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.

Jamesy and His World Record

So, Terry was playing around with our new web cam and here's what he came up with...

Grant the Great

How did we make such an incredible little man? He's a talker, man. He won't quit. It's so great to finally be able to hear what he has to say. I'm making out about half of what he is saying, but it's better than nothing, right?

He says:
Mama, Daddy, Baba, Juicy, NO! (shocker), peas (please), hi-hen (chicken), too-tee (cookie)...and a million other words I can't figure out yet.

Oh, and by the way...I STILL think he's gonna be my south paw. {fingers crossed}

Stay Tuned-

Lu-Hoo-Zu-Hrrr

I just realized that other than our holiday cards we didn't share any of our amazing photography!! So, here are a few of my favorite shots taken December 2008. There were so many to choose from, it was hard. A sincere thank you again goes out to our brilliant artist, Rebekha Pailliotet.

You've been Duff-ed!!

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:

Have a Cool Yule!

My super creative photography genious (Rebekha Pailliotet) did our Christmas pictures recently. I've been uber eager to learn more about Photoshop and she offered to give me some tips and pointers. Here's what I ended up creating! This is my favorite family picture yet! Thanks Rebekha. You're the best.

Schnepff Farms

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

Things I love...

I know. Meg reminded me this week that I needed to update. I've been dreading uploading my pictures from recent trips and random things and so I've slacked on the blog. I thought I'd post a little something fun just to passify you all and give you a little insight into my brain (I know it sounds scary, but bear with me). More to come VERY shortly...

{things I heart}

the smell of Grant in the morning

sleeping in

spooning with my husband

the color GREEN

Arizona summers

James with blue hair

James with any color hair

a can of Dr Pepper just out of the slushy ice chest

new car smell

Dave Matthews-ants marching

Jaidens unprompted hugs

freshly painted toe nails

singing really loud in the car with the kids

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

the Luckiest

It's on my license plate. It's what I say. It's in my art. And here's where it came from... When Terry and I got married, our wedding song was "the Luckiest" by Ben Folds Five. Here's a few pics from that day.

Submission

I am not really sure why I held out on the whole blogging thing for so long. I guess I was terrified that I would be held accountable for maintaining a written record of how my family is growing. Since I've never been very good at record keeping in the past I felt that I would only be setting myself up for failure. For some reason this morning I woke up and the fear was gone. So, here I am fumbling over the keyboard.

I thought it only appropriate on this momentus occasion to introduce each member of the Duff family:

Terry is my super incredible husband. He's cute. He's witty. He's charming (well, sometimes). Add a little crazy to that equation too. He's gotta be. He's married to me!

Jaiden is Terry's gorgeous daughter. She's super bright and loves to take care of the boys.

Photo by Rebekha Pailliotet

James is my free spirit. He is outgoing, funny, and just plain cool.

Photo by Rebekha Pailliotet

Finally, Grant is our baby. Everyone comments on his stunning eyes. I think he has my laugh.

Photo by Rebekha Pailliotet