Holy Schnepf!

We go to Schnepf Farms every year in October and love it. What a fun place to let the kids get dirty and be kids. This year we decided to go on Halloweena (in normal land that would be a typo but here it is perfectly acceptable). What better way to celebrate, right?

It was AWESOME! The Farm had candy at all of the vendors so the kids got to trick-or-treat. Here are all of the super spooky things we got to do:

• walk around the farm and enjoy the agriculture...big beautiful sunflowers, pumpkins, peach trees. It felt so good.


• ride roller coasters, swings, slides and tricycle races


• roast yummy marshmallows and make s'mores- my kids' favorite thing to do


• eat dinner at the d-lish Farm Restaurant


• take home scrumptious Caramel Apple Pie!!!

Needless to say, Peter, John, and Tink had a blast and the parents did too!

Kids Say Funny Things!

Mr. Duff and I bought a deep freezer today! Yay me. I have been struggling with freezer space since the dawn of time. I have to rearrange everytime I go to the market and it's a big fat pain. Since I've become more of a "buy when it's on sale" kind of girl, the freezer has just gotten too small. I am SO excited! So, we started straightening the garage so that the freezer would have a nice new home and ended up really cleaning the joint! We had our mini helper sweeping and laughing. It was great.

We ended up finding a car cover that had been purchased eons ago so we covered the fast car with it. We'd looked for that stupid thing so many times. I was kind of irritated that we found it actually. I was hoping to get Mr. Duff a new one for Christmas...oh well.

I know, I know...where is this crazy story going. Hang on!

So, we get ALL done and we start calling Grant to come in the house. He ran from us as usual and we all laughed. Then he said while pointing his finger to the car "daddy, fast car hiding."

We DIED laughing!

Totally off topic but completely "blogworthy" as my friend Rebekha Pailliotet would say, I found a SUPER cool site today. It's called lollychops and I will be using her printables often this holiday season. She has a rockin' printable tags, cards, and recipes.


Then, I found these gorgeous single serving pies in a jar! Check it out. Lollychops has printable gift tags for the jar lids.

Grant-ISMs

Okay, so this weekend the fam went to Arizona Grand Resort to play in the water. Grant went to Grandma Sue's house to hang out with his aunts and g'ma while Terry and I played with the big kids. By Sunday I was missing him so much that we sat around the breakfast table and talked about all of the Grant-ISMs we could think of. I'm going to try to capture them all again so that they are documented and I can look back on this and tear. My big boy got his hair cut today too...OMG! He went from infant to toddler with every shear.

Here it goes:
*Peder-Pan (his favorite movie-he asks for it 5 million time a day)
*Oh-tay (okay)
*Wub-Youuuu (Love you)
*Too-tie mommy (Cookie Mommy)
*No Mama (often used when I say no first)
*No wan it (Don't want it, used with a pushing away motion of the hand)
*Daddy Tatch (Dad and Grant love to play catch together. Grant loses the ball in wind up typically)
*Tum-On (Come on!)
*Ouh-Hide (Used to get Daddy to take him out to play ball)
*Ready, Set, {insert running, then wait 3 seconds while he runs ahead}, GO!
*Wun, Two, Free, Four, Fibe, Sits, Seben...(up to15! This kid rocks with numbers)

Crazy December

Well, it has once again been a crazy December. We left the week before Christmas to see my fam in CA so that we could be back in time to get the kids off to their respective parents. It was chaos trying to get everything done a week early, but it worked out. We got home on the 23rd and enjoyed being home together as a family. Terry was home quite a bit and got to enjoy the kids. It was awesome. Here are a couple of random shots from the past couple of weeks:

Schnepff Farms

We went to the pumpkin patch this weekend and let the boys roam. Here are some shots of the family.

Our trip to Orlando!

So Terry hosted a few workshops in FL this last week and so we decided to take the kids on a Minnie vacation (pun intended). The kids had a BLAST! It was great. My favorite part was that Disney decorated for Halloween. Growing up in California, it was interesting to see the differences between Disneyland and the main park at Disney World. I will say that while it was totally worth it, traveling with three kids is NOT for the faint hearted.

Here are the kids on a ride with dad/Terry. He was smiling, but really hates rides.

The kids and Big Bertha...one of the clydsedales at Sea World

The kids with the sea turtles

Those cool decorations I was talking about

My Little Green Thumb...

So, the other day I took the kids to this ice cream shop around the corner that sells Thrifty ice cream. (side-note: YUM!!) Okay, so James saved his gumballs and planted them in the back yard with hopes that they would flourish and grow into MASSIVE gumball producing trees!! I can't make this stuff up!

SO cute. Anyhow...I had to journal this before it got lost in my brain somewhere between childhood memories and that damn chocolate malted crunch ice cream.

Also, James started Hip Hop class. He's been twice now and is lovin' every minute of it. His favorite time is freestyle. He totally let loose and busted his moves the first week. Then "Fro" (his dance teacher) busted out some moves and now James says that he's not good enough to dance with him. Mmmm. That totally pulled at my heart strings. My little bubba is growing up WAY too fast.

This is Fro.

Oh my gosh...I totally wanted to share this little thing about Grant. He's been waving and blowing kisses. He's been giving High-5s and playing peek-a-boo. GUESS WHAT HAND HE'S USING????? That's right...he's gonna be a leftie just like his Mama! My little South Paw. He's making me so proud. {Big Smile}

And last but not least, Princess Jaiden. She's growing like a weed and doing AMAZING work at school. Jaiden started first grade this year and has already tested at the end of her grade level for reading. Jen has done such a great job with her acedemically. Jaiden was also invited into the Gifted Program at school and will test for it next week. It's so awesome to see her grow. She's got the brains in the family for sure...but who knew she'd get the good looks too!! Daddy's gonna have to buy a shot gun to keep the boys away!! Muahh Gorgeous!

CHOP, CHOP

Grant has been patiently waiting for his first hair cut. The poor kid is going to have a complex when he looks at his old photos some day because his mom let him look like Bozo the clown for the first year of his life. We made it a family affair. It was a great time had by all. Now he looks like a hottie just like his daddy-O!

Grant Edward Duff ala haircut.