Happy Halloween!

From Lily the cow, Rosie the scary ghost and Daisy the little mouse!

I wasn't sure how we were going to handle Halloween this year considering most of the candy collected most likely wouldn't be gluten and dairy free. I had wanted to plan some kind of a party with healthy fun snacks, costumes and games... but like I have time for that! So after sometime pondering the dilemma, I came up with the idea to have the kids trick or treat and collect all the candy they could, bring it home and count it up and use it to buy some fun toys from me with it! It was a win win for all of us. They had fun trick or treating, didn't consume hoards of sugar or wheat or dairy, got a fun new toy, and I have a whole bag of chocolate to eat after they go to bed!!!!

Gerald McBoing-Boing

Multitasking

To see all the pics, click here!

A fun fall family day!

Rich is on vacation all this week, so we are spending lots of time together trying to fit in those last outdoor activities before winter. We had a wonderful day Sunday at Historic Bowens Mill. If you're looking for anything fall and fun to do, I highly recommend it!


Lily loved the one room school house. We are reading the Little House books to the girls right now and they were so excited to see firsthand what Mary and Laura Ingalls school was probably like, bonnets and lunch pails and all!


Rosie is especially interested in animals right now and was so happy to pet them all! Daisy is also very excited whenever she see's animals. You should have heard her squealing!


I have been trying so hard for the last few weeks to get a good shot of all three of my girls together, but they are making things very difficult! They are so cute though!

Click here to see the rest of the photos from our day!

School Pictures

What goofy girls! I can't believe they are both in school!


I think we may do retakes for Lily. It's a cute picture, but something about her posture doesn't seem right. Rosie has a whole new range of facial expressions lately, all very animated.

Fall photos

Here are some photos I took of the girls the other day in this beautiful fall weather. We have been spending as much time as we can outside, trying to soak it all in while we can.

It's very hard to get a photo of Daisy lately, she just doesn't stop moving now that she can walk and she is so serious when she is exploring!

We have been inside for the last couple days though. Lily came down with a sudden case of Pneumonia Sunday night. We ended up in the ER till about 7am. They gave her an injection of an antibiotic and sent us home with an oral Rx. She is doing much better today. Please pray that she would continue to recover quickly.

Family Portraits and Christmas Cards

I have been shooting a bit lately and thought I would share:

This is one of my favorite families to work with! I designed some Christmas cards for them again this year:

If you're in need of a family photo, or your interested in having some Christmas cards designed, let me know! Photographs are such a nice gift, so much better than anything you can buy in Walmart! Christmas is going to be here before you know it! Some other great gift ideas,

I also scan old photographs and design photobooks, calendars and DVD slideshows:

This is a photograph of my grandparents' wedding. My grandmother and her sister married two brothers in a double wedding!

Needless to say, I spend a lot of time on the computer and I am afraid I have worn the poor thing out. It's been acting up lately so I am going to send it in. Apple claims that their turn around time for repairs is only 4-6 days. I sure hope that's true! I don't know if I can go 4-6 hours without it!

Last Farm Work Weekend of the Year!

Thank you to all of you who have made it out to the farm this summer to work and support us! We really appreciate it!

We are planning one last weekend out at the farm Oct 17-19th since the cold weather isn't far off. We would love it if you could join us for a little work, some food and some celebrating! If you haven't made it out to see the farm yet, this is your chance! And it is so beautiful right now with all the fall colors. If you would like to stay out one night or two, let us know and we can figure out a place for you to stay. Otherwise even if you only have a few hours during the weekend, please stop by and see what going on! We will be out there from Friday night until Sunday afternoon. Most of the work that needs to be done is in the house and we will plan on working even if the weather is bad. It would be great if you could drop us a line to let us know if you are planning on coming so we know who to expect.

We will be having a potluck dinner and farm/community conversation on Saturday evening around 6pm!

We are still in need of some estimates and help with plumbing and electrical work, so if you know anyone, send them our way.

Here is a link to a map of the farm's location at the intersection of 36th and Quiggle. We are looking forward to seeing you!

Obama in Grand Rapids

After dropping Rosie off at preschool this morning, Daisy and I jumped on the number 6 bus to Calder plaza to catch a glimpse of presidential candidate Barack Obama. Amy and her girls and Kathy and her boys and I met up with Brian and his boys down there and we had quite a party with the other 16,000 people who came out. Even though I am still committed to not voting (No, I am really not voting. I suppose you want an explanation. So the simplest way I can put it is to say that I do not beleive in the political system of this empire and I do not want to align myself with it in any way. I am choosing to place my hope in the Slaughtered Lamb. But that's something for a whole nother blog post, not the parenthesis...) I am glad I went because I recognize that it is history in the making and I am always up for a seeing a big crowd gather in my city.

Here we are right after we got off the bus:

Yes, we did come to hear Obama, I don't know what all these people were doing. It was at this intersection that we realized that we needed to go left!

Rich took some of his clients down and somehow ended up being seated by the secret service right behind Barack! Check out the video if you don't believe me! You can see his head right in the bottom left corner! He even got to shake his hand!

Rich also did open mike night at the comedy club tonight at the Bob. People think he is so funny. I'd probably think he was funnier, but he told a joke about me and he talks about poop...

What a day!

Rats and toads

We have Rats! Yes we have two rats in our house, they live in the bathroom. Their names are Harriette and Rita and they are our new pets (because we needed more animals!). Lily picked out a special breed of rat called a hairless rat and just like the name implies, she has no hair. She kind of so ugly she's cute! She's the one sticking her nose up in the picture above. Rich and Lily wanted to name her Hairy to be funny, but I talked them into Harriette since she's a girl. Here's a photo of her:
Rosie picked out Rita, the gray one on the left in the first photo. She is a sweet little thing who loves attention. She often hangs out on Rich's shoulder or in his pocket!

They are very friendly and the kids love them, they are actually good pets for little kids. Daisy spends alot of time watching them during the day and the girls look forward to holding them in the evening before we go to bed.


We did have to displace the toads in order to make room for the rats. We had long talks about toad hibernation. It took a while for Lily to come to terms with it, but when she was ready we made two toad houses in the garden complete with swimming pools! We just buried a clay pot and lined the bottom with dirt and leaves. We made one big house for the two big toads:

They seem to like it and hopefully they stick around.

and one little house for the two little toads.
Look closely and you'll see one of the little toads: