Halloween...

Halloween was a wee bit soggy this year, but we got lucky when we finally went out to Trick-Or-Treat and it stopped raining.  

A little surprise for our friend Grant...

Grant and his mom Becky were up in Portland for quite a number of days for his many doctor appointments.  Oct. 30th is the one year anniversary of when Natalie made her trip to heaven, so it's an especially rough date for Grant.  Nikki and Amber came up with a great surprise for Grant & Becky and a few of us were available and able to be in the surprise!

Braces are off!!!

Pretty big deal in our home today.  After 14 months of wearing braces, she got them off!!

Victor took her in for her appointment and she was SO HAPPY!!

After school I picked her up and we went back to the ortho office to get her retainer.  I'm taking bets on how long we will actually have the retainer.  She got the 5 minute version of what NOT to do with your retainer...hoping she's more responsible at 8 than I was at 16.... :)

Disney on Ice...

The kiddo and I had a great time going to our first ice skating show!  

Manning trail head...

Jill and Dan got married...

We were honored to be included in Jill/Dan's wedding reception.  There wasn't enough room for everyone to attend the wedding and it ended up only lasting about 90 seconds anyway.

Great to hang with a lot of our favorite Relay peeps tonight!  Charlotte even caught the bouquet, mainly because she went charging after it after Jill tossed it over all the girls heads!

Thankful for the easy/good days...

Today was a rubber boots type of day.  The leaves are changing and because it has been SO NICE, they are coming off faster than most of us would like.

Charlotte was GREAT tonight.  No issues with homework, reading and she ATE the clam chowder tonight....in fact it was HER suggestion!!!

Jill's "nanometer" bachelorette painting party...

Libbys Kindle auto-corrected bachelorette to 'nanometer" so that's what we called it.

Libby, MJ, Kay, Katie, Sarah, Cheryl, Stephanie, Leann and I helped do a little pre-wedding celebration at The Loaded Brush.

I of course got lost on the way and it's in a very strange location, residential next to McCloughlin Blvd, so hard to get to.  I didn't really like the instructor or the uncomfortable seats, but we were there for JILL, not mu BUM!  :)

8 miles!!!

SO PROUD of our girl!!!  She went from being stubborn and terrified of riding her bike without training wheels, to finally riding on her own two weeks ago.  Today we went out to the Banks/Vernonia Trail and she rode EIGHT MILES!!!  

Because the weather is finally starting to turn, we maybe passed 25 people the entire 90 minutes we were riding/looking around.  

Gotta get her a bigger bike, SOON!!!

SO PROUD!!!!

Vine Gogh with Rosemary...

Rosemary and I finally managed to do a painting together at Vine Gogh.  She'd never been to one before and really liked it.  

When we got there found out a childhood friend, Robin, was there with a few of her family members.  Rosemary use to watch her when she was a wee one...small world!

Rosemary's painting has a crane on it, mine does not.  Mine kinda sucked, so I got rid of it!

Fall is in the air...FINALLY...

E is for Elephant, H is for Hedgehog...

One of my FAVORITE bloggers, Sarah, Repeat Crafter Me, is posting 26 days of animal appliques.

I'll post ALL of them at the end of October, but here are a couple from this week that I LOVE!!!

Thinking about doing these as lapel pins or cards for Relay...

Selfies and the baby boomer generation...

My Uncle Terry and Aunt Lil are staying with mom & dad in Sunriver for a couple of weeks. They've been having a great time and I know that Terry and Lil are great for both mom & dad. Mom's been having tougher times and we know it will only continue to get worse.....

I'm rather proud of Aunt Lil and her ability to text me photos...now that she has a smart phone, I asked her to take a selfie of the four of them and send me.  She sent me regular photos, then one of her and Uncle Terry out for a walk, then I got this one!!!  :)  Made my day earlier this week.

Her response to my "you pass" comment cracks me up!  "Pass what...old folks smile contest?"

2 miles on the bike with the kiddo...

I'm SO grateful she finally realized she COULD do it and now we've go the world at our bike!! Victor still needs to get a new bike, but the kiddo and I can ride around town all we want.

Tonight it was just a short 1/2 mile to the upper elementary school near us, then a few times around the track.  We would have gone more than 2 miles, but she was getting bored, so next time we are hitting the Banks/Vernonia Trail to get more scenic miles in!

Cup of Groot...

I finally saw the movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, a couple of weeks ago.  I hadn't had a real desire to see it, even thought Victor said it was great, until I saw Twinkie Chan's Groot!

I had started one, but hadn't finished the arms....Twinkie made an awesome, hour-long, video tutorial and once I watched it  - watch out world!! Cup of Groot is coming to town!!!

Project Life App for my iPhone!!!

Project Life App went live 9/17/14.  I didn't download it on my iPhone until 9/20/14 and I'm head over heels in LOVE with it!!!  You can read more about it on Becky Higgins' blog.  

A few years ago I tried doing the digital scrapbooking from my PC.  The issue for me was 1) TIME, 2) TIME and 3) remembering how to do it in Photo Shop Elements.  It wasn't hard, but there were lots of steps and downloading of different backgrounds, etc....

This is SO easy and CHEAP!!!  $1.99 to download the app and you are ready to roll.  You can either save the files and download to FB or your blog and you can also send to Costco to print, $1.99 per 12"x12" page, photo quality prints!!!  AWESOME!!

As long as you have the photos you want on your phone, you can plug them all in, add text and save...BAM it's THAT easy!!!  On the way back from the pumpkin patch Saturday I had our trip page done and downloaded to FB.  Only thing I need to do is send the page to Costco to print....THAT's my kind of app!!

Right now it's only available for iPhone/iPad, but they are working on it for Android users!!!

Here are a few of my first pages and I put them all together in a template and I can print this out in a 12"x12" page!!!!  AWESOME!!!

Lakeview Farms '14...

The weather couldn't have been any more perfect today!  Reached 82 degrees, but was in the mid-60's when we went to get our pumpkins!!

Re-entry to work didn't suck....

First days back from sabbatical can be tough....today was NOT!!!  Came in early ~5:45am before the shift 1 folks were in and found my office HAPPY and totally decked out in photos from our adventures this summer!!  Thanks to Rosemary, John and my hubby, re-entry was great!!!  Gabe brought in the 6-pack of Mike's to help!!!  

Sabbatical #3 is history and it was wonderful!!!