October

It has been a month since my last...a whole month! It's not that there hasn't been anything to write about; on the contrary, there has been too MUCH going on for me to find any time to think, let alone write. (I have found myself several times over the past few weeks stopping in mid-sentence at a complete loss for words and then mumbling something about my brain not working to the person that I had been talking to.

Quinn started his new job as the Direct Sales Supervisor for Cox in San Diego on October 4th. It was sort of a sudden change of plans for us, especially since we just moved to Santa Maria this spring. But when the job opening became available, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for Quinn to interview for a position where we would be able to live close to family. Needless to say, he got the job! Our plan was for Quinn to stay with his parents until I could find someone to take over our lease. We thought this would take quite a while since the landlord never followed through on fixing up several things he was supposed to and, consequently, we were overpaying on our rent. Well, I finally got my craigslist posting up on the evening of Sunday, October 9. Within a few hours, I got a call from a family who was moving down from Oregon that week and just found out that their lease fell through, and they were wondering if we could be out by the following weekend. I made a few quick phone calls, and after some back and forth with the landlord, we finalized everything on Tuesday afternoon. With the help of wonderful family dropping their plans for the week to come help pack/move, as well as the help from the sister missionaries and a few small miracles, we managed to get out by the afternoon of Saturday the 15th and drove on down to Oceanside with our things in a U-Haul...and no place to unload lined up! While our things were parked at the end of Quinn's parents' street, we managed to find a great house that we were able to move into on Tuesday the 18th, never mind that it was RAINING uncharacteristicly hard for San Diego that day! Since then we've been trying to unpack, deal with an ant invasion that has required two visits from the exterminator as well as hours of me sweeping up ant carcasses, trying to find a preschool for Rylee, and enjoying being back in San Diego close to family again!

Now, if it were any other time and my brain were in any other state, I would have put these pictures chronologically with my text, but as it is I didn't think to do that, and since blogger doesn't yet have the advanced capabilities required to cut and paste, here are my pictures (:

On the first weekend of October (a week prior to the craziness) we came down to San Diego. Grandma Clawson was visiting from Utah, and we went to Sea World.

(The girls love playing with Avery!)

One tuckerd-out, sun-kissed little girl...

At some point the next week (I think Saturday?) I took the girls to Waller Park near our home in Santa Maria, where we love to go, and let them ride the ponies. They've wanted to do this several times before, but we never seemed to be there at the right times.

Then we fed the ducks,

played in the water (Rylee decided it would be a good idea to get ALL the way in the water...),

ran back to the car sans pants,

and drove home sans clothes, since all of Rylee's clothes were soaked.These next pictures are from Rylee's last day of Pre-School at the Early Learning Center, which happened to be the field trip to the pumpkin patch. I got to go along, and so did Grandma Mac who had been up helping us pack for the last few days. Rylee was stoked to ride on the bus!

It was the cutest little pumpkin patch!

(This is Miss Rachelle, the assistant teacher. Rylee loves her.)

After a short lesson from the farmer on pumpkins and different plants that grow on the farm, they turned the kids loose to choose their own pumpkins...

(notice, it has been officially marked as Rylee's property!)

This is Rylee with the farmer, who was so nice and took her over to pick some carrots.

And, oh, by the way, I am in LOVE with my new camera! I haven't really had much of a chance to play with it an learn how to use it with all of the craziness, but even without me knowing what I'm doing, it takes beautiful pictures! While the kids ran around, I played a little...

This is the first time I've seen artichoke plants - aren't they beautiful?Do you see him?

Look really closely at this one...TWO little critters!

Rylee with her teacher, Miss Shelley.

We sure do miss these Misses!

This is the only picture I took after the pumpkin patch until this week. Cailyn just loves wearing these bunny ears these days!

We celebrated Avery's 3rd birthday this week...two days before her baby brother Liam was born! It is so fun to be close to the McDonalds (:

I just love this picture (although can't figure out why it uploaded sideways...)! This is Avery thanking Rylee for the froofy blue skirt we gave her. Isn't that smile just priceless?

And now it is way past my bed time, but I will be back soon with Halloween pictures (and you won't want to miss them, I promise!)