Playing Catch-Up

Autumn's fort, a great place for a snack!


As you can see I'm posting a lot today, I'm trying to play catch-up. What with recovering from surgery and trying to keep up with Autumn I've not had much time on my hands lately to post something here and there so you get it in clumps. My recovery is comeing along, I'm still sore but not as much and I'm still tired but I can make it through the day without desperately needing that mid-day nap. Now I just need it (without any adjective). I still can't wear 'normal' pants that zip and snap and button. I get along with overalls and lounge pants (at home) and nylon warm-up type pants. Autumn still likes to nap and play in the cat bed. Here she is in her 'boat'.

Autumn loves to play in this house. Putting mail through the mail slot is her new favorite thing. She is always asking me for more mail.

Autumn enjoys cooking on her new stove and washing her hands in the sink.


A pony ride with Daddy.

Wrestling with Daddy is a favorite past-time.




This is our new Wii. Kurt traded in his X-box 360 for this more family friendly console. I really enjoy it actually. We've bowled and played tennis. I can't really do the baseball and boxing yet due to my recent surgery but they look fun too. Autumn likes the golf and tennis. She hasn't seen the baseball and bowling yet.

See what we found at the store? Isn't is cute?

Family Tree

Here is a project we are working on, it is not completed as I'm waiting for some hand tracings and a couple of pictures, but we are having fun with it. I plan to laminate it when I get all the pieces in place. Autumn likes to give everyone 5 and name them all, she's getting really good with the names. She also kisses the ones she can reach.
I don't know if this is a craft I came up with on my own or if I read it in a parenting magazine or if I read something and then modified it. I wanted to paint it on the wall and then trace the handprints there and paint them. But since this is not a place we own and we'd have to paint it out when we moved I'm putting it on paper. This way too I can put the pictures on, I wasn't sure how to do that if I'd painted it onto the wall.

Dancing At Church

Autumn LOVES to dance and when she has dancing buddies it's even better. When the Praise Team at church warms up on Sunday mornings is a great time to dance around with your friends. These are from my cell phone so not the best quality but they are so cute. Or as Autumn would say "Awww tute"

Sun Dogs

I have seen these sun dogs almost every morning for a week or two now because it's been so darn COLD here. It is so amazing to see these, I love it. Sometimes they are just bright yellowish/white light like the sun and sometimes they are rainbows. The other day I was driving to work early and the sun was just peeking over the horizon. The sky was a beautiful pinkish purple and I was thinking about the miracles that God has placed all around us that we tend to be too busy to notice. The sun dogs were rainbows and just beautiful when I drove right through one! Yep, I drove through a rainbow, it was so COOL! The sun dogs looked really low and then all of a sudden the spectrum of colors just washed over my windshield. I was so shocked I hit my breaks, thankfully there was no one behind me. It really was the highlight of my day. Here are a couple of pictures I have taken over the past couple of weeks of what I've seen while driving to work.

For you scientific types out there here is a definition of Sun Dogs I found on Wikipedia:

sun dog or sundog (scientific name parhelion, plural parhelia, for "beside the sun") is a common bright circular spot on a solar halo. It is an atmospheric optical phenomenon primarily associated with the reflection or refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. Often, two sun dogs can be seen (one on each side of the sun) simultaneously.
When sunlight passes through the sides of a flat crystal, both the angle of the sun rays and the orientation of the crystals affects the shape and colour of the sun dogs. Misaligned or wobbling crystals produce colourful and elongated sun dogs, while light passing through the crystal in non-optimal deviation angles (up to 50°) produces the "tail" of the sun dog stretching away from the sun. As refraction is dependent on wavelength, the sun dogs tend to have red inner edges while the colours farther from the sun tend to be more bluish-white as colours increasingly overlap

Secrets of the Universe

Want to know the secrets of the universe? Autumn can tell you, Grandpa too if he could translate what Autumn told him. :) Grandma got a step stool from Great Grandpa John. It was perfect for putting Autumn eye to eye to her grandpa to have a very serious conversation. Autumn also had some good times with Grandma. She helped clean up the basement after the wedding and put a bed away. She loves to be given jobs. They played tickle and snacked on toes too.

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A Bit about Christmas

Christmas was a fun time. Autumn got to know her Aunt Jen and Uncle Tom and cousin Isaac well. She remembers them better now to, she likes to look at their pictures. She also had a good time with her Aunt Jane and new Uncle David. Autumn got a playhouse that fits in her bedroom doorway. She loves to play in her "hoose". She pushes the door bell and while it plays a sounds she also sings "dindon" and then says "min!" Unfortunately mommy can't bend over to get through the door yet. Daddy's shoulders barely fit through but he did manage it. She loves this thing, it was a perfect find and I am thrilled that she loves it. Autumn was the flower girl in her Aunt Jane's wedding. She did a great job and didn't disrupt the ceremony at all. We were all proud of her. Her grandmother and mom made the dress. It was a combined effort to get it done by the wedding. Grandma wrestled with the dratted zipper for more than an hour but we were all in our "cinsess" dresses for the big day. My Aunt June entertained the couple of children before the wedding began with sunday school songs that I wasn't familiar with. Believe me I know them now, Autumn wants to sing the He He song all the time. And enjoys dancing to one about building a house on the sandy land.

Catching Up

Well it was a busy season. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I’m not sure I sat down. We went to South Dakota for Christmas and my sister’s beautiful wedding. Shortly after that we came home so I could have a birthday present of surgery. That is a REALLY short summary of our lives lately. I’ll go into more details later when I’m feeling more up to everything. Tomorrow I’m going to try going back to work and see how that goes and then take things from there. Here are a few pictures of Autumn to keep everyone happy. She has found that there is a game on the internet that she loves to play, her “fish” game. She’ll point to the computer and say “fish” and hope that you’ll turn it on for her. If you have little ones you should check out www.kneebouncers.com. All they have to do is press any key and things happen. Of course it’s best if you can limit them to the space and enter keys so they don’t open up windows and other things. Also before our trip to SD we went to Kurt’s cousins’ house and made cookies. I only got a couple of pictures but Autumn had a blast. She helped roll the dough out and was so enthusiastic that it all rolled up around the rolling pin before I could even blink. Then Sandy and I turned our heads for 2 seconds and she managed to dump out ALL the snowflake candy toppings onto one cookie! She was trying to eat them faster than I could put them back into their little jar. It was lots of fun. Autumn is an expert at picking up the little scraps of dough, though she needs to work on her aim a bit, they tend to go into her mouth not back into the bowl. :) Then again, mayber her aim is just right. She had fun putting the cutters on the dough and putting sprinkles and other decorations on the cookies.