BOO!!

Happy Halloween everyone!!

The kids are psyched for today. Normally I have a hard time getting Riley up but this morning I reminded him that it was Halloween and he jumped right up. And Miss Paige squealed (literally) when she realized we were taking her flower costume to daycare. Ha ha.

Pictures courtesy of Shelley. It was too dark to get a good picture when I left the house this morning. I'll have costume pictures up in a few days.

I've been MIA.

I know, I know. I haven't posted in forever. October has just been a super busy month and I have been doing just enough to keep my head above water. How about some updates? :)

Riley ~ Riley has his last night of "Learn to Skate" class tonight. Paige and I didn't go with last time but Ryan says that he's catching on more and more. I went the second week and "mom mode" kicked in when I saw him struggling to get to the end of the ice he was supposed to be at. I had to turn away a couple times because you could tell he was trying his hardest but just wasn't able to keep up with the other kids. He's pretty much the youngest kid out there so it's to be expected ... but, yeah, it's hard to watch your 4 year old struggle like that. He starts actual hockey practice the second week in November. His other big news is that he's headed up north to grandma and grandpa's house with daddy for deer hunting. He's been asking and asking and asking and PLEEDING with dad to go with ... and dad finally caved. I'm not sure how much he'll actually spend out but I think he's just excited to be included. (And Paige and mommy plan to shop while the boys are gone!!!)

Paige ~ Paige is talking more and more. I'm not sure anyone outside of Ryan, Shelley (daycare), Riley and myself can understand much of what she says but we keep encouraging her to "use her words". She talks a LOT about the whole potty training thing but most of the time she tells us AFTER she's gone. The one exception? The other night after bath I was trying to get her dressed ... I'd had a long weekend working and was tired. She wouldn't let me put her diaper on and went over to the bathroom. I was the mean mom and wasn't in the mood to deal with the 2 seconds of sitting on the toilet only to do nothing besides putting a half roll of toilet paper in the bowl afterwards so I told her that no, she needed her diaper on. So what does she do? She peed in the hallway. Yep, mom of the year award for me. :) The positive (that I kept telling myself as I was cleaning it all up) was that she told us before she went. Hopefully we're making progress there (as long as mom cooperates).

Ryan ~ Ryan is headed out to Texas tomorrow for work. Whoever planned this conference obviously doesn't have kids as they planned it over Halloween. :( He managed to get tickets for a Wild vs Stars game while he's down there which I think he's pretty pumped about. Besides that he's been busy working on my "honey-do" list. He's put a new faucet in one of the bathrooms, put up a new towel rack and toilet paper holder, fixed some chipping issues we had in the tub downstairs, varnished and put up new closet doors in the office and a few other smaller things from leftover summer projects. Plus he's been "super dad" quite a bit lately by taking the kids out when I have sessions.

Me ~ I've been trying to keep the household together but feel like I'm failing at it right now. October and November are just swamped with photo sessions for everyone wanting Christmas cards. It's good ... I like it ... I just wish I didn't have that other pesky 40 hour a week job too. :) I seriously would not be able to keep up if it wasn't for Ryan stepping in so much lately! Other than that everything is good. I feel like I've officially made the transition to winter because I've taken out my little knitting bag. :) The SNOW that we got on Sunday helped with that a little too though.

Halloween is this Friday ... it's hard to believe! Riley is going dressed as a hockey player (dad wants to add a black eye to the costume) and Paige is going dressed as a flower. How total opposite can you get huh? :) We'll head out to trick or treat with some neighbors. I'm not sure how long Paige will last but hopefully it'll be long enough to make it around the block. I figured that would give Riley a decent number of houses to hit up for candy. I'll throw some blankets in the wagon with a doll or two and a sippy cup of juice and that should tide her over for a while.

Well, that's all that's new on this end. I have pictures to post but those are on a different computer. I'll try to get those up soon. Have a great Halloween everyone!

It's that time of year ...!

Look at our little tough man. :) He starts learn to skate classes tomorrow and then starts playing sometime this fall.

AHHHHHH!!!!! I'm not sure I'm ready for this!

Just a couple ....

Last night I took Paige across the street to the empty lots to see if I could get some pictures for her 2 year pictures, as well as her birthday invites. I don't want to share them all right now because I'd like to get her invite out first ... but here are a few sneak peaks! :)

Reason #1158

Do you want to know reason #1158 why a parent should NOT ignore their child's calls? Because sometimes the little girl has an inquisitive older brother who opens the HUGE bottle of, newly purchased THAT NIGHT, bubble bath to smell it ... and sometimes said inquisitive older brother doesn't always put the top back on.

