in the name of accurately portraying what our picture sessions really look like… just keepin’ it real…  😉

so this year… mikey wanted to be a ucla football player!  (he’s been VERY in to football this season.  mostly because his daddy has had more time this year to do things like watch football with his son.  it’s been really, really fun to see them bond this way). and allie was our ucla cheerleader girl! and lauren?  well, she was our sassy ucla cheerleader girl. she really does just play by her own rules. and this is about when she said, “mommy, i’m too wittle and fweezing out here.” but, but, i had to get a pic of the special mommy-made hairbows first! our three baby bruins. and as…

for our latest fun friday, we carved our pumpkins! but because i still had to count it as a school day, we did a bit o’ learning first.  i threw together a little “pumpkin fun” sheet the kids had to fill out first.  it included estimating the weight of the pumpkin… he initially guessed 400 pounds.  then amended it to 40 pounds.  it was actually 8 pounds. my awesome last-minute pumpkin sheet done a few minutes beforehand. 😉  the kids estimated the weight, circumference, used our five senses to describe the pumpkin, and then drew a sketch of the face they wanted to carve. even the little one got a…

we visited the pumpkin patch at tanaka family farms a couple of weeks ago.  i had grand plans to get nice, fallish pictures of each of the kids there. turns out, kids don’t give a hoot about posing for nice, fallish pictures when there’s a corn maze involved. what is it about corn mazes that prompt every little kid to take off running, leaving me in the dust? well, every little kid except for this one.  she consented to be my corn maze buddy and was happy to stay put.  as long as she got to hold on to her baby pumpkin. daddy handed it to her soon after we…

so like i said before, we didn’t go out much while on vacation in arizona.  no need to when the house kept us plenty entertained. except for one little outing.  some might call it a field trip.  others would have it on their bucket list.  we figured we might as well since we were in the state and all… it involved a train. and it was headed to the… and we tsais were on it! daddy bought us seats in the part of the train that included complimentary refreshments for the two-hour ride.  the kids thought these were chocolate muffins.  they were bran.  they ate half of ’em anyway.  and…