Scenes from the Weekend

Last weekend we celebrated Lydia's (my niece and Claire's BFF) 2nd birthday.  I am still so glad my sister and I had our girls so close.  They are the BEST little friends.  They both get so excited to see each other and they love playing together.  Since neither of them have sisters of their own yet, having each other is the next best thing.

Claire & Lydia giving each other hugs goodbye.  I can't even handle how cute they are together.

The party was a fun little get together in my sister's backyard.  It was perfect for the kids to run around and play.  We got to eat yummy cake & ice cream, no bake cookies, and rice crispy treats.  And as much I don't want to rush Claire turning 2 years old, it did get me really excited to throw her another birthday party.

I'm still over here making anything and everything out of the copious amounts of apples we have.  So far I've made applesauce, dried 2 batches of apples, and apple butter.  I think next I'm going to try to bottle some apple pie filling.  

A few shots of Claire from one of our walks just because she's so darn cute.

I took this picture on the official first day of fall.  The leaves are starting to change color and fall off the trees, but to my dismay it still isn't feeling much like fall.  Hopefully we'll get crisp cool weather for good soon and no more of this back and forth stuff from mother nature!

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Unrelated to the picture but something I need to write down before I forget.  Yesterday, I was singing 'Moves like Jagger' to Claire.  I asked can you sing it?  She looked at me and said, "Moooooo..... cow!".  Close enough.  :)

"A portrait of my daughter once a week, every week, in 2015."

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Claire is exactly 20 months old in this picture.  She will be 2 years old before I know it!

"A portrait of my daughter once a week, every week, in 2015."

Apple Picking

We woke up to cloudy skies and cool air blowing through our windows this morning.  There was a tiny bit of fall crispness in the air, and it got me far too excited than I should admit.  After breakfast and cleaning up the house I took Claire and Rory outside to pick apples with me. 

Claire was an eager little helper.

At first Claire kept picking up all of the fallen apples on the ground that were mostly rotten, and wanted to put those in our basket.  I decided it would probably be best if we cleaned up the apples off of the ground first so we hauled a garbage can over and went to work cleaning up the ground around the apple tree.  Once the ground was free of all the rotten apples I was able to start picking some.  We started with a small bagful and I am planning on making some crockpot applesauce to try to convince Claire to finally like it.  I'm hoping to pick more this week to dry a batch of apples to keep on hand for snacks and maybe bottle some apple pie filling.  I'm going to scour pinterest and see what other apple recipes I can find to try out.  Fall baking season is my favorite :).

New Family Pictures

Last weekend we decided to take some new family pictures.  We just did some in the spring but Bryce hated how long his hair was in all of those so we decided to take them again to try and get some we were both happy with.  I found this dress earlier this summer and thought it would be perfect for pictures.  The first time I tried to buy it it sold out, so I waited a few more weeks and snatched it up when it finally came back in stock.  I got Claire's dress for her 18 month pictures & my little brother's wedding and it matched perfectly so we just had to get Bryce a new button up to match the color scheme.  Here are my favorites, but you can see the full post at my photography blog kamileishmanphotography.blogspot.com

Last bonfire of Summer

Sunday night we snuck away to the mountains for one last bonfire for the end of Summer.  We had originally planned on camping over night but I woke up with a sore throat and cold Sunday morning and did not feel like tossing & turning, blowing my nose in a tent all night.  We decided to still go up for dinner and then just come home late that night.  We went up to my family's property up Deep Creek in Morgan with my sister and her family. 

Claire was way excited she got to spend the evening with her cousin Lydia.  They are the cutest little friends and play so well together.  Laci and I both love watching them together.
I accidentally dropped something in the hole on top of this giant wire spool and it took a good ten minutes to figure out how to get it out.  So of course I had to take a picture of the boys hard at work ;).

Roasting hot dogs

Family shot!

Happy little campers!

We ate roasted hot dogs, s'mores, seven layer dip, and pumpkin snickerdoodles.  It was actually pretty cold when the sun started going down and I loved it.  The air had the crispness of fall I've been waiting for all year.  Now that we celebrated the end of summer and Labor Day is over, I'm really, really ready for Fall.  My favorite season can't come soon enough!

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This week's portrait is from our evening at City Creek.  Claire's newest thing is to cover her mouth, gasp, and whisper "Wow!"  whenever she sees something that amazes her.

"A portrait of my daughter once a week, every week, in 2015."

City Creek

Last Friday night we decided to take Claire to City Creek for a little family outing.  We haven't been there since before she could walk so we thought it would be fun to let her run around and see the fountains and everything. She loved it!  She was clapping, squealing, and running around everywhere.  It was fun to see how excited she was!
This is one of Claire's latest new things.  She covers her mouth, gasps, and then whispers "Wow!"  She's learned her melodramatics from watching all the Tinkerbell movies one too many times ;).  
After playing outside for a good while we meandered our way down to the Disney store.  I've been trying to decide between a few different ideas for Halloween costumes and I wanted to show Claire a Tinkerbell one, since she loves Tinkerbell so much, to see if she would get it or not.  As soon as we walked in she kept excitedly pointing to all of the princesses shouting "Sincess!"  

Playing in the dress up station

Checking out all the stuffed animals

We took her to the Tinkerbell section and showed her a Tinkerbell doll.  She was pretty excited about it at first but then she just wanted to get down and keep exploring.  We showed her a costume too, but she didn't really react like she understood what it was so I think we'll wait and save a Tinkerbell costume for next year when she gets it a little more.  I have a few other ideas I've been contemplating for Halloween anyway so that just helped me make up my mind.

After playing at the Disney store for a while we went to the food court and Bryce picked Chinese food for dinner.  We finished dinner and then let Claire play around by the fountains one last time before heading home.  It was such a fun evening.  I love spending nights like this with my little family.