We had another fun Halloween at our house!

Emma and Ian couldn’t wait for Halloween this year. Everyday, for a week before, they asked me how many more days until Halloween.

We had our 2nd annual Halloween get together at our house. The Fitlows and the Bruemmers came over. We had a little dinner and then went out trick-or-treating. It was a really warm night, which is really unusual. Most years we are out there freezing to death. But, it started raining just before we went out. Luckily it was just a light rain, and we still got to go out.

Scott wasn’t feeling well. He was diagnosed with Strep throat today. But, he was a trooper and still managed to come out and pull the kids around in the wagon.

I don’t know if it was the rain, or if they were just exhausted, but the kids didn’t want to stay out trick-or-treating as long as they usually do. So we called it a night at about 7:45pm. They were exhausted. Ian wanted to eat some of his candy, but he ended up laying on the kitchen floor next to his loot bag, half asleep.

All in all, it was another fun Halloween!

We carved our pumpkins tonight.

I don’t know why, but Halloween seems to sneak up on me every year. I have all these cute Halloween decorations, and I never remember to get them all out until a few days before Halloween. Then it just doesn’t seem worth getting them out

The same thing happens with pumpkin carving. I never want to do them too soon, but we usually end up waiting too long and doing them at the last minute.

I planned to do them tonight, but the day was kind of crazy and I just felt overwhelmed about adding another thing to our to do list. Plus, Scott wasn’t feeling well, and I didn’t think I was up for carving 4 pumpkins with 3 kids by myself.

But it ended up being fun. Scott was feeling a little bit better, and he came and helped. The whole family really got into it. Emma was really great at carving this year, and she was a huge help. This was the first year that she was really able to do it by herself.

Check out this jack-o-lantern that she made almost all on her own. I cut the top off for her and then she went to work. She cleaned the whole thing out, and separated the seeds to toast later. Scott helped her draw a face on it, and then she cut it out all by herself. It turned out great and she was really proud of herself.

Nora enjoyed “helping” too. She liked stabbing the pumpkins and then she got a hold of the pen and drew all over it.

Even though I felt stressed before we did it, it ended up being a lot of fun. Afterward, I spent some time playing around taking pictures of the pumpkins. I actually used my tripod for the first time. It was fun, and I think I got a few good shots.

Last winter I took a photography class at the University of Utah. The instructor was really great. He worked at a camera store, so he knew a lot about the latest and greatest photography gadgets.

One of the items he recommended was called an ExpoDisk. I looked into getting one, and I actually went to his camera store once to buy one. The problem was I didn’t have my camera with me and I didn’t realize that they came in sizes.

A few weeks ago when Scott and I took the Photoshop class, I was back at the camera store. I decided to treat myself and I bought the ExpoDisk. The instructor of my Photoshop class said that it was the most amazing piece of photography equipment. His eyes lit up when he talked about it.

Today I saw why he was so excited.

I did a photo shoot for one of my friends, and I used it for the first time. It made such a huge difference! I was thrilled with the color balance of the shots that I used it for. I don’t have any before and after shots from today’s photo shoot, but I do have one that I took in my bedroom a few weeks ago.

The color in my house is really tricky. I have kind of caramel color walls, and they always trick my camera and the color comes out funky. The ExpoDisk totally did the trick.

Here is a shot I took using my camera’s auto white balance:

Here is the one with a custom white balance using the ExpoDisk:

It worked even better today at my photo shoot. I just wish I had used it a few more times while I was shooting. Since we took the photos at sunset, the light was constantly changing. One set of the photos had some really cute shots, but the white balance was off. It just means more editing. But the photo shoot was successful and I learned a few things.

One thing I will definitely do next time is use the ExpoDisk!

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Nora is ready to potty train. Actually she has been ready for at least a month.

The problem is, I don’t know if I am quite ready.

A few months ago I decided to get out the potty chair. I put it in the powder room. Nora loved it immediately. Right away she wanted to take off her diaper and sit on it. She proceeded to take off her diaper and sit on the potty about a thousand times a day, but she never did anything. Mostly she just wanted to sit there and play with the toilet paper.

A few weeks ago she started to get it, and she figured out how to pee on the potty. A few mornings I just left her diaper off and let her run around naked. She did pretty well at going to the potty when she needed to go.

Here in North Carolina we decided to get her a potty chair. Of course, she loved it. Every day she has been sitting on it and peeing every once in a while.

