{Park Junkies}

The weather has been freakishly wonderful [You know, warm sun, cool breeze, you can taste the fall in the air....] the last couple weeks and Evette and I have turned into park junkies. We seriously go to the park nearly every day - sometimes twice a day. It's great. We have a handful of parks nearby and we love to make the rounds.

Sometimes we meet up with friends, sometimes we bring lunch, sometimes we stay for over 2 hours.

Evette likes to run around, play with her friends, make new friends, eat snacks, play with chalk, and dig in the wood chips.

I like to chat with my friends, eat snacks, read, watch Evette be the social butterfly that she is, and just sit.

{Carving Pumpkins}

Sunday night we carved pumpkins! Evette mostly enjoyed it! Evette has loved spotting pumpkins all over the neighborhood and was excited when we get to put a face on our own. 

She wasn't a huge fan of the yuckiness - Just like Momma.

 That's what Daddys/Husbands are for :)

 Drawing the face

She loved seeing it all lit up!

Then after the little one went down for bed, the husband finished up ours

We're excited for Halloween around these parts!

{Texas State Fair}

We went to the State Fair on Saturday. We went the second to last day it was open - and it was a Saturday. It was pretty busy, but we went as soon as it opened and it wasn't that bad at all! I was fortunate enough to score us some free tickets as well! [the fair is EXPENSIVE but they have lots of discount days, none of which happen to be Saturday, which is the only day we could go - bummer....] I met a new friend at the playground [a friend of a friend] and we ended up talking about the fair and she offered me her extra tickets that they got through her husband's work! How sweet is that!? I was so grateful!

Riding the "Choo choo train" down to the fair

One of Evette's favorite parts of the fair was the automobile section. We let her sit in all sorts of vehicles and pretend to drive them. She LOVES cars and was in heaven running around from one car to the next.

Big Tex!

Corny Dogs! Delicious!!

We packed a lunch and some snacks so we only bought novelty snacks here and there and didn't have to spend a fortune and wait in line forever with a cranky baby. She ate grapes while in line for the funnel cakes so.... healthy and happy, right?

We rode on the Ferris Wheel!

And Evette LOVED this car ride. I told you she loves cars. She was in heaven! I was a little bit nervous about how she would do, but she was laughing the whole time - huge fan. She was BARELY tall enough to ride by herself and she rocked it. She's fearless!

 And of course, a carousal!

We also went to the children's petting zoo.

Corn on the cob - delicious!

Saw some shows like the BMX Bike show

 The celtic rock band...

This year we also took a look at some of the arts and crafts, photography, paintings, and food competitions. It was really fun!

Evette was in an interesting mood that day - a little bit cranky the whole day, but it was never bad. Overall it was a great day. We saw a lot of fun things, ate a lot of fun things, did a lot of fun things. It was a great family date!

{General Conference}

General Conference is one of my most favorite times of the year - which is awesome because it comes TWICE a year. It's a weekend where I get to listen to modern day prophets and be spiritually fed. I can watch it in my pjs at home with my family and listen to what the Lord has prepared for me to hear. It's great.
As a kid/teenager it was a LONG weekend where I just tried to stay awake. But as I've gotten older I appreciate it more and more and now I yearn for it.

Some favorites [which was hard to pick because I feel like after ever talk I turned to Sean and said, "Yes! Loved that one...."] -

Elder Uchtdorf's "Come, Join With Us"

Elder Bednar's "The Windows of Heaven"

Elder Holland's "Like a Broken Vessel"

Elder Uchtdorf's "You Can Do It Now!"

President Eyring's "To My Grandchildren"

President Monson's "I Will Not Fail Thee, nor Forsake Thee"

Elder Nelson's "Decisions for Eternity"

I'm excited. I'm inspired. I love it.

 For more highlights, check out this site. Cool!

{Remember that one time we stole a park?}

Background Info:
Every month in our neighborhood there's a week designated for "bulk trash" where you can pretty much put anything on your curb and a big ol' trash truck will come and pick it up for you. People put out old furniture, scrape wood, fallen tree limbs, and anything else you can think of. There's a culture where you can pick up anything off of the curb from someone else's pile if you want it. It's not uncommon to see people in their trucks drive around early in the week and load up on all sorts of "treasures" before the trash collectors come along.

 I've been wanting a playground [like a Little Tikes plastic little playground] for our backyard for a while now but was not quite willing to cough up the money for one. I even looked at some on craigslist but couldn't figure out how to load it into our tiny car by myself and bring it home.


Story:
Once upon a time [yesterday morning, to be exact], we were running a little bit late to church. Church starts at 9:00am and we were pulling out of the driveway at 9:02am. As we were driving down the street we noticed this huge, beautiful playground set sitting on the curb 2 blocks from our house. Yes, it was bulk trash week. We immediately stopped. Sean and I got out and took a lot at it - it was in fabulous condition! Nothing damaged, not too dirty [it is an outside toy..], nearly perfect condition [we noticed a new one in their backyard, so they really were getting rid of it!] We wanted it - and we wanted it bad. It was huge, though! How were we supposed to get it home?

