Meee-Mommmm!

That's what Violet has taken to calling me recently. She's getting the syllables transposed, but we aren't sure if it is on purpose or not. At any rate, it makes me smile every single time I hear it.

We all attended the Sunshine Academy's Halloween party on Friday evening. We'd never been to the Cache Valley Fun Park before, so this was a new experience for us all. It turned out to be more fun than we expected!

Violet is exploring the "soft play" area, which really just means she was crawling around the jungle gym/plastic tubes/giant anthill for children.

Violet was a skeleton for Halloween. Or at least her pajamas had a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on them. And her blankie mysteriously became a scary ghost in this picture. Weird...

Vi helped us do garden chores on Saturday AND Sunday. She particularly liked riding around in the garden cart. Here she is excitedly pointing out the helicopter that flew by. (Thanks for the garden cart, Grammy and Grandpa.)

The garden cart was on Saturday. By Sunday afternoon, Vi's attention had turned to the wagon.

Random picture of Violet in a tote bag.

Hard to see, but we've had a lot of finches visiting the sunflowers by our front porch lately. It is really nice to see them hanging upside down, pulling seeds out.

Post-Birthday Birthday Bash

We hosted a little get-together this afternoon/evening in honor of Violet's birthday. Guests included Ellen, Denny, Meghan, and Maddie Dolny, Tif Thomas, Maegan Lokteff, and Amy, Madi, and Henry Odum Shahan. Thanks so much to everyone who came - we had a wonderful time!

I even enjoyed the prep work, which included making homemade pumpkin cupcakes (with pumpkin I processed and froze last fall) with cinnamon cream cheese frosting and sun-dried tomato hummus. Along with the vegetable, bean, and barley soup I had going, the house smelled fantastic all day.

Here is some hard evidence of the fun:

Violet enjoyed the pumpkin cupcakes.

Violet learned how to unwrap presents today. She is very careful, and tried to

re-wrap everything when she was done!

The cupcakes, prior to being devoured by the hungry mob.

A video of Ellen reading with Violet. Ellen is a great reader!

And before I forget, I need to say Thank You! to all of you who have sent Violet birthday love. We've received several packages that we waited to open until her birthday (Thursday) or today. She's loved everything, from the froggy birthday cards (she got two of them) to the tractor, the baby doll (which she now sleeps with), the books, the singing and dancing Muppet, and the savings bond. Well, OK, she didn't exactly love the savings bond, but WE did, and she probably will at least appreciate it once both she and it mature:-)

Birthday girl!

Violet is 730 days old. Where did those 2 year go? I dunno.

There will be more pictures and maybe some videos tomorrow, so let's hope these can help you make it through until Saturday.


Here is Violet decorating a pumpkin for Halloween. Why is she wearing no clothes? It seemed prudent to remove all her clothing when giving here a couple of Sharpies. She is so proud of her pumpkin, and rightly so.


Violet likes to play airplane.


Gratuitous Kokanee pic.

Here You Go.

Yes, yes, we know it has been a damn long time since we've uploaded a post. That fact has certainly not escaped either one of us. But please rest assured (if you even care...) that we have not been neglecting our blogging duties out of laziness or simply because we've just been having so much fun that we couldn't tear ourselves away to upload some pictures. It has been quite the opposite, in fact. We've had a tremendous amount of stress (work, home, life in general - you all know how it goes) lately, and things like, say, having fun, relaxing, and working on the blog (to name a few) have fallen entirely off the radar.

That being said, I am staying up late when I should actually be in bed, trying to get over whatever new (the current in a succession of many) cold I have, to throw a few pictures your way. Please understand that this is the best bone I have to throw your way. Really, enjoy what you can get, people.

Oh, and for those of you who are not Facebook-enabled, here's the big news: Trooper has a brain tumor, and probably won't be with us for much longer. There's a long and drawn-out story involved, but I'll spare you the details, other than that I thought I'd be losing him on several occasions. So far we've been able to control the seizures and other symptoms reasonably well. But we know that his time is short. Saying goodbye to your best friend for the past 10 years sucks.