The last couple of days she has started to tell us when she has to poop too. It is so funny. She says “I poop it” over and over. It comes out sounding like I pooped, so we check her diaper and don’t find anything. Sure enough a few minutes later she poops. I finally figured out she tells me that before she has to go.

Today she had a big break through. She got up this morning and her diaper was really wet. I took off her pajamas and diaper and she got up and ran away. I decided to just let her run around naked for the morning. Every time she had to go she just went into the bathroom and did it herself. She came and got me once and saying “I did it! Come on.” She grabbed me by the hand and took me to the bathroom. I looked into her potty and she pooped! She was so proud of herself.

I left her diaper off until it was time for her nap, and she didn’t have any accidents. So, I am thinking it is finally time for me to bite the bullet and start potty training her. She is the earliest by almost a year of any of my kids. I kept thinking I should wait, and that it would be easier. But she is definitely ready. I guess a few weeks of running to every potty in sight will be worth it to have my last child out of diapers!

This trip to North Carolina I have been lucky. I have gotten to play more golf than I have in a long time.

The last time we were here, we finally found a babysitter that I trusted to watch the kids. She is a nanny a few days a week and we made plans to have her come here on her days off from her other job. It has been so nice. This is the first trip here in a long time that feels like a vacation for me, too.

Scott was here this past weekend. We got to play golf together on both Friday and Saturday, which hasn’t happened in a long time. This has been a really nice trip!

Sunday we took the kids over to the little practice area at the end of the driving range. It is the perfect place for the kids, and we can walk there from the house. Nora got her first taste of the golf course. We gave her a little club and she played with the golf balls. She liked playing on the putting green and trying to throw the ball into the hole.

It was amazing to see the progress Emma has made in her golf swing. A few months and a few golf clinics made a huge difference in her ability. The last time we were here she hit balls a few times. She would swing a couple of times, miss the ball quite often, and then sit in the golf cart and draw on the score card. This time it was like watching a different little girl. Her swing looked great, and she was making perfect contact with the ball. She hardly ever missed and she was getting most of her shots in the air. It was cute to see how proud of herself she was. She just kept hitting ball after ball and she was having fun doing it.

Ian got a little jealous of her progress. He hit balls for a little bit, but got frustrated when Emma was hitting the ball farther than him. He didn’t want to hit balls and ended up running around chasing bugs. Scott spent a little time with him, giving him some one on one attention, and Ian really enjoyed that. It helped get him motivated to hit a few more balls.

I am so happy that we are all able to spend time together here in North Carolina. This is such a perfect place for the kids to grow up playing golf.

I am going to be moving my blog host from Very Commerce to Liquid Web tonight. Hopefully everything will go smoothly. I apologize if my blog is down for a bit. See you on my new server

UPDATE: It looks like everything is working and the move went smoothly. I also upgraded WordPress, so please let me know if anything looks funny or isn’t working correctly.

Here are a few photos from our field trip to Crystal Pines Alpaca Farm. I tried really hard to pick out some shots that were not of my kids. I couldn’t resist the last one

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One of my mom’s friends here in North Carolina told her about Crystal Pines Alpaca Farm. We made a visit there today and it was really worth the time we spent. It is a working alpaca farm, with lots of other animals too.

The kids really had a fun time and I think we all learned something. The alpacas were extremely friendly and used to seeing people. As soon as we walked into the pasture they came right over to us. Ian was a little afraid of them, and I couldn’t convince him to feed them. Emma thought they were cute and she enjoyed feeding them.

Alpacas don’t have any top teeth, so they really can’t bite you. If you just hold your had out they use their lips and just scoop up the food. They are really soft and like having their backs rubbed. They explained how they shear the fur, and showed us how they hand spin it into yarn. We saw some of the products that the farm makes with the Alpaca fur like sweaters, hats and a few finger puppets. We bought Ian a really cute hat for the winter.

After we saw the Alpacas we got into the gator tractor and went for a drive to see the other animals. They had a lot of different varieties of chickens. They had a type of chicken that they called the “Martha Stewart Chicken” because they lay colored eggs. We were hoping to see some of the colored eggs, but we only found one brown egg.

They had one cow, Daisy, who was a Zebu cow. She was so cute, and incredibly friendly. She followed us all around the farm. At the end of the day on the way home in the car I asked Ian what his favorite part was and he said “Tickling the cow!”.

We all had a really nice time, and I would recommend anyone in the area visit the farm.