Here, There and Everywhere

I've been feeling a little nostalgic lately and thought I'd make some lists:

Things I miss about Sacramento:
-The people. Such good people. I miss our friends and neighbors. Some have moved away to other places, too--of course they are included in this. We love all of you!
-The paths that we could run/walk on. The river. Such a beautiful place to run and I never had to worry about streets or cars.
-The quiet. We live on a pretty busy street now so there is noise. I love where we are but I just miss the quiet sometimes.
-The kids have talked about how they miss our climbing tree. I miss it, too.
-WinCo. How do I love thee, WinCo? Let me count the ways... Boxes of Smart Start for $2.60, cheese for less than $3/lb, cheap bulk bin items, I could go on and on but I'll spare you that. I just get depressed grocery shopping here sometimes. Luckily, the produce is super cheap here. That has been nice.

Things I love about here:
-The weather. It really is nice.
-The people. We love our new ward (church congregation) and have met many nice neighbors who we're hoping to get to know even better.
-The schools. I really like Elizabeth's school and Natalie's preschool. They are great.
-Our backyard. It is wonderful. We love the fruit trees! They are starting to get ripe and we can't wait for more oranges/lemons/tangerines. Plus we just planted some vegetable seedlings in the garden space. We're hoping they actually live. We don't know anything about fall/winter gardening here. Who am I kidding--we don't really know anything about gardening in general.
-The good, cheap produce (see above)
-Everything is close. I can get to any store I'd want to go to in less than like 20 minutes and most are less than 10 minutes.
-Streets lined with yellow ginko trees. I thought it was so beautiful that I took a picture while driving. This doesn't even do it justice:

Sports

Nate loves balls and he loves playing sports. We really haven't done much to encourage it except provide the materials. In fact, I feel bad that I haven't done more for all my kids. Not that I want to push them into sports. I just feel like Joe and I, being the reasonably athletic people that we are, should at least give them a base in different sports so they have more confidence if they do decide to pursue something. Plus it's just fun to play sports together as a family. I feel like I had all that built in since I had an athletic older brother to try to keep up with, and I was thankful for it.

Anyway, here are some video clips of Nate. This first one was taken a few months back. Please excuse the lack of pants and the saggy diaper. That's the beauty of backyards, I guess. :)

Soccer...


Nate's favorite sport right now is probably golf. He loves hitting balls around the backyard and can do it for quite a long time...


He recently started playing with his basketball hoop, too, which we just moved into his room. I'm always impressed with how he'll miss shot after shot without getting frustrated. He gets so excited when he makes one, though, and says "I did it!"

You'll have to forgive Joe for turning the camera part-way through this one...

Halloween

We had a busy Halloween. Most of it was spent at the school/preschool for costume parades and Halloween parties. Sadly, I forgot to bring a camera to Elizabeth's parade. It would have been next to impossible to get a picture anyway since there were so many parents crowded around. I was impressed with the teachers' costumes. All the grades did themes and they were really creative.

Natalie's class did a little parade around the school.

Here they are heading out:

Nate insisted on holding Natalie's hand the whole time and it was sure cute:

After school I tried to think of something we could do to kill time that wouldn't involve eating all of the candy they had already acquired at school. So, we dressed up like mummies...

Getting out is the best part:

Elizabeth even wanted her face wrapped:

Then, in the evening we went trick-or-treating with some friends in their neighborhood. It was fun and I was impressed with the kids' stamina.

This guy refused to let anyone hold his candy for him:

It got really heavy, too, because people kept tossing huge handfuls of candy into his pumpkin.

Who can resist a chubby little monkey at their door?
Not many, it seems. :)

Unfortunately we didn't get pictures of the costumes until the night was over. That's why Elizabeth's wings are falling off and the fabric covering the design on Natalie's shirt had ripped off. Still, they are pretty cute...

A bat, a ping pong player, a monkey and a cat

I was the boring one who didn't dress up. Joe really doesn't like Halloween and balks whenever I try to suggest dressing up. So, I thought it was poetic justice when we found out that his firm is really big on Halloween and everyone has to dress up. His team went with this ping pong players theme (Joe even thought of the team name: The Intimmigrators--ha!). Unfortunately, he wouldn't let me post a hilarious video of him participating in the pie-eating contest. If you visit us, we'll let you watch the video. That's some good incentive, right? :)

I had to add this in....

My friend Janelle took this awesome picture:I just love that face.