Fall finals...

Photos shot on the last warm day of fall - these days my suggestions to 'go out & play!' get met with tales of woe & frostbitten fingers. And dare I suggest that the Nilsens are done catching up with posting fall photos? Just in time for Christmas.

Back yard posing...

Nilsen Girls

There are more of them than there are Nilsen boys, multiplied by their cuteness the boys are totally and utterly outnumbered, but what is also true is that ALL the girls has an adventerous spirit...

I suppose that without it they would not be true Nilsen girls, most motions go UP...

...and when the top it reached it comes around...

...and then back down

Fall fall fall

Backyard activities are quite something at the yellow house in the fall... there are rides

...climbs...

...fixing...

...and trixing!

Leaf Raking is a Season Unto Itself at the Yellow House

On this particular day the kids hatched the idea of raking a pile of leaves for the sole purpose of jumping into them with Ellie & Jonah (who were to arrive imminently). Lucky for them, their Farmor was more than happy to indulge them in their whim.

As the official 'Ideas Person', Cecilie tired quickly of the actual raking, and retired to perform feats of amazing physical strength in the redbud tree. Although it looks like a particularly good Ashtanga yoga pose, she is just reaching for the furthest-out branch.

Ellie & Jonah finally arrived, and their mom's comment on the melee was 'hey, it really is a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving!'

The Leaf Monster lies in wait for his next victim

Super heroine

I will forever love these photos of our dress-loving, princessey, inner-life living Cecilie Girl. She has this in her: the wild, crazy strong and fearless kid who cannot quash her zeal for life no matter what dramas befall her.

Super hero

Lars seized the day, early one fall morning, to do a little superhero practice.

Either that, or he's pretending to be an autumn leaf...

Fixin' and strippin'

So our Facebook friends will have heard much about Torbjorn stripping on the weekends. It is with great pleasure that we demonstrate where he's been stripping:

We herald the final days of the hideous 60s-era front door, that of the peeling veneer and gapping framework.

We herald the return of Tim Ryan, fabled carpenter of yore, who wasn't very interested in installing a brand new door/windows unit, but who got sucked into the project when I whispered the words "extensive restoration"... Not only is he one of the world's best carpenters, he is also one of the world's nicest guys.

Torbjorn is ALSO a really really good worker guy. Just not a fabled carpenter of yore.

Ballet: A regular ol' practice day.

Readers, the BIG Winter Recital is coming up!!!

A family that farms together...

It is true what they say, it is good for the constitution to wade through the Broccoli leafs with a bunch of beets, in fact it is the true meaning of life...

If all farmers come as cute as these there is really no reason there shouldn't be more of them (farmers, that is;)

And after a long day in the fields, the family heads home to the homestead...

...in the sunset

Larriland farm, we are big fans, we'll be back for strawberries in the spring

Chainsaw art

So farmers these days aren't making their money on the pick-your-own beets. More often you will find a farm shop selling cookbooks and honey sticks and veggies for those who don't want to go out in fields to pick. But at Larriland (our fave PYO), they have taken the entrepreneurial spirit and run with it. We bring you:

CHAINSAW ART

Go, Tortuga, go!

Lars 'rasslin with the alligator...

Halloween cut outs

10 Things I Love About You

Imagine a complaining, 'can you believe my husband' kind of voice, talking to other moms at ballet class this afternoon: "this morning, before he left on a 3 day business trip? My husband brought ALL the laundry downstairs and sorted it - so now I get to do the rest of the loads he didn't finish." I wanted to slap myself mid-sentence. Seriously? I'm complaining about this? Why don't I go ahead & complain that when he emptied the dishwasher he forgot to match sippy cup lids & valves?

I think a bit of paradigm shifting is in order here. Without further ado, here are a mere 10 reasons why my guy is such a keeper.

1) In a 3-day weekend, he managed to work a whole day refinishing our front door, get us all in the car to choose a Christmas tree, get all the Christmas boxes out of the attic, and get the tree up & 90% decorated.
2) He has taken my obsession with Christmas and run with it, making it happen even when his wife gets all Grinchy on him.
3) He lay on the floor this morning at 7am finishing a puzzle with Lars like it was the only thing he'd planned for the morning
4) He has a daughter who told me tonight "I miss my Daddy more than anything in the whole entire world"
5) He wears only black socks, only Gold Toe socks, and he STILL doesn't expect anyone to match them for him
6) He wears brown corduroy trousers that make him happy every autumn when I dig them out of storage. (ok, the trousers themselves, not so cute. but that he gets so happy about them? v. sweet.)
7) He has manfully taken over the midnight duties with Little Miss Wakefulness, now that breastfeeding her into silence is no longer an option.
8) He has emptied the kitty's litter box every night since Samuel's arrival, and complained not once.
9) He actually complains very little about anything. Not even about his wife who complains about everything.
10) He gets more and more gorgeous with every year.

Bonus round: 11) he is hilarious cheap entertainment.

So there you go, Mr Nilsen. Sending much love to you as you settle in for a long uninterrupted nights' sleep in a quiet hotel room, whilst I head for bed to fold laundry, feed the baby at midnight, and sleep with the cat. Not that I'm complaining.

Hanging in the frontyard

One day I was babysitting Annika in the front yard I went inside for a second only (I swear) and when I came back out she was gone... (what ever you do, don't tell Kirsten this, please...)

Well, it took me only two seconds to hunt her down, over by the fence - what was cool was that She had gotten there all by herself - up until this point when placed on the grass she would stay relatively stationary and all the sudden she's a mover and shaker...

...and a proud one at that...

All calm, cool and collected, we let Lars take this one

Cecilieisms. It's been a while, hasn't it?

"Mommy, it is kind of lucky and kind of unlucky that our Grandpa is a doctor."
Oh really? Why unlucky?
"Because, if he wasn't a doctor, when we were teenagers he wouldn't yell at us about wearing our bike helmets!"

***********

[Mommy giving speech to kids about how if we are to have a successful meal in Panera after ballet class, I will need their total cooperation and obedience:]
Okay guys, this is a time when I will need you to listen, to obey, and to help Mommy when she needs you to.
"Oh, so you need us to be like secretaries, Mommy?"

Patapsco: A Story of Friendship

This is Lars' lifelong buddy Jonah Stein from up the street.

Here Lars had stuck himself into time out because Daddy had been very clear that if he continued flirting with the rivers' edge and thus getting his feet wet, there would be no treat. (Treat unspecified, but it certainly was a motivator.)

Out of solidarity, Jonah plonked himself down next to Lars and the pensive frown didn't stick around long in the face of Jonah's buoyant spirits.