My house is no longer a barn!!!!!

We did it! Last year we replaced our carpet with gorgeous wood floors that soon were scratched by our lovely cats. Those who know us well know how many we had inside and also know what a clean freak I am. Bleach WAS my best friend. Well we found a wonderful carpenter who constructed a cat condo in our garage amongst some other improvements. These collectively make us wonder what we were thinking. With bby # 2 coming the time came to act. SO the finished product:

My house is spotless. Noah barely makes a mess. The learling tower really helps he does almost everything on there so the food and kitchen mess stays in one small area. He does not walk around with food. My well trained boy. But most of all the purpose of this post NO CATS, no litter tracking, NO HAIR and no having to sanitize our counters at every meal just in case. I did not realize how crazy our life had become. Now I can be free.

Fall in California, Really?

Signs that fall are here for us in California.....
1) The calendar says so
2) my cooking magazines say so
3) I am cooking fall foods and displaying apples on my table.



Fall Stew






Signs that I am hanging on desperately to my East Coast fall weather.
1) It is 97 degrees and we go apple picking thinking it will be cooler by Tahoe. FALSE.
2) putting colored leaves on my porch "in the spirit" while my shrubs are as green as ever.
3) We will go pumpkin patching and take fall photos.

Here are some of the highlights of our outing. We were fortunate to have our friends the Putnams join us with Noah's friend Olivia.

Noah picked his first apples off a tree and rode a pony for the first time. Good fun.

A big boy blanket for Noah

We were at Joanne Fabrics looking for material for the new baby when Noah saw tractor fabric. Now I am not a great seamstress, so simple was my way. The finished product even better than I thought!

Boots...

Here you see him holding out his hand. He does this and says " I have it?".






Our friends the Barkers have had some really cute cowboy boots on their boys over the last 2 years. I finally was able to get the pair I had wanted as a hand me down. I have never been able to find a pair like these so I was super excited when she offered them up. And here Noah is showing off his "silly face and boots"

Happy Birthday Mimi.....

Garrett treated me to a night out to dinner and a show. It was nice to be alone for a while. I had yummy cake at home and enjoyed the show.