Here is Violet, helping me with some yard work. At this moment, we were wondering where Sue the cat had gone.

Here's one of the few pictures that includes Trooper. His leg is shaved from his IV. Also shown are Violet's new froggy rain boots. They are several sizes too large, but Violet loves them. I actually had to hide them so that she wouldn't insist on wearing them 24/7.

Violet enjoys reading the weekend paper over breakfast. Here, she is boning up on Breast Cancer Awareness Month information.

At Merlin Olsen Park in Logan, on the "big kid" jungle gym.

Also at Merlin Olsen Park. We hit the Democratic Party "rally", although it was more of a gathering of the few like-minded souls that happened to be in the area at the time. We did, however, get to meet (and shake hands with) Peter Corroon.

Tra-pap!

So Violet is learning about 1 or 2 words per day now! I had no idea she knew the word "table" until she told me that her milk was on the table. It's kind of scary and intimidating how smart that little cookie is.

Much to my delight, Violet loves tractors. Let me be clear, this isn't a gender-role-I-wish-I-had-a-boy-baby-instead-of-a-girl-baby issue. This is simply that I think tractors are cool and I love the fact that Violet thinks that they are cool, too.

So what precipitated all of this tractor talk? In general, one never needs an excuse to talk about tractors since tractors are inherently interesting. In this case, however, there is the additional reason that the farmers that work the acreage that surround our property are either renovating their alfalfa or planting safflower. Let me qualify, we think it's safflower that they have planted, though it could be alfalfa. The reason we don't really know is that whatever it was that they planted was planted using a strange-to-me drilling rig. I would say that it is definitely not winter wheat, but the moment I say that I'll find out it's wheat. The only thing they really plant this time of year is wheat, but they didn't use a normal drill implement nor does this farmer ever practice no-till or conservation tillage methods. Furthermore, given the crop rotation cycle that I've seen this particular farmer use on the rest of his 2000+ acres of fields (wheat-wheat-safflower-fallow-safflower-alfalfa) it should be time for a safflower planting. But you don't plant safflower in the fall, so again I'm confused. I guess he could be subsoiling solid fertilizer (nitrogen) so it can overwinter? Bruce, you gotta help me out here, it's killing me to have to guess about his tillage plan.

Worst case scenario is that we'll either find out this fall or this coming spring.

At any rate, here is Violet telling us all about tractors and salmon burgers.

Of course after her compelling argument for the universal appeal of tractors we had to go see for ourselves...




Violet isn't all business though. Here she is working on her method-acting chops role-playing as a kitty.

btw, this post is brought to you from the magic of in-flight wifi. I'm bloggin' at 35,000'!

Family bike ride !

So after all of those non-Violet France pictures, we figured we needed to return to the main theme. VIOLET!

Today we went on a family bike ride up Smithfield Canyon. Joanna and I rode out bikes while Violet was carried along in the Burley trailer. When I didn't have to worry about pulling Violet, the trail seemed much more smooth. Violet, however, was telling us that it was too bumpy.

Here is a vid of me pulling Vi up the trail.

The two best looking girls ever...

Me and Vi throwing stones into the creek.

Violet showing Joanna how to throw rocks

Our rides

Vi getting fueled up for leg of our journey!

We saw this little critter on our way home

Untitled

So here are some more pictures of France. Below is some kind of praline cake thing that was super awesome. Also, there is a cup of espresso.


One of the many bottles of wine that we drank.


The outside of the church at Carcassonne.


The inside of the church at Carcassonne.


A turkey, after a fashion.


And here is a video of five guys who were singing in the church. It's worth the download. You should turn up your speakers. I have longer videos of this, but they are something like 200MB and too large for upload to blogspot. It's hard not get goosebumps when you hear this kind of music performed live in the venue for which it was conceived.