Yes, last night Ryan and I were talking and somewhat ignoring Miss Paige and her "Mommy! Mommy!!!!" calls ... and when I did turn around, she was sitting on the floor covered in a slimy substance ... to which I went to investigate. Well, as soon as my foot hit the hardwood floor and went slipping and sliding around, I knew what had happened. Yep, I looked in the bathroom and she'd poured out half the bottle (I'm guessing that the bottle was a little under a half gallon) onto the floor, finger painted with it and then fell on her butt and spread it out into the hallway. By the time I had time to put thoughts to words, Riley had stepped in it ... leaving Ryan as the only one who couldn't claim he felt as if he had olive oil between his toes. Thankfully it was bath night anyway.

Free to a good home!!!

We have some computer "stuff" we no longer need and thought we'd offer it up here.

If you're interested please e-mail me or leave me a comment. The only payment we request is that you come and pick it up. :)

First of all, we have a computer and monitor (old style, NOT flat panel) that we had planned on using for Riley ... but with two desktops and a laptop already in use in our house (and with Ryan no longer in school) we decided to just make Ryan's computer the "family" computer. Quite honestly, I don't even know much about the computer. Ryan said it's a 512 but I don't know the size of the hard-drive. I do know it's an IBM . I believe this was one that Ryan used to use ... and he typically did word processing/banking/internet stuff on it.

As I said, we had planned on using it as a kid computer ... something to let him play games on and learn how to type/use a mouse without opening up a risk to our personal computers.

Also, I just upgraded my printer so we have two printers to give away to good homes.

HP 2210 All-in-One ~ This one just needs new ink cartridges. It's the printer that was just attached to my computer 3 hours ago.

Features
All-in-One device that Prints, Scans, Copies and Faxes
Photo quality printing with up to 4800 x 1200-optimized dpi
Six-ink color printing with optional photo inkjet cartridge
Print borderless 4 x 6-inch photos with HP Premium Plus Photo paper
Print directly from CompactFlash (Type I or II including IBM Microdrive), SmartMedia, Secure Digital / MMC and Memory Stick
Use the card slots to transfer images to the computer's hard drive
1200x2400 optical-dpi, A4 size, 48-bit color flatbed image scanner
Optional black ink cartridge for faster, crisper black text for regular printing tasks.
High-quality photographic reproduction using HP's exclusive color layering technology from Photoret IV technology
Printspeed: 17ppm in black and up to 12ppm in color
Up to 33.6 kbps fax transmission speed
Up to 99 copies, reduce or enlarge 25% to 400%


HP 930c ~ This was what we used two printers ago. We kept it thinking we'd hook it up to a computer for Riley. Also needs new print cartridges.

Features

Print technology: HP thermal ink-jet
Speed: 9 ppm in black, 7.5 ppm in color
Resolution: 2,400 x 1,200 dpi for color, 600 dpi for black
Input capacity: 100 pages
Output capacity: 50 pages
Media types: Plain, ink-jet, photo and banner papers, envelopes, transparencies, labels, cards, iron-on transfers
Maximum paper size: 8.5 by 14 inches
Memory: 4 MB
Print cartridges: 2 (black, trichamber color)
Dimensions: 17 by 8 by 16 inches
Weight: 12.6 pounds without print cartridges

Nothing says Fall like a trip to the apple orchard!

I fully admit I may be a bit bias. I remember being let loose in my Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Kevin's apple orchard with my cousin, Cory, ... both with our own baskets to collect however many apples we wanted. I remember my Uncle Kevin somehow maintaining his sanity as he pulled a bunch of my pre-teen squeeling and gossiping girl friends around in a tractor wagon as we picked apples and pumpkins. So yes, I fully admit that I may be bias ... but I'm not sure how anyone could disagree that the first bite into a freshly picked apple is what Fall is all about.

We headed out to our favorite orchard today. Northwoods Orchard is a somewhat small orchard with a few animals to pet, a corn maze, wagon ride, pumpkins ... oh yeah, and apples. :)

We've gone to this same orchard every year since Riley was born. I'll never forget how we found out about it. I had called my dad to ask him if he knew of one around our town as the ones we had gone to the years before were closed. He proceeded to tell me how he'd driven by a new one and wasn't really sure what it all had. When I asked him for directions he started giving me street numbers but then suddenly his tone changed. "Once you get into Douglas, take a left and go past Cheryl and Kevin's old house. Go up and over the hill to the west of them. And once you go over the hill you'll see three beautiful combines ... take a right there." Leave it to my dad to give me directions based on what was in the field on the day he happened to drive past.

Anyway, as I said, today we headed out for the first time this season. We walked around to see all the animals and then took a walk to pick some apples. Riley is an old pro at this as he fully remembers these trips last year. Paige on the other hand was a bit confused ... until she saw one section of trees that had a lot of apples on the ground. Then she suddenly realized WHAT those red things where ... and started collecting. At one point she had about 4 apples in those tiny arms ... rotating bites through them. It was a sight to be seen!

