Tuesday, November 12, 2013

aunt rachie

my sister came to visit the last week of october and it was SO fun to have her here. (my brother had also come to visit for a few days in september on his way home from his summer job in alaska -- we have been so spoiled to see so much family lately!) she came a few days before halloween so she was here for all the festivities (and to coach me through making hudson's costume, ha).

b left on november 1 for a business trip over the weekend so it was PERFECT timing for a girls' weekend. we played in seattle, went shopping, went to snoqualmie falls, watched chick flicks and played with the boys. it was so fun and i totally miss her already.







Friday, November 8, 2013

halloween 2013

fall is amazing in washington. i absolutely love watching the leaves change color and getting into the harvest spirit. fall in so cal, for me growing up, involved more of our everyday sunny weather and picking out a pumpkin from the grocery store or a corner lot that popped up for one month each year with hay bales scattered around to give it an "autumn" feel. definitely nothing as authentic as this.


we've made it a family tradition every year we've lived in washington to go to jubilee farm to pick out our pumpkins, and we were all looking forward to doing it again this year. especially now that jack sort of gets the whole holiday thing. ;) we rode the hay wagon out to the patch, got our pumpkins, rinsed them off at the farm and watched the festivities. on the way home, b took us all to get hot chocolate and then we watched football all afternoon. it was the perfect fall day.




huddy was a total champ and didn't make a peep, just hung out in his baby bjorn and licked his sweatshirt the whole time. haha. 


pumpkin CARVING, on the other hand, was not so much of a win. jack was grossed out by the pumpkin guts and preferred to watch b carve instead. i put this collage on instagram and it still cracks me up every time i see it. haha. 


jack declared months ago that he wanted to be a pirate for halloween, which was fine by me since that's what he was last year and i already had the costume. ;) i wanted hudson to be a little parrot to go along with captain jack, so i whipped up his semi-homemade costume the day of our first party with a bunch of felt and a red onesie.



by the time the actual halloween rolled around, we were exhausted. there are so many holiday activities once you have kids! there was a ward party the night before halloween, a preschool party the morning of, trick-or-treating at microsoft and then the ACTUAL trick-or-treating that night after dinner.


the preschool party:


this one cracks me up. argh!:


visiting dad at work (please note the giant xbox one countdown in the back -- that launch has consumed b's every waking hour for MONTHS now):


i made a cute little halloween dinner (thanks pinterest!) and while we were eating, jack announced he was done being a pirate and wanted to be a dinosaur instead. so, we pulled the dinosaur cape out of our dress-up box and he was a dinosaur for the last round of trick-or-treating. gotta roll with the punches when you have a three-year-old.



we live on a somewhat isolated cul-de-sac with very few kids, so we knocked on the doors of about four nearby houses and then went home. i think it was the perfect speed for jack since he was tuckered out by that time anyway. then we put the boys to bed, ate some of jack's hard-earned candy and watched hocus pocus. ;) such a fun halloween!

Thursday, November 7, 2013

SEVEN

october 20 was our 7th wedding anniversary! so proud that we made it past the seven year itch. ;) we've been talking about weddings a lot lately in this neighborhood and i have to say that i think marriage just gets better and better with time. seven years feels like such a good spot for us -- marriage is comfortable and fun and happy and cooperative and we've worked out a lot of kinks over the years. i'm so lucky to be married to b.


anyway, we kept things pretty low-key this year. i always like to go out and DO things instead of buy things for anniversaries or birthdays, and we threw around a lot of activity ideas, but since hudson was going to be our +1 it kind of limited our choices and when it came down to it i just wanted to keep things simple. we went out to dinner at cuoco (one of the famed tom douglas restaurants in town) and it was delicious and relaxing. that coconut cream pie everyone talks about is legit, people.

our actual anniversary was on a sunday, so it was even more laid back. we just went to church and had dinner with some friends, then came home and popped in our wedding DVD that we hadn't watched in years. it was so fun to look back at ourselves and our families from seven years ago and see what has changed...and also what marriages we have already outlasted. ha.

seven years! here's my traditional look down memory lane. four states, two kids, lots of jobs and LOTS of hair colors/styles later. ;)

[salt lake city UT]

[los angeles CA]

[beverly hills CA]

[provo UT]

[provo UT]

[vancouver canada]

[seattle WA]