sabbatical from the blog ends

i believe i said something about life calming down a little once summer ended. i was wrong!!! so today, with rain streaming down the window panes and hayden wreaking havoc at preschool, i figured i had a moment to do some updating. donnavan's only been checking daily to see if i have updated the blog yet, so this is for you donnavan...

a man who has the most amazing face in the world

who loves to be tough but really is the most gentle and caring soul i've ever met

who would do anything for his wife and children (including dishes and taking care of the kids while his wife has a meltdown and takes a break from it all)

who i love forever and ever and ever.

so the real reason that donnavan wanted to see the new blog so badly is that we have had a very monumental occasion in our relationship. donnavan and i went hunting for the first time. yes, it was both mine and donnavan's first time hunting. now those of you who know donnavan may be a little perplexed by this statement. i mean, this is the man who was born wearing camo. who shot his first gun before he could walk. so let me explain myself. yes, donnavan has shot many an animal but hunted them he has not. unless you would be willing to call hunting: seeing a moose off your back porch, jumping up, grabbing your rifle, running out the back door barefoot and in your underwear, and making your shot.

(okay, just so donnavan doesn't kill me, i better tell you that i may have exaggerated this last portion slightly)

here is my great hunter!

here i am with my great hunter. i must admit, for a girl who didn't handle her first gun until she was 25 and cried everytime she watched bambi, i really enjoyed hunting. (that may have had to do with the fact that we didn't actually shoot anything :)) all in all it was a really awesome 12 mile hike.

for fear of writing a post that could compete in length to novels such as les miserables, i will only include two other autumn activites.

now "she plans her time well" will probably never be a phrase written or said about me. i tend to try to squeeze every last drop out of my day. sometimes it's worth it... but not usually. ikaika's first birthday was the perfect example of my overplanning skills. we had planned a family birthday party for him starting at 6:00 in the evening. preparing for that alone probably should have filled up my day. but oh, that wasn't enough for me. for a long time we had been planning to go to the pumpkin fields with our dear friends, the coon family. the only possible day to do it fell on kai's birthday. not just on his birthday but we planned to leave at 2:00 in the afternoon. with the pumpkin fields over an hour away, you can do the math. luckily, everything worked out perfectly and we'd never miss an outing with the coons.

this is kai on his first birthday. luckily he did not at all seem bothered by my overplanning.

here is the coon's maddy (better known as hayden's future wife).

the last two pictures i took at a costume birthday party for hayden's cousin kali. seriously, this amazing party tannea (kali's mom) put together would be enough to make any mother there want to hire tannea for their next child's party. Included in the package was: one homemade doll cake, hand painted princess decorations that looked as if they were done by disney himself, and invitations printed on the wrapper of chocolate bars. most importantly, the kids had a blast. awesome job tannea!!

(can you find hayden in this picture?)