2 each, which I was so happy and proud of myself for.  The one went rotten and the FedEx man kicked one in, and Mariah got sick the day we carved and never got around to carving hers.  And so I'm glad I spent $2 each at Sprouts instead of $6 each at the pumpkin patch.

a sad day

I got my daily after-school call from the girls yesterday, Arissa is always the one who gets on first, and as soon as I picked up the receiver I heard moaning and wailing in the background.


I could tell it was Mallory and it didn't sound like her usual, thrice a day tantrum crying (although that is pretty wild and loud too).  This was sad, sobbing crying.


So I asked Arissa what happened and she told me Mallory's fish had died.


My grandma bought all 3 girls a fish over the summer, which they lovingly named, fed, and watched every day.


But Mallory's fish had completed it's mission on earth apparently, and was called back to the big fish-pond in the sky.  But she left behind one sad, mournful little girl.


Nana's promise to buy a new one the very next day, plus a bowl-full of pretzels, helped to cheer her up quite fast.


But there was no way of talking Mallory into letting any of us flush this fish.  It was going to have a proper burial if she had to do the whole thing herself.


So we planned a sunset cermony, dressed in our funeral best, and got er done.






















Each of the girls said a few words.  It was very sweet and somber, until after each speech when they would press one of the pedals on the play-microphone which then played recorded applause or drumbeats.  It kinda ruined the moment, but it was pretty hilarious.















Mallory & Mariah wrote their own speeches, and Arissa read us a Bible verse:


















And then Mallory rang a bell 3 times, and we had a moment of silence.





















Our little guest of honor:











Nana didn't dress in funeral attire, but we still let her attend.













I made little crosses out of hydrangea stems, one for Vanessa The Fish and one for our other sorely-missed friend: Blossom, who she was being burried next to.














I even cut two of my few remaining bloomed hydrangeas for the decedants.













Farewell to our little friend, may she rest in peace.

crafts & crazy cats

The girls and I spent some time making fun stuff this past weekend.










I made felt cupcakes:











And the girls worked on sewing American Girl felt pencil toppers that I got them:











You can see from these faces...it's hard work:













But the results made us happy:













And through it all, since we had taken over Missy's favorite place to nap (the kitchen table-gross), she crawled into the next best place.









My work-in-progress basket.  She looked a little squished, but apparently she liked it.








Looking at her all twisted and contorted like that reminded me of how I feel most nights when there's 3 kids in the bed with me.


But just like her, I make do.  At least I don't have my face crushed up against a wire basket, like she did.  I shouldn't complain.