October=love

October is my favorite month of the year. I love when the weather turns cooler, slippers are permanent fixtures on my feet, the leaves turn all shades of pretty, and sometimes when I'm lucky my Red Sox are in the playoffs (yet another reason why Sept. was a terrible month this year). Anyway, I thought I'd share a few pictures of our beautiful fall that we've been having. I miss New England the most in the fall, but Boise really does fill the void pretty well. I am loving Boise more and more then longer we stay here. I took this picture off of Wikipedia because I thought it was a very pretty picture of downtown in the fall. 

Before I moved to Boise I had never been here. I didn't know much about it and really had no desire to come here. Idaho was just never on our radar. Not because we thought there was anything wrong with it, we had just never considered moving here and thought it was a lot different than it actually is. I'll share a couple facts I've learned about Boise since moving here in a shameless attempt to recruit visitors/friends to come live by us:  :) 

1. Boise is also called the "City of Trees" and you will see why from these pictures. 

2. Population of Boise is around 205,000 but the metropolitan area around Boise houses 615,000. 

3. The weather is actually really mild. When I thought of Idaho I thought of crazy long winters. Turns out Boise has a very mild climate with 4 distinct seasons. It sits at 2,700 feet which is about 1,500 feet lower than Salt Lake City. The weather is similar to Denver's in that it can be very erratic. In the summer we have days that get over 100 degrees but it still cools off at night a great deal. The Winters are also pretty mild. On average snow falls don't accumulate over 3 inches at a time. Last year we shoveled one time and even then it had melted by the afternoon! 

4.  Boise school district has great schools with several high schools listed in the Newsweek Best High School categories. 

5. The Greenbelt. 20+ miles of a combination of paved and trail that goes along the Boise River. The Boise River also is a popular spot for fishing, rafting, etc. 

6. We are 45 min. to an hour from skiing and within a couple hours are several mountain ranges with beautiful hiking and camping areas. (we don't actually own camping equipment yet, but it's on our list of things to get try...haha!) 

7. The people are wonderful. Boise itself actually has a lot less members of our faith then we thought. It seems they all move out to Meridian (a suburb), but that's okay with me. I like the diversity. Our Primary actually has about 20 kids TOTAL and that's if they all came on the same day. 

8. Clean air, blue skies, and white puffy clouds---Jared's favorite! 

Newly discovered:

Tablerock. You can hike it or drive it, and since I had some time constraints we drove it. That and the thought of taking the boys on a hike up there by myself makes me a little nervous! The boys LOVED it and it was really fun to see Boise from this vantage point. That's the Boise State football stadium in the middle. 

Downtown Boise. (These next few pictures I actually took in the morning because I drove my Dad up before he left for the airport. So excuse the fog. It burnt off about noon)

Looking towards the airport.

The main reason I brought the boys up there was to watch this:

They loved it and we had a lot of fun. It's Brody's turn in pre-school to take home "Buddy Bear" so he came with us to Tablerock.

It was a little cold... ha! Poor guy.

The cold was finally getting to him. 

We heard some coyotes while we were up there. Brody tried to get a better listen:

Then my camera died, so one last one taken on my cell phone:

Anyone wanna come visit me now?! :)

Dreaming...

Not sure if you've noticed but I like to take pictures (ha!). A lot. Not because I want to become a professional photographer, but because I want to capture my kid's faces as much as possible now because someday they'll be all grown up and I don't want to forget what they were like when they were little. There's something about little children that makes you smile. Now that Parker's entering his two's and getting more opinionated I like to look back at his baby pictures and remember what a sweet, happy baby he was. When he's a teenager I'm sure I'm going to want to look back at his 2 year old pictures and remember what a funny kid he was. Somehow I think it helps me remember the person underneath the behavior and that makes the behaviors more manageable. Sorry, that's probably my psychology background coming out. I think pictures can be powerful. One of my favorite things to photograph is peaceful scenery and beautiful homes. It makes me happy. One of the things on my i-need-to-start-seriously-saving-my-pennies list is a nice camera. I'm grateful for the one I have as it does the trick usually, but I was shown this week how a nicer camera can capture a small activity so much better. My cute friend Lisa just got one and even though I have no idea how to use the thing it was amazing! haha She sent me these pictures and I love them all so much more than the ones I took that I wanted to share. Thank you so much Lisa for taking them! :) So, even though you've already seen pictures from this little excursion here you go:

 My personal favorite:

Snuggle Bums

 Anyone ever wish blog posts had "like" buttons like Facebook for when you "like" a post but don't always know what to say about it? This apparently is one of those posts/pictures for me because I "love" it actually, but can't come up with anything super exciting to say about it. So, here you go. Just a picture of my boys, taken on a cell phone camera that illustrates part our daily life and makes me smile. Feel free to "like" it. 

Catch-up and Fall Fun!

I have been seriously lacking in the blogging department lately because I didn't think I had much to blog about. However, when I just uploaded my new pictures from my camera there were about 40! So this post is going to have quite a few pictures--again! Things around our house have been crazy as usual. My boys are growing like crazy, Jared is extremely busy, and I'm just trying to keep my head above water while enjoying it all. I'll have better posts about my boys pretty soon as Parker's 2nd birthday is right around the corner! Since this post is going to be picture intensive, let's get to it. 

