Natures Best Disguise

Look at this seemingly cute rodent-um squirrel, I mean. Now take everything you think you know about squirrels and throw it out the window-NOW. Because they aren't cute, they are not dumb or simple. They are rodents! Too smart for their own good! When an animal is smart it somehow takes away their cuteness-you find yourself wanting to see them fail when they try and climb up a quarter inch pole and you don't want to see them figure out how to get into your "squirrel proof" bird feeders. Nature has disguised the big yellow buck teeth and long skinny gross tail of the rat and stuck on a BIG furry tail and big cute eyes and teeth that can't be seen-unless they are chewing apart YOUR birdfeeder! Don't be fooled any of you, they are only rats in disguise!

What the camera can't capture here is the feeder is spinning very quickly, about to throw off the rat-um squirrel. But somehow the rat figures out how to slow it down by hanging upside down-it somehow works for a bit-then it starts spinning out of control again with the weight of the large rodent until it ultimately tosses the squirrel off-which I captured (a personal feat of mine) in the next picture.

Here is um Mr. Rat-a-tat-squirrel as I like to call him. We know he's a male because, well you can see IT in the candid nude shot (down 2-for you squirrel fiends)

This is natures best FEMALE disguise-she is the cleverest of the two-no surprise here-that's usually how it is. Look at the way she twines her body in the bird feeder-which has now morphed into the "Rat Feeder"

Here is the lovely couple out for their daily terrorizing of the feeders in the Henley neighborhood. They set a personnel record yesterday-eating out the newly filled feeders in under 10 minutes flat! Amazing, I'm calling National Geographic! This ones for you mom!

Pretty Girls

Trent and I were messing around with these cute pictures of the girls. Which one do you like the best? If your lucky you might be getting the favorite for a Christmas card!

HALLOWEEEEEEEEEN!

Halloween, the scariest, bestest, awesomest, funnerest time of year!!! Especially at our house with 2 witches and their cat!

The scariest witch of all-she doesn't even need to pretend (when she starts to get tired) She really did make a great witch with her CRAZY hair.

My man-He's like a fine wine-he gets better with age. I just love the new tat

the hood heading down the street.

Trent with the girls

We really do have a great neighborhood. It was a lot of fun to go trick-or-treating all together last night

The exhausted, tired one-after a lot of witching activities-

Night Out

Look it's Ashley Simpson!!! She does look like her doesn't she?


Anywho... last night I went out for my good friend's birthday-Chelsea-(she bottom picture) It was a much needed night out with JUST adults. We had a great time at this new restaurant called Grazie's in Wexford (for those of you from around here-you should definitly try it).

This is a picture with all of us-everybody but me works at Chelsea's salon-some fun women!

We striked some poses-trying to act like we're all young again(not nearing 30) well exect for Tiah, oh I mean Ashley Simpson.

This is the picture of us Utah girls-Chelsea, myself and Tiah

And here is the Birthday girl-Happy Birthday Chelsea!

Reminder to Self

These pictures and this post are kind of for me, myself. I try and remember the way I decorated my fireplace with every new Holiday-I'm sick of trying to remember-so I'm taking these pictures to remember next year. (Not that what I did was so hard or something, it just makes it a little bit easier on me, and I can easily reference back with a blog post. Most of the other areas decorated in my house are easy to remember or should be changed up every year so-

Next-my attempt at being a fun mom and hostess. We're having friends up, and I thought it would be fun to make a autumn/Halloween desert. These cupcakes are suppose to be pumpkins. The gourds are suppose to help your imagination reach the point where they do kind of look like pumpkins, maybe though the real things actually hurt the effect! They're strawberry flavored; it's suppose to be an unexpected surprise...

Catch-Up

I have been so behind on blogging! I'll take you through these pictures to bring you up to speed. Above: Sweet Sophie at 7 months. Yes she's sitting up and now she's somewhat crawling, dragging herself around. She's ahead of where the other girls were, at this same age. She is so much more of a mover than Olivia and Maddie were.

Here is Trent with the girls at a neighbors birthday party

Maddie showing her loot from the pinata

Sophie trying to stand-at the same party

Maddie attacking Dora the pinata-does anyone else enjoy seeing this as much as I did? Dora is by far the most annoying children's show on tv-she's always yelling!

Olivia swinging. Liv, you are not going to get very far with one hand and your eyes closed! (and she didn't get far; didn't even make a dent in Dora's big noggin)

This is a picture of what Hurricane Ike did to our yard-we just got some of the after-math, but it was definitely bad. Our county was declared a disaster area. over 60,000 were without power and water for almost 7 days. We luckily were not among these, but the outages started less than a block away. It was unbelievable to us how lucky we were.
Here is a tree that was snapped in half by the wind and knocked onto our house. It hit the house and then rolled down onto the deck. Somehow it did no damage-again we were very lucky/blessed.

Cutting up the tree-we had a fire that night with some of this wood-should have taken pictures-

Now these pictures are all the way from Labor Day-we went biking up to a lake not far from our house. We had a great time and the girls were able to go swimming. Now it is cold and hard to picture all of that (its in the 40's today).

And this is how we roll- gear that we purchased with gift cards this spring from Target. It was probably the smartest gift card usage we have ever made.
Hopefully I'll have another post up with all we've done to get ready for this Halloween!

WICKED

We went to Wicked last night!!!!! I've been so excited for this. We bought the tickets about 2 months ago, and the anticipation this last week or so has been killing me. I've been wanting to see Wicked for quite awhile. When we went to New York last year, we were there for a week and everyday-seriously everyday, we played the lottery to try and get tickets to it-we never got the tickets to Wicked (there were about 500 people doing the same thing as us), so when I saw it was coming to Pittsburgh, I bought them that very night! And let me tell you-it was an amazing, great, great play.
There were a couple other factors in the anticipation of this night-we left all three kids for the first time together. We've actually never even left Sophia with a babysitter before. I was very nervous, but it seems to have all gone very well-it was a very long night for the sitter though-we were gone over 8 hours!!! What a way to leave the baby for the first time-I know.We went with our friends Lisa and Jason, and this is dinner. We are of course at our favorite restaurant Nakamas.-nothing new-

Here are some pictures from inside the Benedum theater. It was the most beautiful theater I've ever seen a play in. Here are some interesting facts I just looked up about it-
1. Built at the turn of the century
2. There are over 90 crystal chandeliers, torchieres and sconces in the theater, all but one are original. The Central Brass Company located in Reading, PA refurbished them.
3. The signature piece of the Benedum Center is the original main chandelier which weighs 4,700 pounds, is 20 feet high and 12 feet wide. It was restored in honor of the late H.J. Heinz II. 4. In 1900, the Benedum cost $3 million to build. In 1987, the Benedum Center cost $43 million to restore.
5. On St. Patrick's Day in 1936, the theater flooded within two feet of the balcony. Several men were trapped for three days until police arrived in a motorboat and rescued them.

I love going to a place like this and then learning about all the history it's made and seen-I guess thats why I love museums-oh I would love to be able to go back to Europe and visit all the old castles and history sites again-I was only 17 when I last went and there is so much I've read and learned since then and I think I would appreciate it so much more.

These pictures we took are illegal btw-since no camera's are allowed inside the performances-Trent took the picures(not me)