makes me want a fourth

pumpkins galore!

my most FAVORITE time of the year is right now! i love the fall season. the hot, HOT sun is no more, the air is crisp and cool, the colors are amazing, and the smells are irresistible. mmmm. i wish it could be like this all year long. except maybe christmas. i do love christmas! last weekend, allan and i took the kids to a new (for us) pumpkin patch because we heard they had cool pumpkins and great prices. we ended up with a wagon-full of pumpkins of all different colors and sizes. so fun! if you live nearby and haven't checked out job's nursery in pasco, you gotta go! allan and i will be going back for some trees in the near
future. :)

davis lake getaway

i have never gone on a women's retreat before, so i thought it would be fun to see what one would be like. it was a lot of FUN!!! i was originally going to stay in a plush cabin (i.e., in the lodge), but seeing that the "rustic" cabins were a lot less expensive, i opted for one of those instead. plus, all of my girls from my small group were staying in the rustics. we were lucky and got a cabin right next to the bathroom. it made the super cold mornings more bearable. :) i had a great time hearing awesome messages from some very Godly women, praising God with very moving worship music, learning more about Jesus and why it is critical to preach the Gospel to ourselves daily, hiking, laughing, goofing off, zumba-ing, and just hanging out with some great girlfriends. i am looking forward to this again next year!

(1) FAT file girls (2) davis lake (3) our rustic cabin (4) the girls! (5) me and brenda (6) bre and abby (7) getting ready to hike (8) me and rachel (9) bren, me, and rach (10) rach, me, and bre zumba-ing! (11) devotional speakers, karen and kelli (12) me and erin (13) thesisters cake (14) goodbye shot in front of the lake(pics courtesy of rachel and melissa f. thanks for sharing, girls!)

one short month...two big deals

september was a big month for our little elise. first of all...elise turned 1! allan and i were excited to celebrate her first birthday, but at the same time sad that our baby is getting to be not-such-a-baby. it was hard to see lucas and emma turn 1 and start walking and talking, but we also knew that we would have another little one to hold, rock, and cuddle. but with elise, she's our last; our last to swaddle, to rock to sleep, to hear coo, to feed a bottle to...the list goes on. sniff sniff. in fact, we want to keep her as a baby so much that we are purposely not encouraging her to walk! how wrong is that?! anyway, we had a wonderful time celebrating our baby girl on her first birthday. we threw a bug-themed party with her friends logan and analise, who both turned 1 within one week of elise. the kids were so cute all lined up in their high chairs waiting for their cake. see for yourself! (pictures to come)

then, on elise's actual birthday, we took her to chuck e. cheese's per the request of her big brother, lucas, of course. check the three of them out riding on the fire engine and motorcycle together! lucas also requested that we dress elise up in his power rangers costume.

the second big event for elise (and for us) this month was her surgery at children's hospital in seattle. she had to have a small cyst removed from her upper chest area and had to be put under general anesthesia for it. sniff sniff, again. we drove over to seattle on tuesday afternoon (9/22) in preparation for her surgery, which was first thing wednesday morning (9/23). praise God everything went exceptionally smoothly! i have to say, it was extremely hard to let our baby girl go in the arms of the anesthesiologist (they preferred us to stay in the waiting room). but the hospital was very good about keeping us informed every step of the way and our surgeon was thorough but efficient. we were expecting for a good long wait, but our buzzer buzzed before we knew it and we were talking to the surgeon about how the surgery went within an hour of sending elise off. it took elise a little while to wake up and recover from the anesthesia, and she did get a little cranky/mad for about 10 minutes after waking up. but, overall, she did GREAT. better than we could have asked for. she did so well that she didn't even need tylenol the next day. amazing. these little ones are so resilient. look at our little trooper of a girl. (the pictures are chronological beginning with us heading over to seattle to right after we got to hold her back in our arms)