My 100th Blog Post!

In honor of my 100th blog post, I am gonna' make it a doozie. I have fallen a little behind in posting pictures because I've been a little bitter for the last few weeks. Anna has been sleeping through the night again for about a week or so, and I am JUST starting to feel like I've caught up on my sleep. I got to the point where I was barely functioning day to day. Anyway, I have a lot to catch up on so here goes:



This is our family trip to the pumpkin patch - it was really hot that day - there's something wrong about picking out pumpkins in the heat. I'm really starting to love the Fall. I love the colors, and although I don't have a lot of Fall decorations, I am starting to enjoy decorating for the season - and I also love the smells of the season.



Haylie got to go on a field trip with her cousin Tyler's preschool class (Anna and I got to go too)



ANOTHER pumpkin for the porch



Here's Haylie standing with the preschool class. I tell you - she fit right in - she was following instructions and not being shy at all.



They had a little "storytime" at the beginning and here's Haylie sitting with the class. I couldn't believe how well she fit in with those kids who were, for the most part, about a year older than she is. I can't wait to get her into preschool next year - and neither can she! She is always sad when her older friends go to school and she can't go.


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We traveled down to Fallbrook last weekend for my dad's retirement party. 35 years with the fire department! Congratulations Dad! This is a quilt my mom made for him out of his old work t-shirts. Pretty cool, huh?



My brother Jeff and his family were at the party too and he is a falconer. Ever heard of it? Well, he is licensed to keep some wild birds like red-tailed hawks, etc. Here Eric is holding my brother's hawk, Bullet. He was such a beautiful bird. And so tame. My brother had to trap him from the wild and he has only had him about 3 weeks - we could even pet the bird's head and he didn't ever get frazzled by us.



I know I'm a big dork who is moderately obsessed with animals, but I LOVED holding this bird. It was a little intimidating staring him in the eyes at such a close proximity - but soooo cool!



Haylie got to see bunches of cousins. Here she is with her cousin Shea wearing firehats in honor of Grandpa Garry. What you can't see is that they were also wearing Grandma Jo's shoes!


MacGyver strikes again. Eric figured out a way to mount our latptop to the back of the driver's seat of the car so that Haylie could watch movies on the trip. Notice the headphones? That is so she could watch whatever she wanted and WE didn't have to hear it! Eric listened to talk radio and I listened to my iPod. It was quite the setup, I must admit.

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We had our trunk-or-treat last night at the church. Here's our buggy little family. I was so upset that there was no costume contest because I gotta say - Eric the beekeeper and Anna the bee were the cutest ones there. They would have taken the gold for sure. I found the bee costume for Anna and loved it - then at 4 a.m. one morning while she was screaming I had the idea for Eric to be the beekeeper. We found the jumpsuit at Sherwin Williams - it is actually a painting coverall - and I fashioned the hat out of a Musketeer hat, some fabric, and some tulle.


Haylie would have been a close second in her ladybug costume. My friend sent me a picture of a ladybug costume several months ago and I thought it was so cute - so I recreated it and made this sucker from scratch! *Patting myself on the back* I was very pleased with how it turned out.

Make sure you go to http://picasaweb.google.com/kmetler/October2008 to see more pictures!

Tag, I'm it...

This is an easy tag that didn't require me to answer 5,000 questions or show you pictures of my dirty kitchen. I like it. I was told to go into my picture file, pick the 4th file, then the 4th picture.

This was taken in April 2006 and is a picture of Haylie's very first ride in her forward-facing carseat. We are in my mom's car because my parents came up for her birthday. She only weighed 17 pounds when she turned one, so technically she should not have been facing forward yet, but I was still driving my 2 door Civic and could not wait any longer to have her turned around! Where has the time gone?



I tag...Kelly, Stefanie, and Jennifer W

The Big Three-Oh

Eric turned 30 today! Happy Birthday honey! We went out to dinner last night and had a quiet little party here tonight. Haylie has been so excited for Daddy's birthday - and couldn't wait for cake! Here's a picture of my boring cake...I had visions of so much more - but in my sleep-deprived state, I totally forgot to get the stuff at the store that I needed, so it will have to wait for another time...


