thanksgiving fun

it is a family tradition (since kyle was walking, so about 18 years), on thanksgiving of going up to the mountains to collect leaves. the kids all take a bag and fill it with different color leaves of all sizes. we then use the leaves to decorate the table.

this year, we got to go to a park a mile or so up the hill that was closed last year. it is open now and we all had so much fun there. they had the best BIG teeter todder, rock wall and slide :)

here are my pictures, that speak louder then words, of what i am thankful for . . . my family

little miss s & a

these girls are the daughters of one of my friends. i have taken their pictures a few times - starting when miss m (dark hair) was in her mamma's tummy. and now she will be one this week. it is amazing how fast they grow up.

here they are, one brunette, one blond (like mom & dad), both gorgeous!





here are some past pictures of these little ones.. how time flies!

picking b ack up the camera . . .

life has taken over lately.. sicknesses, birthdays, holidays.. i haven't been taking pictures hardly at all. i miss it. hopefully after the holidays are over, i will have more time. however a good friend needed new pictures, so i took peyton and autumn with me and got a few of them too. then they were off playing while i took pictures.

i wish time would slow down. let them be smaller longer. peyton will be twelve in 2 weeks... TWELVE.

some favorites from yesterday.

a birthday fit for a princess

on october 18th, our little girl turned 5. it is amazing how fast the past five years have flown. i wish i could slow time. or give me a few more hours in each day. a few more so after all the things (like work) get done, i could just stare at her more, soak in every detail. i am late posting and haven't posted ina while because we have all been sick. first peyton got the flu and it was the bad flu. he lost 7 pounds in just 5 days and missed a week of school. then i got a cold and early this week autumn got the flu. having your little ones sick is torture, it is one of the only things i can't fix for them. i can just hold them and be there. so even for my big 11 year old football player, i stayed home for him. we are all healthy again. autumn woke up yesterday and her first words were "i feel better!" she was so excited. so, now that we are all healthy, i have tons to catch up on. birthday pics first!



we had such a fun time. although i was running on just a few hours of sleep (up late with selena making tutus for all the girls), it was the best party, it was filled with tutus, a princess jumper, games, a pinata, love and lots of little kid laughter. here are a few of my favorite pictures:

sometimes a little attitude can be gorgeous

although i love her smiling pictures. this girl, my girl, has had this scowl and could turn up those eyebrows since the day she was born. so, i love these shots too as this is so so her!

and then there was 9 . . .

oh boy - into single digits. like the past 5 years, this month is zooming by. she will be five soon. we had a good day today. i made her some fried eggs for breakfast and she was nice enough to help me clean. then me, her and selena all went to the library. miss autumn is so picky about books. she likes mudge, biscuit, clifford (notice the dog-theme), but she also likes morris the moose and we even got a winnie the pooh book too!

after dad got home we all went grocery shopping and she helped me cook rigatoni for dinner. she has the best bite to test pasta. she serisously will say "umm, two more minutes" or "almost theree." at 4, she knows her al dente' :)

she is now out on the couch while i snuck down to work. which is what i must do now. i am behind one day, but have a pic for yesterday, just need to get it uploaded :)

here is today's

10.07.2009 - 11 days to go

after almost two weeks. autumn got to go to teri's house. last week she was sick, so she was home all week. she was so happy to finally get to go. i think teri was just as happy to have her back :) she still has a bit of her cough left, but pretty much she is back to autumn :)

when i arrived in the afternoon to pick her up, they were all outside playing and blowing bubbles. autumn was so excited to show me her new coloring book. on the way home, she found the happiest page (i like the happy faces) and colored it for me. this was for me:



she has actually gotten so much better staying in the lines, but this doesn't show it. we have also been working hard on practicing lower-case letetrs, but she always resorts back to her comfort-zone, uppercase. when all is said and done though, i don't care if she colors outside the lines, nor writes her name in caps, she drew it for me and i love it!

10.06.2009 - 12 days till little miss turns 5

weekdays, especially footballs days are so hectic around here. and it is getting dark so early :( trying to get a shot before we leave for football is close to impossible.

i just wanted to post this quickly so i didn't miss a shot day. need to get yesterday's up now.

10.05.2009 - a day late

once the week starts it is so hectic in this house. yes, i forgot (well lost time) posting yesterday, but i did take a photo.




we are now down to 12 days until little miss thing turns 5. oh MY. we have a bouncer reserved and i think about 6-7 kids coming for autumns party. we need ot get a pinata and stuff for treat bags. i want to get soem games to play too. so excited for her.

so for yesterday, autumn spent the day with selena and kyle (or alena and bobo as she calls them). they had a fun day. autumn is still getting over her cold, poor thing.

i also took a pic for today (10.06), but will have to post that tomorrow. didn't want to get two days behind!!

i will post more tomorrow and hopefully catch up.

