More photoshoots...

I've only done a couple shoots in the past couple weeks as the weather has gotten colder. The one I did on Sunday was REALLY cold! So I was glad that we at least got a few good ones before we were all ready to get back into warm cars!

My friend Nicole from church and her family...

 And a friend of a friend...
Her little boy Cash is so cute!

 I have 2 or 3 more I still need to schedule...I wish it would warm

back up just a little!

Catching up...

This will be random...I feel like I haven't caught up here for a long time, so I will try tonight. Even though I need to get up early to get Ashton to piano!

And speaking of piano...He is doing so great. I am so proud of him. Knock on wood, but since we got the piano Ashton hasn't complained hardly at all about practicing and like I said is just doing great. It's so fun to see and hear him doing so well with piano! I love to listen to him play.

He's also doing great in school, and just in general lately he has just been mostly agreeable and happy and that makes me happy!

Love this boy :)

A couple weeks ago he came home with an assignment that was to design a house, and then to build a model of it to scale. Seemed a little overwhelming to me, but he was so excited about it and loved doing it. Lars helped him draw it out and helped him get going on building it, but he really mostly did it himself. I helped with the final touches :) I was so impressed with how creative he was with this! Love how it turned out...

Let's see...what else?
Here are some pictures from Gunnar's field trip to the Pumpkin Walk that I went on with him.
One of the highlights of our fall every year...
Best little buddy from his class...Joe :)

Our favorite scene...Lego movie!

 These 2 are so cute!

Gunnar is loving first grade and I am so happy to report that after our initial hesitation, French is going so well! He loves it and it's fun to see and hear him learning so much so quickly. So glad we decided to do this last minute and that I listened to the sign I received :)
He told us this weekend that he knows how to count to 900 in French and he really does!
His cute school picture...not his real Gunnar smile, but he did pretty good :)

Ashton had retakes and they aren't back yet. 
Gunnar is still just loving football...he takes his blue football to school every day and he and his friends play a short game of football every recess. I love that the school is really just around the corner from us and sometimes as I drive by I see Ashton or Gunnar out at recess playing :)
What else about Gunnar? Well I can definitely say in the past few months, he has finally become way less attached to me. It makes me really sad as he has his whole life been so attached to me. He still wants to me to walk him into school every day, but when we get to his class it's hard to get a hug and a kiss out of him before he's embarrassed! I knew the day would come, but wow do I miss the old days of him needing me so much. He is still sweet to me and loves to cuddle at night, so I definitely take advantage of that every single night. He also recently told me that he doesn't like monsters anymore and wants to know when we can decorate his room in football stuff instead. I guess my baby is growing up.
Anyway...moving on, The boys had Red Ribbon week at school during Halloween week...one day was Crazy Hair day...

Another was crazy sock day...that wasn't hard ;) 

 Then the other two days were wear your clothes backwards and wear red. All of it to help them to remember to say no to drugs! Love that week :)
I still haven't been able to run really. I took about 8 weeks off, tried to be consistent with the exercises my dr. gave me and then tried to run 2 miles last week and my knee started hurting just like it did in August! So frustrating. So I took a few days off then started walking again. And now I'm just going to run a mile at a time for the next few weeks and gradually try to build back up my mileage and see how it goes. I am always grateful I can still walk! And I love to walk through the fall leaves...

Speaking of that...I guess I need to go to bed so I can get up and get Ashton to piano. Lately while he's there I park the car by his teacher's house and walk/hike all around up by her house for that half an hour. I love it!
Well after the pain of getting up early I love it :)
I will try to catch up more in the next couple of busy days...

Halloween 2014

I know there are other posts I need to catch up on before this, but I can't really remember what they are right now, so I'll do our Halloween one first :)

I say it every year, but we love Halloween! Really the whole month of October, and all of Fall! This year we've had beautiful weather and lucked out again on the 31st and it got up to 70 and stayed nice for trick or treating.

Ashton and Gunnar have been SO into football this fall...they both play it with their friends at every recess and have even started to love watching it on TV with Lars. So they decided they wanted to be football players for Halloween. I checked around with friends and facebook first to see if we could borrow all or part of costumes, but no luck. So we ended up ordering their costumes online and they came a couple weeks before. Both fit a little small, but they worked.

As I do every year I wanted to take them out to do a pre-Halloween photo shoot, but didn't plan it out very well and kind of did it last minute the Sunday before Halloween because I wanted to do it on one of the highschool football fields when no one was there. So we ran out there right before it was getting dark and wouldn't you know...that day was FREEZING! And windy! I really hadn't realized it till the moment we got there and got out of the car. So of course the boys being in their thin jerseys were beyond cold and Gunnar cried and screamed at me almost the entire time after I got these couple pictures right when we got there and we weren't even on the real field I realized a little too late.

 Ashton was actually really good and I got these few cute ones of him before we all ran back to the car.

So it was pretty much a fail.
Oh well.

Then when Halloween finally arrived, wouldn't you know Ashton decided he didn't want to be a football player after all! grrrr. He actually got ready for school and had it on and was excited to go, but by the time I got to his class to take pictures at his party, he pulled me aside and was saying he wanted to be something else. After school was a complete nightmare because he had a total meltdown about it! When I got to the bottom of why, I found out that some 5th grader told him that the Houston Texans were stupid. Nice. So he took that as his costume was stupid.

(I did a photo booth for his party...it was actually a lot of fun even though Ashton looks mad)

 I printed out a bunch of props to use :)

I stayed in Ashton's class for half of his party, then went to Gunnar's class for his. I was only responsible for taking pictures in his class, so that was nice to not have to prepare anything!

 Anyway after school was over, I finally talked Ashton into keeping his costume on to go to get free Jamba Juice's and to go to Lars' work, and I pulled off at a park and took more pictures of them after we left there...

 He stuffed his jersey with leaves :)

 ...but then when we got home he started all over again being upset and ended up coming up with something totally different to wear. I felt bad for him and mad at the kid who said that to him at school!!

Gunnar was happy as can be to be a Tennessee Titans football player :)

And off subject...it was kind of funny that the weekend before...their two chosen teams (Titans & Texans) actually played each other and they made a bet on the game that whoever's team lost had to do the other team's chores for 2 days. Luckily Gunnar's team lost ;) he is a good sport & did Ashton's chores without complaining!

Anyway back to Halloween....I originally wanted to be a cheerleader to go along with the football theme, but after trying on one friend's old uniform (and it not fitting so great!) I came to my senses and decided to be something different. I didn't tell Lars or the boys what I had come up with, I just surprised them at school and at work :) It was a lot of fun being a scarecrow and really easy to put together!

 After Lars got home and we all stopped fighting about Ashton and his costume.......

We headed over for our yearly chili gathering at our neighbor's house. Crazy that we've been doing this for so many years. Such a fun tradition!

Then Ashton took off with Tyler and Kenna to trick or treat...

...and Lars and I took Gunnar around for awhile.

We ran into Gunnar's best little buddy Owen, I love this picture of them...

Eventually we all came home and handed out candy...

 And checked out what they got :) 

Such a fun night. Already can't wait till next year :) Maybe I'll start working on my costume now...nah, I seem to do better last minute!