Halloween Costumes (from scrap!)

I am so proud of myself right about now. I'm not a very good seamstress. I try but it's not a strength I possess . My Mom gave me a bunch of old material peices that someone gave her, and from that and scraps I had laying around, I was able to come up with Ashton and Pepper's costumes. Can you guess what they are going as?

 I friggin' SEWED that jacket and pants! HAHAHA Thanks to the sweet lady on you tube that taught me how to ease a sleeve into a jacket, I not only conquered my fear of sleeves, but gained the confidence to make pants too! Yay!

Hip Hip Hooray for Halloween!

Getting Festive

Dave was so excited to decorate for Halloween this year. He was the one that urged me to get out the stuff. Usually September 1st hits and I'm rearing to go, but not this year. Once I got it all out I got really excited.

We made these apple shrunken heads on Monday night and we are so excited for them to shrink!! I found the idea on Pinterest. 

We are having a spooky Halloween Birthday Party for Ashton on Friday night, I can't wait to blog about all of the cool stuff we have created for it!! (and I owe it all to pinterest!)

Pepper 6 Months Old

The entire month of September, the only photos I took (excluding Oregon) were of Pepper. No kidding. I still don't have any updates on her progress, sitting, crawling, etc. She still does absolutely nothing, well, except pull hair. (I chose a great time to grow my hair out!)
So, in one blog post, here is Pepper in September, at 6 months old:)

 Pepper got to meet her Great-Grandma Grundvig! Grandma said "I know someone who would just LOVE you!" I cried a little when Grandma started telling Pepper how much Great-Grandpa Grundvig would have loved to play with her if he was still here. I still miss him a lot. Pepper really loved meeting her Great-Grandma Grundvig, she was all smiles!

Oregon Adventure 2011

Dave and I had another opportunity to go to the Oregon coast for business in the beginning of September. It was hard for me to leave Pepper behind, but really good for us to get away and spend some time (lots and lots of time..) together...trapped in a car..for HOURS AND HOURS. But seriously though, we had a chance to talk about anything and everything, and re-evaluate our goals and dreams. Running the business together has been amazing for our relationship. It's hard and grueling at times, but SO worth it. We love every minute of it. Here are pictures we took in Tillamook National Forest. 

We finally reached the coast and it was breathtaking, as usual. 

As you can see above, the fog was rolling in, 

and by the time we got down to the beach, we were completely in the thick of it. 

We went to Oceanside and had sandwiches at a little shop right overlooking the ocean, then headed down to the water with nothing but our hoodies and our camera (well, and the clothing on our backs, obviously). We were in thick fog cover and the beach was really cold. The water was even colder. The beach was really crowded for was Labor Day weekend. We walked along the shoreline, going north. We combed the beach for shells, found jellyfish, clams, dead crabs....

 and clumps of seaweed littered with..ladybugs and grasshoppers. I'm not sure what they were doing there but I'm sure they had their reasons. 

Hey look, it's me. 

Dave decided that this family (below) were ghosts of a family that was drowned in the ocean. He can be very deep and disturbed at times. 

Now, you can see how eerie it looks, the waves were angrily crashing against the rocks and the fog was cold and heavy. Dave and I, having no prior experience with the angry ocean, being naive Utahn's and all, decided it would be *fun* to race the tide and "go that way". So we went THAT WAY. It was getting later in the afternoon and we just kept going. We would wait for the tide to rush out and make a run for it, laughing and splashing, having a grand old time. We found all sorts of caves and crevices and we felt like two adventurers witnessing things unexplored by man. I suddenly realized that we hadn't seen people for a really long time..and that the water was getting deeper and stronger and it was becoming more difficult to race the tide. I now have complete and utter respect for the ocean. (I have not been that scared of mother nature since Girl's Camp of '99 when I got snowed into my tent and it collapsed on me.) I was able to make it back to a safe area without getting COMPLETELY doused (running as fast as I could through the waist-high waves, camera held high above my head), but Dave was not so lucky. He got trapped in a cave..

When he finally made his run for it, he was taken down by a wave and twisted his ankle attempting to avoid behind slammed into the rock face. It was intense. After we made it back to safety, Dave was triumphant.

A little bit humbled and shaken from our ocean experience, we decided to get out of that eerie fog and head up the coast to the Cape Meares lighthouse. We headed up the mountain and literally came up the road and out of the fog. This is what we saw. After a day of dark and grey, this was such a welcome sight!

 Here is the lighthouse..

 and the trail that leads to it..

 Last year when we came here, it was clear and the view of the ocean was INCREDIBLE. This time we could HEAR the waves crashing but could only catch glimpses here and there.

 Still so beautiful..this earth we live on..

 There were spiderwebs everywhere, strung with pearls of dew.

On our way home the next day, we stopped and looked at the uh...thing...what's this called?? haha Oh the Malad Gorge in Idaho, "The Devil's Washbowl". (I totally had to Google that just now.) Gosh, I didn't even want to get out of the car at that point, I had such a raging kidney infection that I was at the point of vomiting and whatnot. Fun times. But, I got out and took these dizzying photos from the dizzying bridge(if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about!)

We had such a great trip, it was refreshing, but we were glad to be back home with our babies. Maybe next year we'll go back with the kids! (But not until we get a bigger vehicle!)