swamped.

going to bed every night while trying to remember what I wanted to post about, but didn't get a chance to, is pretty much a torture, if you ask me. I'm quite sure my head might explode a little if I don't get to unload that pile of imaginary hand written notes to myself with ideas and events for blog posts.

One if these days

...when Ivy no longer wakes up 3-5 times in a 2 hour period at night

...when I'm not making (knitting, no less) Halloween costumes any more (ironically, for a holiday that I simply don't get)

...most importantly, when our hard drive has more than 2 GB left on it so I can finally upload 8 GB worth of photos to it

I'll release all those drafted posts into the wild, and might actually get caught up with current events. Before Christmas would be just fine with me.

Until then, a cute baby face can tie into pretty much any post, right? Like, here's the face of that baby that wakes up on average 4 times in a two hour period after she goes to bed. Maybe I should make her wear that hat, so she can look just as cute when she wakes up yet again.

(her hat is made out of the same yarn that you can see in my blog header. in fact, that's what i was knitting when i took the photo)

my favorite time of the year

Is there such a thing as The Perfect Autumn? Because I'm pretty sure that's what we've been having in these past couple of months. Not too hot, not too cold, not too rainy, brilliant colors and just joy to breathe in whenever we go outside. If it was up to me, I'd have 5 months of autumn and 5 months of spring (with one month left for snowy winter and one month for summer), when I could wake up every day and see just a little bit of change in the trees, air, sunlight. That's why I love spring and autumn so much - everything changes, yet manages to stay beautiful and exciting.

Mark had to go to a conference mid-October for three days, and I barely made it through a 24 hour period of parenting 4 cranky (serious understatement) kids who just happened to all get colds right before Mark left. Luckily, his mom came to help us out for the remaining couple of days. Which was a good thing for many reasons, particularly because she got to witness what our car rides with Ivy are really like, how long she can scream in the car, how crazy my hormones make me when she screams and why we have to stop 2-4 times whenever we go to visit them at the farm.

maya picked out the one with the tail

But all that and other 'moments' aside, we had good time at the pumpkin patch. I'm pretty sure we did, because I didn't find any photos of kids crying or running away, although I seem to vaguely recall something like that happening half a dozen times. It's probably just me imagining things with my brain half asleep.

Week-ending

(even now, after living in the States for 8 years, I refuse to start my week on Sunday. And the work WEEK-END is there to back me up on that. Week starts on Monday, people! :)

In spite of all the troubles and stress (traveling with our car-hating baby - our 4th car-hater, no less. what luck! - and 3 'angels' who just can't grasp the concept of using soft voices, resting or doing anything quiet during car rides, especially during those rare occasions when Ivy is sleeping), it was good to be able to escape the city once more, spend a few hours breathing fresh air, drinking non-chlorinated water from the tap and visiting loved ones that we don't get to see as often as we'd like to.

:: no, we didn't come across a field of wild flowers. I found lovely patch in Mark's Grandma's yard ::

:: another discovery during our visit... so much color and character. so many years of life written all over this 6x6ft corner ::

:: see those stairs? that's where Mark and I had our engagement pictures taken with a self timer (all 17,954 of them), 10 days before our wedding... 8 years ago ::

:: i didn't forget to bring my knitting along ::

:: and mark volunteered ivy to model a hat that she is outgrowing painfully fast. it is still a hit with everyone but ivy ::

:: we got back to the farm just in time to see this ::

yes, it was a good weekend...