Good Morning
Life continues to travel at a break neck pace and as usual I'm just trying to keep up.
Lets see, I was going to blog on 11/11 but, I obviously didn't.
I can't tell you where I was at 11:11am except that I was home with the kids. I thought more about it being Veterans Day and missing my grandpa, who was a WWII vet. I thought about all our friends who are overseas in Greece, Afghanistan and Iraq and the ones who are now retired from the military.

My kids have been in rare form lately and I've been writing down here and there the little things that they have been saying.
For example, last week I made a chicken and dumplings in the crock pot.
Wyatt proceeded to tell Kelly that we were having chicken and dumblings. Hearing that took us a minute cause it didn't sound that off. Later we were on a family bike ride and Wyatt said being outside was so refreshening. It was come to the point where Rob and I just look at each other and smile. They all get it eventually so why not just enjoy it while they are little.
While my kids have been keeping me entertained with the funny things they say I have been having some issues with my gall bladder, so much so that I will be having surgery on the 28th of this month. I'm only a little concerned about the surgery I'm more concerned because I think the school might be doing school pictures that last week of November and I'm suppose to be helping take the pictures.
To clarify, we go to a small charter school and everything they do is flexible, so originally we had planned to do school pictures the first week of November but the principal, who has his own studio set up, decided to buy new lights, so now we are behind schedule.
One morning I was watching a show where they hosts talked about moms whom are always behind the camera and there are so few pictures of them. This is something that has been said over and over and I know from my experience that there isn't enough photos of me.
Taking self portraits is never easy but I decided to try. Like many other women I'm self conscious of how I look or how the photo is going to portray me. You know that saying," my mirror and my camera have two completely different ideas of what I look like". That's me.
I'm trying to hand off the camera when I want to get involved in the action. I'm not afraid to look the fool or be the fool for that matter, especially with my girl scouts.
I have been trying to take better care of my self spiritually and have slacked off on the physical care. Damn Halloween candy. I can feel a difference too since I went on my junk food bender so I'm starting to wean myself off all the crap.
I think that's enough rambling for now.

*Carrie*

This afternoon the weather is chilly, like 55 degrees and there is snow on Mt. Lemmon, anyway Chelsea brought me the DVD of Thomas the tank engine ultimate Christmas. I put her off for a couple of hours but then eventually she went into the DVDs again and this time came up with the movie Santa Claus is coming to Town. I guess Christmas is going to last a couple of months here in our home.

Other crazy things with Chelsea lately; she wants to be called Jessica and she wants to have red hair.
I get that the red hair is from Ariel but I have no clue why she wants to be called Jessica.
At Kelly's soccer game on Saturday, Chelsea started to run around and I kept calling her to come back. Once I reached her I asked if she heard me calling her name. Chelsea yelled at me that she isn't Chelsea Ross she is Jessica. Yeah, don't think so.
Fast forward a little while later and she is off and running again, I called her name a couple of times and when she didn't answer, I called out," Jessica", and darn tooting she stopped, turned around and came back.
What a stinker.
What I find interesting is that she has an older cousin, whom that she has never met, whose name is Jessica.
*Carrie*

This year we celebrated Halloween at my mom's house. We have always heard it was a great neighborhood for trick or treaters so mom was all excited.
Sadly her little street is off the beaten path and she had very few kids come around.
We are told some years it is hit or miss and we all wanted this year to be a hit.
The kiddos all got so much candy. Each kid had a bucket and Rob carried three extra bags that when the bucket got to heavy to carry they could dump it into the bag and keep going.

I'm wondering if people felt bad that the kids didn't have a lot of candy because once they got home those extra bags were half full and heavy.
The kids had a great time and we only went up and down three streets but there was a lot of walking involved.
By the end of our time Chelsea was asking to be carried from house to house. On the way home all three kids fell asleep and we still needed to wash out the color hairspray from the girls' hair.
We started our fun at 6pm and stopped at 8pm then we drove home, showered and all kids were in bed crashed out by 9pm.

I really don't think I need to say whom each kid is trying to be, but I will say that Chelsea has worn her costume every day since and is currently wearing it right now.
The rest of this week has been pretty normal, though we have added a new family routine. Every Thursday evening we have gone on a family bike ride. The big kids are really enjoying themselves and getting better at riding their bikes. We only do about 3 miles and that is pushing it for Wyatt right now.
Maybe on one of these rides I can bring the camera and try to take some shots while riding.
This morning when Rob was leaving for work he called to me and suggested I get the camera ready. The sky was looking like it might be a pretty sunrise. 30 minutes later the pinks and oranges were spreading like fire across the sky. God is such an amazing artist and it was nice to stop and watch the day come alive.
The weather forecast is saying cloudy, windy and maybe some rain this weekend so hopefully that would make for some beautiful sunsets too. There is so much beauty to photograph this time of year and I'm trying to capture as much as possible.
*Carrie*