____
photo was taken around 5ish. no direct sun. aperture at 2.0 with my 50mm 1.8 lens. iso was 200, unsure of shutterspeed, i used AP mode :)

10.04.2009

it was a nice sunday. i slept until about 7:30 (which is late for me). however, we stayed up late to watch fast forward. selena and kyle didn't get off work until 10pm and me and peyton had been wanting to watch since thursday and we now watch together (along with house!). anyway, i woke up and paul and the kids were outside, my car already washed (his sunday routine) and he and peyton were playing football. i grabbed a cup of coffee, my book and was outside on the porch int time to watch autumn practice some basevall. we have been so busy with football, her practice has fallen on the side and it showed. however, after a couple of buckets of balls, she was getting the hang of it again.

after playing, it was breakfast time. sundays in our house, means i cook breakfast day. we made home made tortillas, eggs with cheese, sausage & potatoes with chorizo. yep, nice and healthy, low cholesterol, low fat breakfast in the jay house :) miss autumn is almost always in charge of eggs, so i snapped her daily picture while she did it.

today was also a day to get some yard work done for the kid's party. the evening was spent editing a paper for peyton and also drawing some graphics of his story's characters for illustration. he was so cute and proud that i could draw a toaster with a face :)

our new neighbor across the street (brandy i think is her name - i am HORRID with names) dropped by to give us cookies. i have her invite for the party sitting on my counter, but can't remember their names. how do i address it? we were trying to think of their names and you know what? we know their dog's names - chaos and mahem.. but not the people. would it be horrid to address it to "chaos, mahem & family" - yeah it would. dang it.

i will keep racking my brain. i think i have the names in my phone, but i have had no service since the 30th and can't see my contacts. thanks t-mobile.

anyway, i am rambling. it is late. here is my pic for the day :)



and a similar one one i took a little over a year ago:

10.03.2009 [autumn 5-15]

today is saturday, which in the jay house, means FOOTBALL. i never thought i would be such a football mom, but i am! last week paul bought us (me, him & autumn) redskins jerseys with peyton's number on them. paul's just says "jay" while mine says "jays mom" and miss autumn's says, "jays sis."

the boys won again!! we always have fun. kyle and selena have come the last two games too and they also wear a couple of peyton's old jerseys.

i snapped a couple pics of miss autumn playing mickey before we left and there is also a pic below of selena and you can see me and kyle with our jerseys on in her glasses (and paul and michael behind us as well) :)

autumn had a great day. we made banana bread this morning and after the game, went out to play wee, then she played sorry sliders with kyle and peyton. less then two weeks now & she will be 5!!!

today's pics of the day!

10.02.2009 16 days to go to [5]

today was paul's day off, so miss autumn was home with dad all day. they got to wait for the dishwasher repairman. the window was 10-2 and yes, he arrived at 3pm. AACK. needless to say, he was not a happy camper. on the bright side, the day was spent waiting around, so miss autumn put the time to good use and cleaned out her drawers. yep, my 4 (soon to be 5) year old cleaned out her drawers without being asked. she also (for some reason that makes sense to her) tied different colord ties and scarfs around each drawer (there are heart cut outs as the handle). she was so proud of herself and couldn't wait for me to see her "aprize" (which is surprise in autumn language). so, i took a picture to some day remind her that there was a time that she cleaned her drawers out. just to please me :)

her drawer . . .



and just a couple quick shots outside. she is wearing the same clothes she slept in... again she stayed with dad all day :)

countdown to [5]

i am going to [try] to take a photo everyday this month as a countdown to autumn's birthday (note; a photo a day, not a post) :) nothing fancy, just some pics for us. she has grown so much. i took some photos yesterday (because you know, it was girls day) and the little girl i see in those photos is so so big.

we also went to one of my friends house. she has 2 little girls. autumn is 4 months older then one and a head taller. my friend's friend also came and her daughter is six and yes, autumn was taller then her too!! she had fun at the play date and is becoming much more comfortable with kid's her age . . . it is so cute to see her interacting with them. she is so much more mellow. with her brothers, she is the boss, but isn't as pushy with friends, which is probably a good thing :)

time has just flown by way too fast. i can not believe she will be 5 soon.

here are pics from yesterday. will try and post today's later tonight. these were all taken in the backyard. a couple have hunter with her, oh how she loves that silly dog!