And because it's tradition ... the first pan of Apple Crisp was baked tonight. That'll be pretty standard dessert for the next month or so around the Knudson household.

Here's a few quick pictures ...

Random Picture Drop Off ...

I have just a couple pictures to drop off (I have way too many session/wedding photos to be working on so this is all you'll get for a while).

Last weekend while we were painting, Riley disappeared upstairs for a while. That in itself isn't too out of the ordinary so I didn't think twice ... UNTIL he came down with a wet shirt and his hair like this ....












Mom: "What in the heck did you do?"
Riley: "I used my experiment and styled it, Mom!"

Now when your child tells you they used an experiment as a styling agent for their hair, you begin to wonder what the next step is. Will their hair fall out? Will it be bleach blonde in about 20 minutes? Will it be glued to the top of his head?

So he took me upstairs to show me exactly what he did.

"See mom, first you use this experiment from the school I went to at your work." (Ahhhh, okay, the experiment makes sense now ... we had to use the spray bottle as a prop for an experiement at Vacation Bible School. Phew ... thankfully it's only water!)

























"And then you take your brush and comb it way back."



























And just one of Miss Paige today. This is typical Paige at about 4:45 in the afternoon. Hair flying all over (though, really, it's quite contained here) and giving you the evil stare-down while she wonders where her dinner is.

It was Labor WEEKEND around our house!

I'm sore this morning. After a weekend where many of you were enjoying the last days of summer, I'm wondering where our weekend went! I'm truly thinking we missed a day off.

It was a weekend full of labor around our house. Ryan fixed a plumbing/sheet rock issue downstairs and we prepped both bathrooms to be painted. I spent part of Saturday and the better part of Sunday painting and putting things back together. We just need to buy some new hardware fo the upstairs bathroom, buy some new accessories (Riley wasn't too fond of the rubber ducky stuff) and shower curtain for downstairs and work on a special photo session for some artwork. That's a project I've wanted to do for a long time now so it's good to be done.

We also finally moved all of Riley's clothes to his new room. He moved back downstairs about two months ago but I wasn't sure the move would stick so I'd been putting off moving all of his stuff.

The two biggest developments over the weekend though?

Paige ... Friday night Paige decided she wanted to sleep in the twin bed in her room (the one Riley used to sleep on). I thought it would just be a one night thing ... she's taken naps over there before here and there. Well, she fell asleep there on Friday night, took a nap there on Saturday and fell asleep there again on Saturday night. So Sunday afternoon I reluctantly asked her if she wanted her crib to go bye-bye. She said yes and pointed to her big girl bed and said, "nigh, nigh". I just about bawled! Seriously, she's not old enough for this is she?

She's all proud of herself and loves her bed. Yesterday morning she was laying in there just hanging out. And so far she will still call to us in the morning when she wakes up. I don't think she can get the handle of her door open yet so she just lays there until we come in.

Riley's big news .... the kid is basically swimming. EEK!!! We headed over to Dodge Center yesterday afternoon for one last day at the pool. It's such a great pool ... they have a water slide and zero depth entry end.

Riley's favorite thing to do in the pool is stand on the side and jump in to the waiting arms of mom or dad. As the summer went on he was wanting us to go further and further out into the pool to see if he could make it to us. Well, yesterday daddy was letting him struggle a little bit after he'd jump in (we were in deeper water) to see what he'd do ... and while he couldn't get his head fully above water, he could tread water enough to keep his eyes above ... and when he did go under he didn't really freak out at all.

So after Paige started shaking because she was cold, dad went with her to wrap up in a towel and I gave Riley 5 minutes to swim before we were going to go. We headed to the part he could at least touch the bottom at and I'm watching him as he's going under the water and kicking like he's trying to swim. The next time he came up for air, I showed him how to move his arms underwater to get him moving forward ... and the little fart did it. I'm not going to throw him in the deep end anytime soon .... but he managed to "swim" forward abot 8 feet underwater without touching the bottom. Seriously the kid is a fish!

So that's the update from our house. Riley starts his second year of pre-school on the 17th. We got a letter from his teacher and she sounds like she's fresh out of college ... hopefully these 4 and 5 year old's don't scare her off too much! :)

I'm an auntie ... again!

I hope Ryan's sister doesn't mind me doing this ... but I just have to post pictures of the newest member of the family. Meet Violet ... born Saturday, August 23 to proud parents, Tammy and Clint and big brother, Weston.

We traveled to meet her tonight and she's just an angel. She likes to sleep and eat ... and really, what girl wouldn't mind sleeping all the time and eating without worrying about your figure? I envy her.

So here she is ... Miss Violet Marie. (And I feel bad but I didn't get a good shot of Weston ... I didn't have an external flash on me because mine broke at a wedding last weekend ... and that little boy was non-stop action tonight so what I tried to get of him is blurry. The one below isn't the best technical photo but I think his expression is priceless. )