a month later...

excuses are futile and pointless. i just haven't blogged. our camera is about dead (and i'm coveting a replacement that's a bit more than our budget would smile upon), my kids are being so fun to hang out with, and fall is in the very breathable pre-winter air.

so we've been busy doing the unimportant-yet-significant: bike rides, reading, building blocks, art projects, knight-protecting-his-princess imaginary play, dinners, original knock-knock jokes (these are quite awesome, as you can imagine), homework, games, TV shows, tag, you name it. life is so good right now.

- below: a very brief sunday photo shoot, at layla's request. can you get over how big addie's getting? i can't. oh, and carson's two front teeth have (finally) begun to pop through. they're not small, people.

- below: carson played (begrudgingly) on a flag football team. if asked directly, he'd say he hated it. but when spied while in action, he seemed to be enjoying himself (although not exactly the cut-throatingest player you've ever seen). every tuesday night, we'd head over to cheer him on. he even scored a touchdown and had some surprisingly heads-up plays. two funny (to me) stories:

(1) after a win, his coach congratulated the team on winning. carson replied, "i'm not here to win, i'm here to have fun." coach: oh, okay. well, then, did you have fun? carson: (pause) "no."

(2) a boy named mitch was the best player on the team. he scored the most touchdowns and did a bunch of good stuff that made our team look better than we actually were. mitch had to miss one of the games, but that didn't stop addie from cheering on the sidelines mid-game, "doe, mits! way dah doe, mits!" she was on auto-pilot and knew that's just what people were supposed to cheer at those games. funny.

no photo below, but a significant event of note: we sold our beloved civic and bought a truck. ford f150 supercrew, seats six. it's beautiful. and enormous. paul drives it every chance he gets. i guess it is slightly more manly than the minivan. either way, we can officially haul our own homeowning junk to the dump now. i think this is some sort of rite of passage into adult-onset homeownership.

- below: (clockwise from top left) layla's private photo shoot with her beloved ruby reds, because they're being thrown away. carson's awesome block building, which, when he happened to see me holding a camera, it reminded him he wanted a picture of it. layla's drawing of a flower and a rainbow sky, which is lost in the photography, but she felt very cool (a) drawing, (b) coloring, (c) framing, and (d) photographing her art. and last is a picture of a christmasy jack-in-the-box a nice man at a garage sale gave to addie. it's even creepier in real life, but the kids love it.

- below: i hesitate to call it an obsession, because it's not (it's not! i swear!), but i've been doing a lot of stuff to beautify our house. i am LOVING doing it. just two small examples are below: painting an old drum shade chevron (i'm obsessed with chevron lately; trendy, i know, but awesome) and sewing some chunky striped drapes, painting my gramma's table chartreuse, and painting and reupholstering some old yucky office chairs. i'm liking the way things sometimes come together.

and, for the record, paul is an exceptionally good sport about all of this and much more.

so, that's what's going on. we're all relatively healthy and pretty happy and are doing our best to combat any last-minute halloween costume overhauls, with mild success.

OH. and check back in this weekend to see what's the newest, awesomest thing of all in our househol. i won't say what it is, but i'll give you a hint: it rhymes with schmuppy.