[girls] day

since i cut down my hours, whenever i am off during the week (which means paul at work and peyton at school), me and autumn call the day, "girls day." we play games, bake and usually take pictures :) she is my light, my heart.

it is hard to exlpain how complete this little girl has made our family. considering there was a time in our lives that we didn't know what we would do with a girl, now we do not know how we would function without her. she is a micture of the best of paul & the best of me, with sprinkles of each of her brothers mixed in. she is stubborn and hard headed like her dad, she can be loveable and loves art like me, she has a love for books like me and her brothers, she loves sports like her dad and me, she loves to play make believe games like peyton and she has the memory of an elephant like kyle. she is the best of all us and more then we ever dreamed. for the rest of my days, i will truley belive that gods greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.

she will be 5 in just three short weeks, how time flies when you are having fun!

some pics from yesterday's "girl's day"

perfection wrapped in fur.

so, me and peyton were talking about last night's "biggest loser." on it is a mom who lost her entire family, her 5 y/o daughter, her 2 week old son and her husband in a tragic crash. we were talking about how sad it was. peyton made a comment about how hard it is to lose a dog. the pain, the sadness. then i was talking about the pain of losign a child, how nothing is worse then that.

then, my son opened my eyes. he was talking about how it would be just as hard to lose his sister as lose a dog. of course, this baffled me, almost upset me to a point. i love my dogs, don't get me wrong, but they are dogs, right? there wouldn't even be a decision between my kids or my dogs. however, for my little guy, there is more to it.

if you have never owned a dog, you do not know what unconditional love is. to be loved for being just you. to have someone greet you when you walked in a room like you were a rock star. a dog doesn't care what you look like, what you say or what you do. he explained how his dogs are always there, they never judge him, they never yell at him, they never assign him chores to do, tell him what do, judge him for what he is wearing, tell him to stand up straight, go change his clothes, to stop tapping his hands, to hurry and finish his homework, to mow the lawn, go to bed or do better on his next test. his dogs, never say, "i am busy, maybe later" when he wants to play with him, they never turn him down and they are always there when he calls. they never touch his stuff or blame him for something he didn't do. they never roll their eyes at him or tell him he did something wrong. he says when he is sad, they never ask what is wrong, they don't make him talk about it when he doesn't want to talk, but they just sit with him, they never try and fix it, they just are "there."

needless to say, i learned something that day. i learned that to kids, dogs aren't dogs, they are everything they want them to be and nothing they don't want them to be. they are perfection wrapped in fur. thank you boys for making my boy happy!

monday. monday. monday.

random thoughts on today

what i am eating: sunflower seeds

what i find annoying: all the gross little salt and seed dust that gets under my finger nails

what i should be doing rather than blogging: clipping my fingernails. they have gotten too long and although they are all the exact same length, they remind me of the 80's

what i loved most about the 80's: i will have to say (warning corniness coming), meeting paul and getting pregnant with kyle. . . who was born just 7 days into the 90's

most un-favorite thing i did today: going to library after work because the books are over due. they are always over due. i have no idea why i can not turn in a book on time. and it isn't one book. i always get like 4 and peyton around 4-5 and miss arutumn 5-10. so late fees are like my entire weekly allowance.

most favorite thing about today: on the longest drive home ever (because we had to go 15min past our home to go to library), i hear this from the back seat "what pretty trees . . . what a pretty sky and i love those clouds . . . oh, it is a beautiful day." nothing like your 4 year old reminding you to enjoy the little things.

what i got today: a gift certificate from a friend for microdermabrasion. while i am totally excited as i have thought about doing this. one part of me thinks, "how bad must my face look if my friend is buying this for me?"

and finally

what i took a picture of today: miss autumn was outside on the swing and i just love her little face when she looks up at me. she has the pillow thing from the outside lounge on her back. she wears it like a backpack and pretends she is going to school.

football!

yesterday was peyton's first game. after 6 weeks of practice, the time had come. in the days prior there was confusion over uniforms (we got them friday, less then 24 hours before first game). parents arguing over numbers (yes, parents, the kids don't care). parents saying unkind things about the confusion. blaming people who volunteer 15+ hours a week to teach THEIR kids football. i swear, this is what gets me about organized sports. for every parent that volunteers, there are 10 parents who will whine, curse and be mean to said volunteer. we have 29 kids on our team, but you know how many come to practice? about 10 parents maybe. yes, TEN. and, mind you that those 20+ absent parents signed a form that they would, AT ALL TIMES, have a parent on the field when their child was there. it isn't child-care people. i see your son get a touchdown, i see your son catch the ball or make a great tackle, you have no idea what you are missing while you are sitting home drinking a beer or at the salon getting a pedi.

i just wish parents would participate more and whine less. i think that if you do not have the time to take part in your child's activities, then you have no right to whine about what goes on if you AREN'T there. and don't whine about not being told to arrive early when you would have heard the news to arrive early if you HAD BEEN THERE.