We spent a few minutes discussing what on earth we were going to do. All dressed up in our Sunday best, me in heels and over 6 months pregnant....We went through all of our options - Sean and I carry it home - yeah, no! Leave it and hope it's still there after church so we can get some more man power - no, good finds on the curb go way fast! Disassemble it and put it in the trunk/car - no, too much time and way way way too difficult. Asking the people whose house it was in front of it hold it for us or if they could use their truck to haul it to our house - nobody was home! What to do what to do...

Then Sean, the brilliant man that he is, came up with a great idea. We opened the trunk, and carefully put  2 of the 4 legs of the structure into the trunk. Then Sean trailed behind the car carrying the rest of the playground while I drove 2 miles an hour down the street. Yes, we used our car as a wheelbarrow. Can I tell you how difficult it is to drive stick at a steady 2 miles an hour? Occasionally through the open window I would hear, "slower! slower!" oops!

But we made it! My awesome husband and I hauled that awkward and large playground all the way back to our house. We opened the garage, threw it in, and booked it over to the church. we were about 20 minutes late, but it was totally worth it. Ox in the mire? Not exactly. More like grabbing a childhood dream off the curb on a Sunday morning.

Getting it from the garage into the backyard was also an adventure since it was much too big to fit through the gate. It involved using our ladder as a lever over our back fence and our guardian angel of a neighbor who was walking her dog and lent a helping hand.. I'll let you use your imagination on that one went down - it was epic :)

Evette loves her "new park!" as do we! So we didn't steal a park - but it felt like a steal! During church I would lean over to Sean and say, "Remember that one time we stole a park?" and we'd break into laughter - It was a crazy morning and something that we'll probably laugh about for years.

My (unexpected) summer vacation

I always had the impression that long summer vacations would disappear as soon as I donned my cap and gown. Not necessarily the case, as it turns out! I essentially had 10 weeks off from mid July to mid September (while still being employed/paid!).

So here's how it happened: I wrapped up a project around the end of June and expected to start a new one within a couple of weeks. Two weeks later I was told it'd be another couple more weeks. Again, two weeks later I was told it'd be a couple more weeks. And once more. Finally I more or less gave up on that project and told my staffing manager that I was eager to get working again so she lined me up with a new one, set to start the next week. That project revolved around a rather high-profile merger, which the government sued to stop about three days before I was set to start. The suit put that project on hold for the time being. I was then assigned to work on a project for one of the US government agencies. I read all my prep material and even participated on a couple teams calls. Then the Friday before I was to fly out to D.C. it was discovered that the agency had lost my security clearance, naturally a pre-req for working for that agency. Lost it. How do you lose a digital document? Two weeks later I finally began work on the project that I'd planned on working on all summer - developing a deepwater exploration and production strategy for a world-class oil and gas player.

As I alluded to in the intro, that all took about 10 weeks. My firm wasn't about to set me "on the beach" (i.e. free vacation days in between projects) for that long, so I was assigned to work on an internal project. This meant a couple of things: "internal project" means that the work was for us, and this generally means a much less strenuous timetable than client work. I was able to work from home and often worked quite a bit less than 40 hours per week. Wahoo!

So what did I do with my free time?

I bought a lawn mower. The old-fashioned kind without an engine. Do I regret this decision? Partly. It's hard to describe how manly I feel pushing that thing around. It's also so light and environmentally friendly that it's a pleasure to use. I also like that Evette can play outside with me while I work. On the downside, it's terrible at cutting tall weeds.

I prepared for and ran a 10k [6.2 miles], the Tour des Fleurs. 8:30/mile split! This got me excited so I signed up for a half marathon at the end of this month.

Expanded our veggie garden (Dallas has two growing seasons!)

Took Evette to the library during Heidi's piano lessons. (no pictures, sorry)

Took Evette to see her first movie in a theater, Epic. She loved it.

Made some killer good meals

Labor day BBQ

 Veggie pizza with olive oil and garlic sauce. So so good.

Made purple potato gnocchi a couple of times. Awesome.

Went on lots of bike rides, mostly to White Rock Lake

 There's a "muster" of wild peacocks about 1.5 miles from our house. We like to visit.

 Small horse stable/ranch/thing in the same neighborhood as those wild peacocks. Evette loves watching them eat.

And generally played with Heidi and Evette. A lot.

At the "park" in the Galleria Mall

Nuzzles = pure happiness.

"The babies on the bus go waa waa waa" all the way to the Dallas Arboretum

Many visits to our friends at Gecko Hardware

Teaching Evette how to stack Russian dolls

 Ikea date

 Evette always comes with me when I churn the compost. She loves to see the bugs.

We had some return issues with our local Fry's so we ended up going several times over the summer. Every time we went we ended up spending an additional hour and a half running around the store.  Evette loved that place, especially the "back seat" (massage chair).

It really was a wonderful summer. I didn't enjoy every moment as much as I should have due to the staffing frustrations I was having at work, but it all worked out well in the end and I was able to spend a lot of time with the family. Words cannot express how much I love my ladies.