About a week ago I met with a family to take some long overdue family pictures. They hadn’t had portraits done of everyone together in years. I was so happy to be asked to take their pictures. We had a great time at the park. The weather was fantastic and the colors of the trees were amazing. The kiddos were such hams. As soon as I took out my camera they started posing and turning on the charm.

I’m so happy with how their pictures turned out! They were such a fun group and I really look forward to taking more pictures for them in the future. These are just a few. You can see more on my Photography Blog or by going to my Flickr photostream on the right.

My office had a decorating and costume contest for Halloween. Most departments put up some lights, a few rubber spiders and a fake pumpkin or two. My department however…well we come to a competition with all guns blazing. We strung enough cobwebs to make The Crypt Keeper squeamish and filled it with various spiders and other bugs. We had tombstones and a body outline, complete with murder weapon still present on the floor. I even brought in my strobe light that makes thunder sound effects and my fog machine. Oh yes, there was fog. So much fog in fact that it was getting into the air ducts and spreading throughout our 16 story building!

Everyone in my department donned makeup and fake blood to make themselves into zombies. They looked fantastic! I bowed out of the zombification session since I didn’t want to scare Aubrey when I went to pick her up.

At lunch quite a few employees, myself included, brought in their kids dressed up in costume to trick-or-treat from the various cubes. One cube was a little confused about what holiday it was but the incredible amount of work that guy put into it was worthy of winning a decorating contest anyway.

That’s my bloody hand print.

My whiteboard artwork.

That’s my desk back in the corner…all alone. I love it!

Hmm

He even sprayed fake snow on the windows!

Well isn’t that just the cutest pink leopard you’ve ever seen? She’s standing on my desk eating M&M’s.

Our family makes a point of going to the pumpkin patch every year. Choosing a pumpkin from a pile at the store will never equal tromping through soggy fields of pumpkins in search of that perfect canvas for a festively ghoulish carving.

The pumpkin patch we have gone to for the past two years is more of a theme park than a generic pumpkin patch. There are so many things to do in addition to finding a pumpkin that you could easily spend an entire day there. They have slides, train rides, hay rides, a corn maze, tricycles for kids to race, tricycles for adults to race, farm animals to pet, rubber duck races, cutout stands for ridiculous photo ops, snacks and more. In the end you walk away with some fun memories and some very exhausted kids. Unless, that is, you’re a Johnson. In which case you also walk away with a lot less cash and a couple hundred pounds of  pumpkins because both Brandon and his brother have to find the most massive pumpkins they are able to strong arm from the field to the checkout stand. We filled the backs of two SUVs with the spoils of our pumpkin hunting with barely enough room left for Lyla’s stroller.

Luckily, it was an unseasonably gorgeous day. Oh summer, where did you go?

Down the slide with Maya and Gavin close behind.

My goodness how those two have grown since last year…

Aubs liked the ducks.

His stud pose.

Showing off his giant stack of checkers.

It’s never too early to teach your kids to haul their own pumpkin wagon.

Fridays are trash days in my neighborhood, so like I do almost every Friday morning, I was gathering up everything that needed to go to the curb. As I was removing the trash bag from our kitchen trash can I thought to myself, “I need to remember to grab my keys and start my car so it’s warm for Aubrey.”

I should mention here that I have a remote start device on my car which I have had since 2005 when I bought the car. It has always worked great and I haven’t had to get into a hot (in the summer) or cold (in the winter) car in years! So spoiled. All I have to do is press the start button on my keychain twice and the engine fires up.

As I was tying the strings on the trash bag I heard two very familiar, consecutive beeps. I froze, and like a slow motion scene in a horror film right before something really bad happens, I turned my head to look in the direction of the sound. There, hanging on the hook where I always put them, were my car keys.

I walked over to them slightly hesitantly and picked them up. The graphic display on the remote told me that my car had indeed just started…on it’s own.

“No freaking way.” I walked out the front door to witness first hand that my car was sitting in the driveway…engine running.

Despite the adrenaline pumping through me the logical part of my brain said, “I wonder if there is a short in the car and it has been running on and off all night.” That was easy enough to check because two things would be immediately evident. I had gotten gas on my way home last night so I would be able to see if my gas gauge had moved and the car should be warm, right? As I made my way to the car suddenly I had the thought, “What if someone is in the car?”

I have tinted windows and while you can still see into the car, you really only see silhouettes of people. As I strained to see into my car in the dim early morning light, my heart started pounding as if it was trying to fight it’s way out of my chest with each step. I whipped the driver’s side door open to discover an empty, cold car with a full tank of gas.

Of course then my illogical brain decided to join the party with thoughts of, “What if something started your car as a sign that you need to leave for work RIGHT NOW.” I know, someone has seen way to many supernatural/scary movies. But never-the-less, I was especially aware of everything going on around me for the entire drive to work, half expecting, half dreading something happening because I had waited another 20 minutes to leave the house simply because, well frankly I was a bit freaked out about getting into a car that just started itself.

If only my brain worked like Brandon’s. I’m sure his thought process would not have taken him to the possessed automobile conclusion. He probably would have thought his car was a Transformer, which would definitely by a lot cooler.