First of all I didn't post some pictures from our trip to CA last month because I was waiting to send a couple to Jared's Papa for his birthday this week and I wanted them to be a surprise. One of my boys' favorite things to do at their house is feed the deer so I tried to get some better pictures of the action:

 The little deer don't bother me much, but we only let them look through the screen door at this guy: (not sure if you can see it well, though!)

 Parker man with his buddy, Papa Donn:

 Brody getting attacked by the "leg monster"!

 Just a few pictures from around the house in our monkey costume. Halloween lasts all October for us! haha

 Brody wanted to see if he could still wear it. haha!

 I'll write more about this in my Parker post but one of Parker's new things is talking/playing/making friends with his stuffed animals. This Curious George had to read books with us, play games with us, and when I went into his room yesterday he was singing to Curious George. Here he's giving him snuggles: :)

 The boys and I went to the pumpkin patch with our wonderful friends Lisa, Blake, and Isaac. My boys absolutely love her boys and I think Lisa is one of the sweetest people I know and we always have a good time. Parker especially loves Lisa and Blake. He asks to go to their house frequently and picks out the car Lisa drives on the road constantly saying, "Lisa!! Blake!!" He tried to keep up with the big boys doing everything they did including holding Blake's hand in line. 

Parker, Blake, Brody

 I think this is the only one we got with all 4 of them! Brody, Isaac, Parker, and Mr. Blake in his cool sunglasses!

 I thought Mimi and Katie would especially love this. Brody wasn't real excited to go on a pony ride so we just watched Blake and Isaac go. I really didn't think Parker would want to either so imagine my surprise when Blake and Isaac were done and he said, "My turn!" I asked if he wanted to ride the pony and he said, "Yeah!" He LOVED it! He patted it and called it by it's name, "Joker". Excuse our funny faces. The sun was really bright!

 He held onto the saddle like a pro. :)

 Barrel train ride. Notice the school colors of the barrels. I could do a whole post on the craziness of Boise State fans also!

 I actually rode the barrels with Parker because I was afraid he'd try to climb out. We tried a self-portrait:

 I just love this picture of my cute friend Lisa. We were laughing because we kept trying to take pictures and on the moving barrels were having a tough time!

 This guy loved it!

 The big boys and the little boys both wrestled each other in the bounce house. They are all becoming such boys!

 Hayride through the pumpkin patches:

 This brow still cracks me up. He was very concerned about all the pumpkins we were running over and all the broken ones he saw.

 Our cute friends. We just love them! We went to the park with them today and Brody and Blake just ran around, found some sticks, discussed some snails, and found a dog to play with. It's so fun to watch them be little buddies. I love how similar Blake and Isaac look even though their coloring is totally different. They are going to be heartbreakers for sure!

 We also braved the corn maze even though we were a little worried about losing our kiddos. We spent the majority of the time chasing them to make sure we didn't get separated! The boys laughed and laughed, though. They had a ball!

 Parker and Isaac didn't really want to stop to have their picture taken, but these were our two attempts:

 Parker gives good hugs. :)

 I believe I told him I'd give him a treat if he took a picture with me. That's the happiest face he could give me. haha! 

 This one was a lot better! Apparently we just needed Blake to play peek a boo to get my boys to smile!

 Jumping off hay in his boots:

 Parker man now jumps off of EVERYTHING. Including hay:

 Have I mentioned yet that we call him our crazy child/adrenaline junkie?! He's constantly amazing us with what he attempts and how tough he is. 

 Finally, a smile!

Mr. Cowboy Brody

 Today we took advantage of the beautiful weather and spent a few hours at the park. The first 30-40 minutes was spent like this:

 What are they looking at?! This was going on at the park:

 They would both laugh everytime the dirt was emptied into the dump truck. Since "excavator" is one of Parker's favorite words, he was in heaven! This serious face is similar to his brother's. He inspects everything just like Brody. He now picks out combines, nissans, hondas, semi trucks, glass rack trucks (random I know!), dump trucks, fire engines, "UPS" trucks, garbage trucks, etc. If it moves, he studies it. Jared's mom gave the boys an A-Z "things that go" book and we've read it about 1,000 times!

 It'll be a sad sad day for me when he won't let me kiss those cheeks anymore!

One last one because it makes me smile. :)

Lastly, a little video of Parker man. Our Primary Program at church is on Sunday so Brody has been practicing "I Am a Child of God" since that's what the Sunbeams are singing. Well, Parker has learned right along with him and it'll be interesting to see if Parker breaks out in song from his seat with Daddy. The jury is still out on if Brody will actually sing in Sacrament. We've had practices the last two weeks. The first week Brody and the other Sunbeams sang every word and made all of us ladies cry. Last week they hardly sang one word. It'll be interesting! Brody wouldn't sing on video (yet) but I did get Parker to sing for me one night when putting him to bed. He likes to sing with us now when we sing songs to him in bed. It's one of my most treasured parts of the day. The last few weeks seem to have been tough for us just because we've had a lot going on, but every night Jared and I really do sit and talk about how much we love our little boys. They aren't perfect and we have our days that seem neverending but I'm grateful for their sweet smiles and their reminders to slow down a little. This video is a little small, but on my computer you can make it full screen. It's tough to see, but hopefully you can hear it anyway. It may just be Grandmas and Grandpas that enjoy it, but I hope it makes you smile. He loves to watch this video of himself, so here you go Parker!

Have a great weekend!