Home Made Day

Feeling very home-makery today. I made some holiday blocks and chicken noodle soup. I distinctly remember telling Dave about four years ago when we were engaged as we sat down to homemade chicken noodle soup with some newly married friends that I would never make noodles from scratch. It turns out that they're ridiculously easy so I did do it after all.

Starting to feel ready for Christmas music...

Happy Halloween!

I was so sad to take down all my Halloween decorations today (but at least now I get to start thinking about Christmas :)! We had a great Halloween. Our trunk-or-treat got cancelled due to bad weather but we had a little impromptu Halloween party at our place with some friends and had a great time.

Dave was some hispanic nationality guitar player, and had a sweet stache. Actually every guy who came to our halloween party ended up wearing one of the many sweet staches from Dave's kit. Penny and I were flamenco dancers. She could never quite say what she was but loved dancing to Dave's spanish guitar music and saying "ole!"

We had a blast riding the train in to Beacon Hill on Halloween night with some great friends and their adorable kiddos. Wish I had more pics of them but all I had was my i phone. I was the only adult in the group foolish, or awesome, enough to dress up. That always seems to be me...
Every time we saw any little girl dressed as a princess Penny would bolt over to her, quietly mumble about princesses while everyone tried to discern what she was saying, and awkwardly touch their dresses. It was adorable. She went in for the hug on this one.

Penny is an interesting trick or treater. She runs as fast as she can from door to door, but then takes about 5 minutes choosing the best piece of candy and inspecting the decorations. This is her choosing a piece carefully, its a horrible quality dark i phone pic, but you get the idea.
It was another great Beacon Hill Halloween and we were so grateful the weather cooperated for us!

Keene Pumpkin Fest '11

This year was our second annual trip to the Keene Pumpkin Festival and it did not disappoint. Over 30,000 carved, lit pumpkins. This year we had our friend Devan visiting from CA to enjoy it with.

Penny loved looking at all the pumpkins, declaring "it's a PUMPKIN PARTY!"

These are our kitty faces...


We enjoyed a bag of kettle corn as big as Penny, among other delicious fair fare.
The 65 foot high pumpkin wall. It was magical and if we are still unfortunate enough to be living in Boston next year we'll definitely go again!

Wild Kittens

I hate titling blogs, and how much time blogging I spend trying to title my blogs. I don't blog frequently enough for the titles to be anything but "Lately", "What We've Been Up To", etc. so if I spend more than 30 seconds thinking about it I'm just going to put down the first thing that comes to mind.

In any case, here's what we've been up to lately. We got an i mac, which has been very exciting and I learn new amazing things about it every day. For example I just learned like 5 minutes ago that any pics I take on my i phone get automatically uploaded to i photo!! Amazing. This is the future.

Me and Penny went to the Museum of Science with Diane and Sophie. Penny was really excited to be inside the space shuttle since she has lately become obsessed with "blasting off".

We went to Gore Place and played with some chickens. Penny got to see the farmer gathering all the eggs from the coop and now refers to eggs as "chicken eggs". Like, "Penny what do you want for breakfast: oatmeal or eggs?" "Um, uh, chicken eggs." Which is another funny thing Penny does, whenever you ask her to make a choice she always contemplates with an "Um, uh..." Kids are cute.

The chicken event was fun until Penny got ATTACKED by a rooster. Seriously, imagine how frightening it would be if a 5 foot rooster ran at you and flapped its wings in your face and brandished its talons at you. Not fun. I was afraid she would hate chickens so I took a lot of time to explain to her that it was a BOY chicken, called a rooster, and that it attacked her because it was a boy. So now she'll just hate boys. I prefer that.

In other news, Chris Christie just endorsed Mitt Romney, yay! This is me and P at a Romney event in NH.

Cute Things

Conversation Dave had with Penny this afternoon while changing her out of her dress and into shorts.
Penny: "I'm a boy. I'm a boy."
Dave: "No you're not, you're a girl."
Penny: "I'm a girlfriend!"

P.S. You can comment on my blog again, I fixed it.

Peach Picking

We went peach picking yesterday and it was so much fun! There's a cute little train that takes you down a little brick road with tons of grapes hanging overhead.

Penny was excited to fill up her bag with peaches at first but the excitement wore off pretty quick and then she just wanted to eat the peaches. It was my first time peach picking and there is nothing like a fresh picked peach straight from the tree. It was the juciest, most delicious fruit I've ever had.

California Adventures

My sister Sara and her husband Rangi were nice enough to put me and Penny up at their house and host adventures for almost a month. And no Cali adventure would be complete without a long, hot hike through Scotland.
The hike turned into canyoneering through the river after we'd finished all our snacks and decided to find the low trail back to the car. Penny did awesome on her first real hike.
Other, more traditional Cali adventures included several trips to the beach and grandma's pool, as well as eating In-N-Out 50% of the days I was there. Below are the kids tide-pooling at Crystal Cove. But just hanging out with the cousins was probably the best part of being in Cali. It's so fun to watch Penny get to know and love them. Sometimes we'll just be driving in the car and Penny will say "Bless you Rigdon" or "Bless you Sydney, bless you Cody" (Which I think for her covers both cousins Coby and Kody).

We've been having a gay old time...

Eating delicious Fourth of July fare.Getting legs stuck in chairs at Grandma's pool.
Being patriotic with the cousins.
Looking cute.Face timing.Riding the choo choo monga.

The Broadbent Nuptials

Yesterday Dave's sister Kaity got married in the Oakland Temple! The ceremony was so great and the gorgeous garden reception was the icing on the cake, or the whipped cream on the pie as the case was at Kaity and Alan's reception. In lieu of a cake they had a pie bar with about 30 pies. I seriously could not get over these beautiful flower arrangements:
In between the ceremony and the reception the wedding party and family went to Fenton's for some lunch and ice cream. Outside there were a bunch of puppies to play with. Penny was lovin this little guy sitting on her lap. Only the lure of ice cream could pull her away.

Exchanging pie above, and Penny below looking adorable.

Her cute little J. Crew dress was covered in strawberry juice and chocolate by the end of the night, *tear*, like mother like daughter.

Congratulations Kaity and Alan Broadbent! We love you.