[ok, off my soap box now]

i digress, so back to yesterday, it was the first game and they played out in la quinta (which is pronounced "la KEENTA' if you say "la kwinta" people will look at you funny. anyway, if you have never been to la quinta, close your eyes and think of tall pretty palm trees, people driving around in little golf carts and then think of the deepest hottest place in HELL and there you have it. it was 111 degrees IN THE SHADE. our poor guys were in full uniform and running in this heat. i was just taking pictures and could feel myself melting. i didn't have a ponytake holder and even though the normal me would find this unthinkable, i was searching the ground for a pony, anything to get my hair off my neck! the boys went through all their water before the game even started.

besides the unfathomable heat and misery, the game fantastic. the boys kicked butt. the offense held the line, the players who run the ball RAN THE BALL, and the defense held the opponents. they kicked butt on that field and won 32 to 6 (it was 30 something, but dumb me forgot to take a pic of the scoreboard), whatever it was, they did so good. our boys worked hard. so hard, that after one of our touchdowns, the little guy started puking on the field! the coaches were so proud of the offensive line (of course my peyton is a lineman) that they let the entire O line run the ball in the final minutes, i saw them handing peyton the ball (through my viewfinder of course) and was like, "what are they doing? peyton never runs the ball" i looked at paul and he was laughing too. of course peyton only made it a few steps, but he loved it. the game ended and they all celebrated. they did good, they did what was asked... they "watered la quinta's field." this is what the coach tells them to do, go "water the field." they do so with their blood, sweat and tears.

way to go guys!!!!

8 years later

so, yesterday was 9/11. do you know where you were 8 years ago? i do. i doubt there are many people over the age of 5 at the time that don't know where they were.

what i remember; it was a rushed morning, i hadn't even turned on the t.v. and on the way to work, didn't even listen to the radio, just a cd. when i got to work, someone mentioned the first creash into the tower. i had a class to teach all day and didn't really have time to really understand what was happening before class begun. on break, someone had brought in a t.v. and i saw the second airplane go into the tower. i remember feeling litterally ill and wanting to be be with my family. i called paul and he hadn't a clue what was happening. he was home with peyton (who was just almost 4) and hadn't turned on the t.v. or p.c. yet. he turned it on and he was in shock. i still had to teach all day (i was the systems trainer at the time). when i got home, i sat at the t.v. and i think that is all we did for 2 days. it was horrorfying. i remember about 5 days after, peyton saw a plane outside and came running in crying. i felt such hatred at that moment, how someone could do that to my little guy, to make him fear a plane...

i asked him yesterday if they did anything at school and he said the played the national anthem. i didn't want to ask what he remembered, if he still remembered. i know it is a sad part of our history, but i would like to think he has forgotten what he saw on t.v. that day. autumn is the exact same age he was on that day and i hope something so horrifying happens in her lifetime.

on a happier note, someone got a new hat yesterday. the photo in no way says 9.11, but she can brighten the most gloomy memories.

a day at the [fun] place

we took the kids to castle park yesterday. sadly, the park is not as kept up as it was when i was in my teens and the surrounding area has gone down, but i dont' think the kids noticed. what else change is the cost to get in. you used to be able to go and play arcade and maybe golf. now, you have to pay just to get onto the premises. so $29 for me and paul each and $19 for the kids each and we got $5 each of tokens, a round of golf, some popcorn and the rides.

it was so hot, but we did the merry-go-round first (which miss autumn and i think peyton) LOVED.

then, we went inside the arcade (which had no AC)... me and peyton played miss pac man (uh um, i got high score), then i played skeet ball with autumn, some air hockey with peyton, me and miss autumn played the dance game, some centipede with peyton and some other various games. we had fun and again, i don't think the kids minded the heat. autumn turned in her tickets for a few midget size tootsie rolls, some star stickers and got peyton a little parachute guy (which he played with as soon as we got home).

we then went to the rides and i was a good mom and did the log ride and that spinning one with peyton. i got soaked and peyton remained dry? how does that happen?

we finished off the day at the old spaghetti factory - i ordered spinach tortellini thinking it was spinach inside.. nope, it was green tortelleni. ewe. however, the bread tasted good dipped in the fettucini :)

miss autumn woke up this morning and the first thing she told selena was "guess what? we went to a fun place yesterday . . ." that makes it so worth it :)

pics from the day:

meet little N

a friend from work had this little man 10 days PAST DUE. they came over last week for newborn photos, my shower gift to her. welcome to the world little guy, you were so much fun to take pictures of!