I tried to make a 30 - can you tell?

What Time Is It?

I can't sleep. Haylie was talking in her sleep at 2 a.m. and called out my name. It was probably no louder than if she was sitting right next to me - I shouldn't have even heard it, but I did. I used to be able to sleep through anything! So I had barely gone back to sleep when Anna woke up close to 3 a.m. - she has been crying off and on for the last 40 minutes. One of her top front teeth is trying to poke through and the poor thing has just been miserable. I hate teething. Well, I don't remember teething myself, so I guess I don't hate it - but I hate seeing my baby be miserable because of it.

I don't think I've mentioned on here that I sort of have a job. I mean, I do have a job, not sort of - it's a job that fell into my lap as I was praying to know if I should get a job to help out with our finances. It is exactly the kind of job I was praying for. It only requires a few hours each day and I don't even have to leave my house! I am the customer service manager (i.e. the only customer service employee) for a small home security company. (PS...I'm now typing one-handed with a screaming baby on my lap). So anyway, yesterday was a fun work day - and by fun, I mean complicated. And by complicated, I mean gut-wrenching. I won't bore you with the details but wouldn't you know that I started thinking about work at 3 a.m. and now I can't shut my brain off. I'm thinking I need to call so and so tomorrow, and thinking about what I should have said to angry Mrs. So and So today - er - yesterday ...oh, and I gotta do some stuff for our primary program practice tomorrow night -er - I guess that would be tonight...not sure how I'm gonna accomplish all that i need to do on 4 hours sleep. I'm so wide awake right now its not even funny. Too bad I can't call my customers now when they are so fresh on my mind...how's that for customer service?? RING RING - HI MR. SO AND SO, I DIDN'T WAKE YOU DID I???

So I just gave in a nursed Anna against my better judgement - but tell me who has good judgement at 4:16 a.m.? Yeah. Nobody. PFFFFFT!

I'm gonna go write some things down and see if that doesn't empty my brain of work stuff, then attempt to go back to sleep.

Adios Amigos!

The Tortoise and the Hare Chicken

Wanna know what's even more bizarre than a chicken showing up unannounced in our back yard? The fact that the chicken has become best buddies with the tortoise. And, if the laws of reproduction didn't apply here - we could have little torchickens running around the yard! hahaha!

But seriously - these two roam around the yard together all day long - and the chicken even steals the tortoise's lettuce!


Here's Curly (the tortoise) enjoying a little green snack...


Here's Clucky stealing the little green snack...


Here Curly is fighting for his lettuce...


And here Curly has given up. The chicken is ruthless when she wants to be!

They're so fun to watch - such an unlikely pair but they really do seem to love each other!!

We're a little worried about Clucky getting lonely cuz Curly is about to go into hibernation for the winter...do they make anti-depressants for chickens?

She Did It!

Haylie has always been too scared to feed the giraffe at the zoo. She always wants to and has good intentions, but freezes as soon as his dark tongue comes out! She was looking at a picture of the giraffe feeding from several months ago when I had to do it for her and she said "I feed the giraffe" and I said "No, you didn't feed the giraffe because you got scared." So she then said "I'm not scared anymore - let's do it again". So we gave it another shot yesterday and she did it! I guess she just has to make up her mind about something then it's done!

ALL ABOARD!!

Last weekend, we took a trip up to the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. It's a fun place we discovered several years ago on our way up to Yosemite. They have a steam train that was used for logging back in the early 1900's. Haylie has been really into trains lately, so we thought she'd have fun actually riding on a REAL train. She loved it. I got so many great pictures, but here are just a few:







Anna really liked the ride too - she was so quiet - just looking at everything













Time to say goodbye to the train...




It's so hard to say goodbye. She threw a little bit of a fit when I buckled her in.


That couldn't possibly have been because she was tired, could it? Oh, you have to click on the picture to see the nice string of drool going down her face! hehe...

It was a beautiful day up in the mountains - and the fresh air was...well, refreshing!

To see all the pictures, click here