early birthday

We celebrated Finley's 4th birthday early (November 3rd), since Outi was going to Finland the next day.

We ate Finn's request of hamburgers for dinner & had yummy cupcakes for dessert!

A gift for Cedar, too. Maybe it was for his half birthday...or maybe just because! Either way, he loved it!

Cool new Kid K'nex!

A bug flashlight from Nanalee & Papa Lew. It arrived that afternoon, just in time for the celebration! :)

The very happy birthday boy!

Cedar loves cupcakes, too. He calls them "cookie" but he's got the right idea. ;)

fall portraits

Since Kenton's declaration that we would not be getting professional photos done again (too stressful to be worth the price), I had to work on getting them done on my own (on a couple of different days). I focused on Finn on one sunny day, our family on a different day & Cedar on a 3rd, separate, sunny day. Between the three photo shoots, I managed to get some pretty great smiles. Certainly not easier (in my opinion) than spending an hour at the photography studio, but I am definitely much more pleased with the results! :)

Our family
Finley, Kenton, Cedar & Katrina
(Done with the camera timer)

Finley
The four year old!
(Birthday photos to come...)

Our boys, together

Cedar
The 18 month old!

A few more that didn't make the cut, but are still kind of sweet:

Cute Cedar expression

Sweet brothers :)

Special Note to Mummi: Your printed copies are ready & waiting for when you return from Finland! :)

trick-or-treating

On Halloween night, we started the festivities by trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. I'm really glad we did. It was fun to watch the kids get so excited. Cedar figured it out pretty quickly & was soon running right along with Finn to get to the next house. He didn't give up the treats until the next treat was offered; then he dropped what he was holding to take the new treat! :P We had to remind Finn not to walk right in & take what he wanted...we'll have many years to practice! ;)


My 3 ninjas

We met up with my sisters & their families at my parents house.

Cohen, Tyler, Finn, Sadie, Cedar, Griffin & Ronan

I dressed as a Green ninja. Not sure if they exist, but it worked with my clothing choices in my closet! ;)

Memaw & Papa with their grandkids

Becca, Gretchen & Katrina
This picture cracks me up cause we didn't notice Ninja Finn in the picture right away. He really is a ninja!

Katrina & Kenton

Next stop: Jesse & Carolyn's house...or Frankenstein & the bride of Frankenstein :)

Then we were off to Stu & Jacque's house. Jacque was dressed as Batgirl & their dog Barney was dressed as a chariot? He had a little Roman soldier riding on his back. :P

Jacque's cute Halloween decorations that I totally wanna copy next year! Ghost milk jugs - so great!

Our final stop was a Mummi & Pappa's house where we mooched some real food! I didn't plan dinner very well & it kind of got left out, so we were thankful for some yogurt for "dinner" - to go along with all the candy we had already eaten! :P

baby shower for gretchen & tate

On Tuesday, October 26th, I helped put together a baby shower for Gretchen & baby Tate.


The idea for the cute lanterns came from here. Becca & I whipped them out & they looked so good...next time I won't use scotch tape to hang them. ;)

Lots of people helped bring the yummy food!

Lots of sweet gifts.

Kelly, Becca, Gretchen & I
Kelly headed up the planning of the shower & really wanted to make it extra special for Gretchen! :)

Opening gifts

The gift from my co-workers. :)

Patty (Josh's mom), Amy (Josh's sister), & Gretchen

Katrina, Gretchen, Mom & Becca

Our friend Sheila is due just one day apart from Gretchen!

barn party

Another trip to the Barn Party! It's one of the highlights of our Fall. :) Kenton was a Kung Fu master, Finn a ninja, I was a gardener & Cedar was a rooster (a borrowed costume from Griffin). :)

The Chase family
Becca the hobo, Aaron's a shark, Cohen's Karate kids, Tyler's an Elvish Avenger, & Sadie is a pink fairy (I think)

The Ruddicks
Ronan's a rock star & Griffin is a tiger

Finn played all the games & really liked the rope swing! He kept cutting in line inadvertently. :\ Everyone was so nice to our little ninja!

The Green Family
Spiderman-Ethan, Kitty-Macey & Pumpkin-Emma :)

A battle between Kung Fu-Kenton & Karate-Justin!

Cute Malia was a bunch of grapes!

And Finn was trying to sweet talk his way into getting some of Ava's candy. Don't think she was giving in. ;)

Blurry Finn with Miss Chelsea dressed as Dora. So cute!

last comic standing

Kenton bought us tickets to see the top 5 finalists from last season's Last Comic Standing for our anniversary. So on Thursday, October 21st, Carolyn watched our boys so that could go out to eat & to the performance.

We ate dinner at Steelhead Brewery. Possibly not the best choice on the evening of a Duck football game, but the food was great...loud, cheering fans, not so much. ;)

We had great seats in the balcony!

We were pretty excited to see our favorite comics & they didn't disappoint!

Of course, I didn't actually take any pictures of the comics themselves. I was too busy enjoying the performance. It was a fun night & definitely something out of the ordinary!