I took all of these last night. We had a really fun time playing in the tub and brushing our teeth before bed. For some reason her curls kicked in big time last night as I was drying her hair, hence the flying nun look.

Gavin had his 4th birthday party last Sunday. His actual birthday is October 12th but Monday’s aren’t known for being good party days.

It was a good party. My sister-in-law Sarah got all the kids pumpkins and aprons with their names on them and set them loose to paint their own pumpkins. It started out tame enough until Aubrey inspired the boys to go nuts with the paint. Who says you’re not allowed to mix every color until it becomes a disgusting shade of brown?

Lyla was there to witness the mayhem.

My serious artist.

Hands are more fun than paint brushes.

Watch out behind you Batman!

Yesterday Aubrey decided to take Gavin for a ride in his Gator now that she can reach the ‘gas’ pedal. He had fun riding in the back. We’re all going to the pumpkin patch later today for the annual pumpkin choosing ritual. Of course I will take lots of pictures!

Brandon and I have been going back and forth on whether or not we want to buy a new house. Last week we were gung ho that we were moving and as a result we have spent the past two weekends working feverishly to finish all of the little projects that have been on our “to-do” list for the past 3 1/2 years. It’s actually kind of depressing to think that we have nearly perfected our house in two weekends and we spent 3 years putting it off.

I do have to say though that I finally like our kitchen! I by no means love it because of the lack of a pantry of any kind which we don’t have the room to change that fact, but the kitchen no longer feels like a dark cramped room. We completely re-did the ceiling (scraping off the old popcorn ceiling was not planned but was a definite improvement) and we put up a new stainless steel trimmed florescent light and bought a refrigerator that actually fits into the small hole where it was supposed to go. Our house was built in 1974 so apparently things were much smaller back then. I had a heck of a time finding a refrigerator that was not too tall.

I also painted our guest bedroom which was LONG overdue. It was very obvious that no one had ever shown that room any love. While the other rooms in the house had been painted many different colors throughout the years by previous owners, the guest bedroom was still a faded shade of light yellow with nail holes and unfinished spackle jobs where old curtain rods were removed. The room is now a beautiful white/lavendar called “Lace Cap.” Not only does the room feel bigger but it feels new and clean too, not that it was ever really dirty. It’s amazing what paint can do.

I touched up little nicks and scratches in the walls all over the house as well. Between the new exotic hardwood floors, custom arched doorways, new HVAC, and all new stainless appliances, we now have a beautifully cute little house that is likely to charm the socks off any potential buyer. Long story short, now we’re not sure we want to move.

We have been crunching numbers and we may decide to take the money we were going to use for a down payment and pay off a lot of bills, my car and his motorcycle included. We could free up more than $1000/month that are currently going towards bills, which of course I would end up putting back into our savings to work on another down payment for our next house.

Of course if the perfect house came along and it was the right price, I don’t know that we could really say no. So much to think about! I guess we’ll just go with the flow and see what fate throws our way. In the mean time, we have a house I love coming home to.

Aubrey was in one of her moods this morning where she whined/cried at me from the backseat but rejected everything I offered her.

“Do you want milk?”

“No.”

“Do you want your cereal bar?”

“NO.”

“Do you want to hold hands?”

“No!”

She stared blankly at me in a way that said, “I don’t know what I want, you figure it out.” So I replied, “I love you. Do you like Mommy?”

“NO!” and she buried her face into the headrest of her car seat so she didn’t have to look at me. Ouch! I didn’t think I was going to have to have my heart broken like that until she was a teenager, or a preteen at the very earliest! Of course I’m sure she was just in the mood to be disagreeable and didn’t actually mean what she said. But it still made me put out my bottom lip in a faux pout. She responded by offering me her hand as if to say, “Only one of us can be irrationally sad in this car so you can hold my hand if you really must.”

How did I go from being her favorite person to someone who isn’t allowed to look at her? Oh how I’m dreading the teens…

Every stinky diaper I change of Aubrey’s I have always said “Eeeew!” in an exaggerated way mostly in an effort to entertain her while I cleaned her up. I never gave it much thought but I now realize she has entered the age when I need to start watching each and every thing I say around her because she is a little parrot.

We are nearing the time when I am going to make a true effort at potty training so every time I head to the restroom I make a point of telling Aubrey, “Mommy has to go potty, do you want to come sit on your potty too?” She is usually very excited to join me in the restroom and sit on her little potty seat copying me. The other day she even pantomimed wiping even though her pants were still pulled up.

Last week she walked into the restroom, stood in front of me, pulled my jeans away from my knees, scrunched up her face and said, “Eeeeeeew.” I burst out laughing. Now she loves to point out everything she considers to be gross and melodramatically announce that it is “Ew.” This morning on the way to day care she dropped a piece of Pop Tart out of her mouth and it landed on her arm, to which she responded with an upgraded phrase of “Eeeew durdy. Durdy Momma.”

She is getting good at stringing words together too. She was enjoying a sucker she was given by a store clerk and declared, “Nummy Daddy! Nummy!” Of course I had to correct her that I was Mommy, to which after a short pause she laughed and rephrased her statement to, “Nummy Momma.”

A coworker of mine sent me the link to this video and it was just too cute not to share.

All the Single Babies