schnepf farms

here we are at schnepf farms 2 years ago. look how little my lily was! and topher and that bald giant noggin! so precious.

i am at 36 weeks, so from now til i have this baby, expect lots of 'flashback' pics cause i am feeling mighty nostalgic and sentimental!

anyhoo, thursday morning the kids, barb, and i headed down to queen creek to go to schnepf farms. it was great fun, if only it hadn't been 95 degrees that day. where are you autumn?!?!?!

i believe the farm is only open thursdays-sundays. and it's $15 per person (ages 2 and younger are free) which is kind of steep. which is probably why we didn't go last year... but it's $12 if you get your tickets at Fry's, but they also have 2-for-1 coupons on SRPs' website, or attached to your SRP bill. you can only use it on thursdays in october, which means this thursday is your last chance to use that coupon, so if you want to go- go this week! and it's actually supposed to dip WAY down to 82 degrees by the end of the week! yeah fall weather!!

you can go to the farm for relatively cheap, after you actually get through the gate, but we dropped more money on the train ride and pony rides. whatev. we probably won't go next year, so we were living it up big time this year :)
the petting zoo is free, and the kids had lots of fun in the also-free playground. we also managed to watch some pigs and goats racing which was pretty funny and out of the ordinary. all in all, a great time was had by all, and the kids walked away with pumpkins that they got to pick from pumpkin patch themselves. (for a small price of $2 per pumpkin.)

here are pics of our great day: (i have also included one pic of me in all my very pregnant glory.)

more chris love

my beautiful husband is in hawaii right now. and i am not. sadness! he is in paradise for a friend's wedding. i would have gone too if i wasn't 35 weeks and 5 days pregnant. us and our timing! boo... but because i miss him, i am dedicating another post to him.

on monday, chris' day off, he got called in to work. he left the house at 5:30am and did not return until about 11pm. that's a lot of overtime! thanks for that Jesus. a lot of that time was spent sitting around and waiting and watching. not that fun. for a normal person, working 17 hours does not make for a great day. but chris' day ended off with him tackling an unaware criminal who was so surprised that he peed himself. chris got pee on his jeans as well, and this made for a great day at work. so gross. so crazy.

speaking of chris' work, if you think about it, chris sounds a lot like a marvel superhero. he even has a kinda secret identity. but he goes off in his special car and fights crime and puts bad guys in jail. a lot like, say batman. and chris has actually convinced our poor son that he is in fact batman. topher is really into superheroes and really into his dad, so having his dad be a superhero is a major bonus.
me: "topher, who is spiderman when he isn't spiderman?"
topher: "peter parker."
me: "who is ironman when he sisn't ironman?"
topher: "tony starks."
me: "who is batman when he isn't batman?"
topher: "my dad."
no joke. chris has really brainwashed this boy!

lastly, i showed this picture to lily a few days ago:

it's a picture of lily and her cousin zoe.
i guess lily hasn't seen this picture in awhile, even though we go through old pictures fairly regularly. zoe lives in alabama now, and lily hasn't seen her cousin in over a year.
anyway, when we look through pictures, we always play the "who is in this picture?" game. so, i asked lily when we looked at this picture, who was in it. lily looks and says: "there's me, and there's dad's other baby."
i have never before heard lily make the distinction that daddy is caucasian and i am asian. but she fully thought that this caucasian kid in the picture was her dad's. so hilarious. and so wrong for so many different reasons.

man i love my kids and i love my husband! come back home soon chris!

the worst gift in the world

a few months ago, my dear friend mary beth decided to buy her hubby a groupon for sky diving. she didn't want him to have to go alone, and there was no way she was going to go with him, so she asked if my crazy husband would be interested in joining in on the fun. and of course my crazy hubby said yes. so i bought a groupon too.

chris has been sky diving before- in argentina before he went to antarctica. if he was going to die sky diving, it probably would have been there. he was in a foreign country, he was up in a rickety old plane, and who knew if his pack had a chute or a bunch of burritos. fortunately there was a chute. and it worked.

so chris and jeff ventured off to maricopa to get on a plane, only to jump out of it. they were both pretty excited.



mary beth and i joked about living together if they should happen to die. but surely, they would not die. lots of people go sky diving all the time and don't die. except for this 75 year old lady who went sky diving last week. she and her instructor died as both their primary and emergency chutes did not work. i only found out about this tragedy after chris' jump.

anyhoo, i went to church with the kids and i texted chris to text me when he landed safely back on earth. he texted me (praise Jesus!) but this is what he wrote:

"my first chute exploded so we had to use the emergency chute. i'm fine though."

omg people. chris is a major jokester, but i knew that he would not joke about that (he's trying harder to not play jokes on people that result in tears.) so all morning i kept thinking about how i almost killed my husband with this gift that i had bought for him. the WORST GIFT IN THE WORLD. it's like buying someone a pet shark. or a live grenade. or something equally horrible and dangerous. the bottom line: do not buy someone you love, or even like, a the gift of sky diving- aka almost dying.

