::speaking of::

Speaking of cozy fires, (we were speaking of those at some point, right?) weren't you wondering where we got all that wood to burn??

Well, I hope you were wondering, because I'm going to tell you.
Early this week Kris bet up with a friend from the ward who works for the Forest Service. He's like a genuine mountain man (well, sort of), and he's awesome. He had a permit to cute firewood--which are evidently very affordable--and he took Kris out into the middle of nowhere to find a great big deadwood fallen tree that he had run across at some point. I guess it was crazy getting there--no roads or anything of course.
They chopped it up with Gilbert's chainsaw and axe and then filled the back of the Land Rover with chunks of (extremely aromatic) wood.


No--that chainsaw doesn't look very safe or secure--we'll assume they moved that after the picture and before driving home, right? They both made it home with heads intact anyway, that's the important part.

Kris was pretty proud of his load of wood.
And rightly so, it's quite impressive.

Sultan was less impressed and more distressed--the wood was in his spot. What's a dog to do?

The wood smells amazing and it's been really fun to have cozy fires on cold days. And I think the cutting of the wood satisfied a need for adventure in my husband--well a bit of that need anyway. Feeling like a real mountain man is pretty awesome.

::::

We went out adventuring yesterday and got ourselves a wild christmas tree from the mountains. We're pretty proud of ourselves.
More photos and story to follow--tomorrow hopefully.
I wish my mom was still here to do the dishes for me, that was way too nice. I'm totally behind now that she's gone!

::crazy halloween craziness::

Yesterday (saturday) was an insane day of halloween activities.
Having the holiday fall on a sunday is a bit of a pain because instead of just one fun day of festivities, it's basically the whole weekend. But oh well. It's just those of us whose backs get tired, and the little ones who get oversugared and overtired that suffer I guess.
Anyway, we started the day by taking Max to his karate class--a preliminary strike against the later sugar high. I was hoping a little exercise would do him good.
Then Kris and Max came home, got ready, and headed out to the school halloween carnival. I opted out of that activity and stayed home.


(yes, Max looks like he's wearing some of those hillbilly teeth--that would be a great part of his costume--but unfortunately no, that's his real mouth. He keeps making this weird nerdy smile these days.)
Luckily for me I got to find out we had a mouse in the kitchen while they were gone. I was trying to be productive and was hoping to whip up batter for our traditional cookies. I got into the utensil drawer and found that a bunch of them had been chewed up. Ewwwwwww. Then I got to clean everything in the drawer. It was really fun, and a truly lovely addition to the day.

Off they go--it really looks like they're headed off into the savannah for a safari, doesn't it?

Then after they came back from the school party we had the church trunk or treat. Our costumes were really built around this event--We were explorers in an awesome old land rover. We had africanish music playing from the car and a fun fuzzy dog that we caught on our adventures tied in the back of the car.
And the best part? Moustaches. (Except me--all I had was a hat, but it worked.)



"I say, where can I go to shoot some big game??"

Kris won 2nd place in the costume contest. It wasn't too hard, considering that he was one of three men that dressed up. Plus the mustache is awesome.

The explorer and his beast.
I think the following three photos are pretty funny--sorry if it's mustache overkill.



Max looks like he has a little mustache envy.

We bowed out of the ward party early because we had to go buy all sorts of mouse traps and stuff--the thought of a mouse running through my kitchen was not doing a lot for me.
Then we went to our last event--we have a family in our neighborhood whose kid is in Max's class, and they bring all three of their kids into our office. They're awesome people and we really like them, so we couldn't miss their party even though we were SO tired.
So we went for an hour. By the time we were done there Max was in full meltdown mode. He was a floppy, screaming, exhausted disaster. So we went home. And my back was glad to be home too.
It was a crazy day. Crazy halloweeniness. And we didn't even get our cookies made or our pumpkins carved........

.::Big Haircut(s)::.

Pre:


Post:


We have a barbershop one door down from our house. It's a father son place and they've been there for 30 years. Kris needed a haircut, and Max was starting be blinded by his bangs, so Saturday morning we thought we'd give the barber(s) a try. Max was done by the dad and Kris was done by the son. The dad is probably like 80 and the son is probably around 60.

They give old school barber type haircuts, obviously!!
It was fun, they were super nice and Max was SO good. They used the clippers on him, and the vacumn and he hardly even flinched. He got a tootsie pop afterwards too, which made everything worth it.

Actually, the haircuts look good when they're not combed in quite such an extreme way. If I could've gotten a picture today or yesterday of the two boys I would've. They both look cute.

Kris looks super cranky in the first picture because the brake sensor switch or something like that decided to wear out in our only car. Which means it wouldn't shift out of park. He ordered the new part on thursday night--overnight, but of course turns out it wasn't going to be delivered until monday (today). We wanted to go have fun on saturday, but were stuck home. No beach. Bummer.
But luckily we live within walking distance of lots of stuff. So we still had a fun day. We walked a whole bunch around our area and got some lunch and did a little grocery shopping at a local market (not really local to us, but local to the area).

We got the part for the car today and Kris fixed the problem in about 10 minutes. It was amazing. It's nice to have something small and fixable go wrong once in a while. Hopefully I don't speak too soon!

.::Happy Happy::.

birthday to Kris!!
I'm a little behind here (as usual). Kris's birthday was on saturday. We got back from new york late thursday morning and have been scrambling to finish up moving in and stuff since. So saturday we spent most of the day running errands (trying to actually get some food in the kitchen) and cleaning up, washing little boys, you know. Important stuff.

We went to a cool sporting goods store by our house and bought Kris some nice new flip flops for his birthday. I think he likes them.

Our sweet friends Chad and Melissa offered to watch Max for us so that we could go out to dinner and actually talk to each other. It was really a combination birthday and anniversary dinner since Kris was going to be in NY for our anniversary. It was really nice. We went to a great place called Blaze that's right across from our house. The food was delicious and the place was really nice.

Afterwards we came back and ate cake with Max and Chad and Melissa. The cake turned out looking really great. But it was the first thing I've tried to bake in this new oven and it was a little underdone on the inside. It's an electric range/oven and I can't remember the last time I've used one. The cake still tasted good though. I always think frosting makes the cake anyway. Well, homemade frosting does anyway!


After looking at the following pictures, I'm not sure whose birthday it actually is!

I could barely get one quick shot before all the candles were blown out. Can you see the blur of Kris up on the left hand side trying to blow one of them out before mr wind machine got them all?

I only had one present for him. But it was a good one.

And no, it wasn't my son. He was a present, but back in 2004.



Again, whose birthday is it anyway? Nobody can really tell....not even Kris.

We got him a spare tire cover for our one and only car. Now we can feel cool because we finally have a safari animal on the back of our Rover. Thanks to ebay. Yay for ebay!


So happy birthday to my sweet Kris. He's in New York right now and we miss him!
Who couldn't miss this sweet face?

Or this smooth dude?

I love you Kris!