Happy Halloween

Treats and crafts at Briggs' first class party, flowers for Nana at the airport (arriving from Africa), trying to get a photo of thirty costumed kiddos,"pumpkin treating" - Haddie, a sweet flower and a stinky skunk fighting to stay awake after a long day, too much candy, and a PB&J dinner at 9:30 pm. You gotta love this weird and crazy holiday! Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Patch

Picking out pumpkins with the Thompson crew at the cutest little pumpkin patch.

And I saved the best for last... :)

Simpler times...

Ironically our friend Lorie was just talking about how her need (and amazing ability as a professional photographer) to capture the perfect shot can sometimes conflict with enjoying the moment. Her solution is to attempt to lay down the big guns and go with the "little camera." Even with my little point and shoot, I sometimes feel the same way and wish for the days when I didn't have to check messages, respond to a billion emails, and yes, catch each and every emotion my children have ever had on film. Last week I got my wish.






We took a spontaneous trip to Disneyland (our FIRST as just our little family of four) and wouldn't you know it, four shots into the day, the camera went dead. Of course, I was paralyzed and distraught beyond belief for a good ten minutes, but then I did something very un-Jenn and simply LET IT GO! Cameraless and free! Truly, it was one of the best days... with only memories to prove it. Fortunately, we did get our first set of annual passes (thanks to our fabulous family and friends who had been contributing to our fund over the past year) so in all honesty, there's no doubt I'll have ample opportunity to snap a billion and one Disney photos this year. But sometimes just simply soaking up the moment is the best way to go...

Vegas, Baby!

Some time back, I whisked Ryan away for a surprise getaway to none other than Vegas. The inpiration for the trip was really our favorite comedian, Jim Gaffagin. Ryan and I LOVE him. Absolutely hillarious. Ryan really wanted to write this post (which is why it is months behind) but finally gave over the reigns due to time constraints. He would have said something dry and sarcastic about bacon and Hot Pockets so use your imagination. I think Ryan has a crush on him. :)

We stayed at the Wynn (which was amazing and very UN-vegas-esh) and had yummy drinks by the pool, lounged by the waterfall over coffee and ice cream, shopped, saw Gaffigan and were on constant lookout for celebrity sitings -apparantly someone famous is almost always at Wynn. It just so happened that the US Olympic Basketball Team was staying at our hotel that weekend; at one point we hung out for awhile about 10 feet away from Lebron James... until I decided to start snapping photos, (which by the way did not come out-sad), and got booted by their security entourage. Oh well.

We gambled a whole twenty bucks and did not win. Boo.

Had crepes in Paris. Gotta love the 1/2 size Eiffle Tower and attempts to avoid triple chins in said photos...

And I'm not sure if I've ever shared Ryan's addiction to Mardi Gras beads. He's obsessed. I'm not sure if it's the hunt or the music or what, but he beelines to the beads. No matter where we are, concerts, fairs, the Rio....he's gotta have him some beads. Haddie appreciated her new costume accessories when we got home too. :)

Montano De Oro

We snuck over to the coast a couple of weekends ago to get out of the blazing heat and hit up some of our favorite spots... Firestone Grill for lunch in San Luis, a walk along the creekbed with Chocolate Milkshake frozen yogurts from Country Culture, and a quick jaunt over to the Atascadero Zoo (I was actually traumatized by this zoo when Ryan took me back when we were dating - I swear there was an anorexic tiger there and it was the saddest thing I have ever seen! Fortunately the zoo's current tiger inhabitant 'Sala' was very healthy this time.). We spent the rest of the day running down the massive sand dunes at Sandspit in Montano De Oro and dodging monster jellyfishies that were all over the beach! It was a great little getaway, but every time Ryan and I go over and drive past the wineries we secretly wish we had ditched the kiddos so we could stop and do a little tasting again. Apparantly it does not bode well to have a kid in one hand and a glass in the other.
One of these days... :)

The Begining of an Era

Briggs started preschool this fall and is absolutely LOVING it. We are now inundated at home with imaginary classrooms where Briggs is "Miss Jeanie" (his teacher, of course), and pleads to go to school on off days. The only issues we are still working on are tears picking him up (he does not want to leave), and more tears from Hadley dropping him off. The first day when Haddie demanded she have "her" backpack for school, I knew it we were in trouble. Briggs let her carry his lunch pail in and she bawled her eyes out when she realized she was not going to be staying. So, on any given day I'm either dealing with her crying (literally) "I want to go to school, too!" or "I want my Briggsy." Poor thing. Apparantly my kids love school. Here's a couple shots for the archives... And yes, that is the brightest, darn tootin', cutest little backpack ever. Thank you McNaughtons!!! Briggs loves his first REAL backpack.

Then Briggs snagged the camera and thought it appropriate to capture Mom & Dad on the first day of school also... :) It was quite possibly an even bigger day for us, you know. :) Our little man is growing up!

Auntie II

Dear II (pronounced "eye-eye"),

Thank you for coming all the way up to play with us a couple of weeks ago. We had so much fun at the water park, getting ice cream, making cookies, watching movies, playing soccer, and dressing up! We love the treats you left for us too! Come back and play with us again soon, and we'll keep begging Mama and Dada to take us down to the beach too!

Love, Briggs William and Hadley Gwen

P.S.
Hadley loves her new dress too! She wore it out on the town with Mama for a girls night out while the boys saw Star Wars and got lots of compliments :) She kept saying "I'm Tess!" which made no sense to us until we saw her friend Tess in the same dress the next weekend. What a smart little memory!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!