Dogtober

this month has so far been over run with four-legged animals.

our friends, the vogts, went on the disney cruise last week, so we had the pleasure of watching their gigantic english mastiff, mally. if you've been a reader for a while, you know that mally actually used to be our dog. so we really couldn't say no when they asked us to watch her. the kids were happy to have her here. so was chris. pug was so happy he peed all over the living room, again. and as for me... whatev. dogs are not my favorite things in the world.

here's a picture of lily feeding mally. mally is a big big girl. this picture does not do her girth justice:


and even though dogs are not my favorite things, you would think they were cause i actually made a halloween costume for pug. there is a fun thing that the city/town of gilbert puts on every year called Barktober. supercute. especially if you really like dogs. my kids really like dogs, and my friend lainey really likes dogs, so we go, almost every year with lainey and her two dogs. this year chris tagged along, which was awesome, as did pug.

topher really wanted pug to be a superhero, and i saw these ridiculously cute superhero costumes at Old Navy, but was not about to drop $20 on a costume for my dog, so i made a super-ghetto version of the Old Navy costume using felt. i spent less than $1 on three pieces of felt. that's a great deal! i actually had a ton of fun making the costume, and also had a ton of fun hanging out with my friend, my family, and my crazy dog at Barktober:

the magic of felt and an old t-shirt (for the cape)


batman-pug


batman-topher and batman-pug


lily and lainey and grendel and griffin (who were dressed up as converse shoes. super cute!)

woody, toaster, eating mia

monday morning, robert and lindsay headed out of town, leaving their three little monkey children behind. i am so happy for them! they really needed a break. they come back tomorrow and i am looking forward to hearing about all the sleep that they got, and all the hot food they got to eat that they didn't cook. a giant village of people stepped up to do what robert and lindsay do with the three kids every day and night. i had a very short shift from monday to tuesday. i started off with just emma, which was nice cause chris took lily to ballet, so just topher and i hung out with emma and it was quiet, and calm, and lovely.

then lily, topher, emma and i headed to the other watson house where gabe and corban were napping. when the boys woke up from their nap, chaos ensued, but it was a very manageable chaos. having the five kids awake together for an hour was ok, but had it been for much longer, who knows what would have happened. but it reminded me of my incredible mother, because the age range from lily to emma is about the same from my sister to my twin brothers. how my mom had five kids, raised them, and didn't kill any of them is amazing. props to you mama ham! you are amazing.

anyhoo, corban, who is 2, is hilarious. he has this hilarious little voice and speaks in an interesting way. he is much easier to understand now than he was about 3 months ago, but he still says things in his own way. for instance, i just noticed this week that he calls lily 'woody' and topher 'toaster'. it has made me laugh all week just thinking about it. i love that crazy kid.

then yesterday i went to the hospital to see my beautiful friend cindy who just had her second baby girl. so awesome! praise Jesus. i will do a separate post about that later. but i brought lily and topher to the hospital with me, and my superpregnant friend erin had her son, greyson, with her, so we took turns visiting our friend and waiting in the lobby with the kids. great times! when i came out from my visit with the brantons, the kids and erin were looking into the nursery where a little newborn was under the uv lights, wearing tanning goggles, and chillin like a villain. so cute. lily loved it!

when chris got home, she told him all about it. this is their conversation:
lily: "we saw a tiny ittle baby and it was wearing sunglasses and it was so cute!"
chris: "when mia comes out of mommy's belly she will be that small too. and then you guys can meet her. aren't you so excited to meet mia?"
lily: speechless. look of horror on her face.
chris: "aren't you excited to meet mia? your baby sister?"
lily: "what??? we can't EAT mia! she's my baby sister!"
chris: "i didn't say EAT. i said MEET. we will not eat your baby sister."

i love little kids cause they say, and i guess hear, the darndest things :)


ps. have i ever mentioned before that we are naming our baby Mia Joelle? maybe i have, maybe i haven't... i'm losing my mind... if i haven't- now you know!