Ode to blogs

As I spend my time enjoying other people's blogs I have discovered a few little tidbits about the blogging world that bring joy to my heart. So I have decided to share....
#1. Don't you just love how when you are leaving a comment on certain blogs and you get to "choose your identity"? I love this. So if I wanted to be someone really fabulous and smart and sexy and good at math or a non-procrastinator or super-duper popular or amazingly clever all I would have to do is type it in the name category. I could even leave tacky comments on peoples blogs that I stalk and NO ONE would know cause they have that swell anonymous option.
#2. I really enjoy when you have to type a word verification and you get awesome words like scatif and verbla and nanlob and rumwex and other tasty morsels you can use in everyday conversation. ie."Cleaning the house makes me really nanlob." or "My brain is in a constant state of verbla."
#3. I love how people have those counting meters on their blogs. I think those people have a lot of confidence and I am secretly jealous. I would get one but I am afraid the lack of visits would make me blue.
#4. I have found I kind of get mad at people when they take a long time in between posts so I will shun their blog for a day or two. But I have found I can't stay away for too long or I miss them.
#5. I love when I un-shun(for all you Office fans) a blog and they have done a bunch of posts. It feels like Christmas.
#6. Sad to say but I am a comment whore. I love them. One day this person, whose blog I had been stalking for months and who is awesome, left a comment on my blog. I felt like the nerd who finally gets noticed by the popular kids at school. Then I felt nervous that I really didn't deserve the comment and that maybe I should apologize to that person for my crappy blog but I didn't want them to know I was a stalker so I didn't.
#7. I cry when reading strangers and friends blogs, daily.
#8. Sometimes reading blogs makes me feel envious, grateful, ashamed, amused, crazy, peaceful, hopeful, paranoid, chubby, lucky, confused, uplifted, inspired, lonely, alive, tired, excited and more.
#9. I wish I were a better blogger, person, sister, friend, daughter, mother, wife, Latter-day Saint, American, and human being.
#10. I think I have proven once and for all I am a nerd.

Some Fallish Stuff

Oh fall, how much I love you. I love the way you look, the way you smell, the way the air of you moves across my skin. The football games, the pumpkin days, the sheer joy of the changes that you bring. Everything becomes more crisp, more warm, more homey. Interesting that at the doorstep of their ends the leaves become more alive and vivid. And as the days grow shorter I find myself trying to fill them to the brim. This just may be a love affair. But one that is often bittersweet. Because on your winds comes the whisper of colder days, the end to hours playing out of doors, the heaviness of winter coats and winter nights, and the realization that time is moving steadily on. Aging and changing my children. Making the hands I hold a little bigger and the heads I kiss a little smarter. The winds call them ever forward. Pulling them inevitably out of my arms. Their season living in my home is so short, so precious, so beautiful that as the seasons of this earth change, my heart can't help but ache at the theft it foretells.

Soccer came to an end. Henry really loved it this year and played on a very fun team. He gets better and better every year. It is amazing to watch his little stick legs running down the field after the ball. (look at those red cheeks:) Max didn't love it this year. He mostly wanted to hang out with his buddies, build ant huts in the grass, and hang on the goal post. His coach actually asked what he could do to get Max more interested in the game. I told him bribes and cattle prods. He did not find either effective. We spent 2-3 nights a week at the fields and Millie did great. Of course, my parents attended every game. What a blessing they are in our lives.

Canning is inescapable in the fall. I spent many, many hours juicing, boiling, cutting, paring, slicing, and filling all the while murmuring and griping. Then ta-da quarts of tomato juice, whole tomatoes and peaches cover my kitchen and like labor, all the pain is forgotten and all I see are those precious babies.
And what can be funner than a fall day at the pumpkin patch. We have made such great friends in our ward and so spent the afternoon with them. On the hunt for the perfect pumpkin we found the perfect day at the Red Barn. We rode the hay wagon, traipsed through pumpkin fields, and ate yummy ice cream. Millie fell in the patch about 18.3 times but still had fun. The boys were a little bummed that I wouldn't let them take the biggest pumpkin home(my dad grows pumpkins -it just didn't seem prudent to pay for what comes our way for free) but ended up happy with their "ghost" pumpkins.

I love her

So I wonder exactly when it happened, that exact moment when I stopped counting Millie's life in months and milestones and started counting it in moments. Moments when she makes my heart catch by the sweet look on her face. Moments when she makes me giggle or moments that make me cry. Or those odd ones that make me do both at the same time. Moments of pure determination. Moments of pure adventure. Moments of sheer joy. Moments when my gal is a mystery to me. Moments when I wish I new the words to whisper to make time slow down and keep her a baby just a moment longer.



Here she is drawing(her new favorite pastime)



Mills and mom BFFs









Funny little hand thing she does



She got a hold of Dave's Sprite and was sucking that sucker down and enjoying the Little Mermaid(mermeet)

The chair pics are of her getting her molars they were driving her batty.