New Floor & Family Picture Outtakes

Okay so we have received a TON of snow. It was a record snow fall last Tuesday night/Wednesday. Everything came to a standstill while the blizzard raged on outside. Madsion...just 90 miles south of us received 18" of snow...I think we got about 15", but with the blowing and drifting it can bury Kyle in one step!

Do I have any great pictures of it??? NO! I've been inside with Stella...not really wanting to venture out in the white stuff with her, staying way to busy trying to keep the house organized. Reeve and Tom have been chopping wood and shoveling, and Kyle...um well...I believe Kyle's good at providing entertainment. If you're working hard, he does his best to try to make you laugh.

One thing I'm pretty tickled about (so is Stella) is the new flooring the boys are installing. We're still working on it, and nothing is arranged real purty yet, so I have no finished pictures. In some of the family outtake photos you can see it somewhat finished. It looks real nice and is MUCH easier to clean than the concrete.
Here are some of the install pictures:




Well it's Raye Family Portrait time...time to set up the fancy smancy (Not!)studio in the living room, get out the tripod, and practice setting the timer for the ultimate in do-it-yourself-style family portrait. We had MANY MANY MANY pictures...I've assembled about a quarter of them below. It was amazing Stella stayed good as long as she did! It was amazing Kyle stayed good as long as he did.
Setting up the scenery:

Kyle's mugshot...let's hope it's his last, please folks he needs all the hoping he can get!

Here's the "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" series:


Fun with the timer!


Tom's hand can be seen as he tries to run into the shot!


Stella decided to throw her hat on the ground!

Stella was PULLING Kyle's hair!

Laura is just a little TOO HAPPY in this picture while Stella is trying to fly away!

Ahh...here we come to the series labeled "Caught in the headlights"



This one COULD have been the family portrait, but you'll see the real one soon!

Mr. Jack & Stella's Hat

Reeve has been busy knitting. He finished his guy...he calls him "Mr. Jack Gnome"

He's done everything 100% by himself. He asked me for advice on the hat, but that was about it. He's working on a cape for him...he wanted to make a sweater, but Nana came up with the cape idea...much easier to knit!

Stella loves her new warm snuggly hat I made :-)

Stella, Kyle Reading, and My first Hat

We've been enjoying glorious Fall weather here. The temperature seems perfect...in the high fifties and sunny. We love it.

Stella is wearing my goof-up. I'm trying to make her a hat and had to rip out and start over many times before I really got going.

She's crawling all over now. We have to watch her constantly...she's fast!

Kyle still enjoys reading to her, and as you can see by the look on her face, she LOVES it!

Here is my first knitted hat! It will be for Stella. I ran out of yarn so I'm at a standstill until I get to Viroqua on Tuesday. It's been a fun experience. I can hardly wait to see her wearing it!

Halloween 2009 & 2000 Revisited

We had a lot of fun making costumes for the boys this year! They both were in charge of what they wanted to be and what they wanted to look like. They helped pick out what materials we were going to use and they helped in cutting and gluing. We're going to work on sewing, but I did all the sewing this year.

Stella wore the same pumpkin costume that my late cousin Dee Dee(1st cousin once removed...I think?!?) gave to Reeve. Reeve was about 22 days older in this picture than Stella is now. We tried to recreate the shoot.

Here's Reeve at 6 months on Halloween:

Here's Stella at 6 months on Halloween:



Pirate Reeve, "Arr watch yer back matey!":


Wizard Kyle..."Watch what you say to me...


I can turn you into a rabbit from my hat."

We went to a pumpkin carving party, and carved pumpkins in a barn. Reeve and Kyle had a ton of fun playing at the top of the hay mound...the perfect place for a Pirate hideout.

Here's Kyle's pumpkin:


and Reeve's pumpkin:


Stella's favorite place to be these days is hanging out with Reeve and Kyle...man she LOVES those guys!

Stella is 6 months old today!!!

Our little Stelle-Belle (Kyle's nickname for her is Stelle-Belle-Xcell) is 6 months old today...I can't believe it! She is a cutie-pie and very happy, but she also has her fits when she wants something. Usually her fits happen when she's tired and needs to take a nap or go to bed. Pretty normal stuff. She's trying hard to crawl forward and has done it a couple of times, but backward crawling is oh so much easier. She likes to do "downward dog" (yoga pose). She has said "mama" several times when she wants me to pick her up. She also says "da da da da." She babbles a lot and tries to sing with us. The new curriculum I'm using for the kids really encourages a lot of singing...something I really need to practice! We sing a neat Canadian Folk Song in our home school cooperative called "Land of the Silver Birch." We sing it a lot around the house lately and the boys are convinced they heard Stella trying to sing it.
Reeve likes to take Stella to the piano to bang out some tunes.



In our cooperative the boys are learning to knit. Kyle is very good at "casting on," so good that he likes to rip his knitting out to start over again just so he can cast on. Reeve and Kyle both made a chicken, but I couldn't find them this morning to take a picture of them. Stella LOVES their chickens, and they're happy to let her suck on them and play with them. Somehow she managed to take all the stuffing out of Kyle's chicken, luckily Kyle thought it was hillarious.




Reeve is having a blast with the knitting. He wakes up early to work on it. Right now he's making a gnome

I think they're both doing great. Reeve is very proud of himself because he has learned how to purl.

Today is their Halloween party, so pictures of pumpkins, pirates, and wizards are in your future.

Kyle's 7th Bday, Stella's 1st Snow

Finally starting to feel like myself again. For the past 3 weeks I had the worst flu!!! I'm all better now :-)
We've been getting Stella ready for the cold weather by trying on some clothes a friend brought over for her.

I was in a funk earlier when I originally wrote this entry...I do like pink, and Stella does look cute in pink...just a boy Mom getting used to having a little girl :-)

Purple is okay...Here is Stella wearing purple in her very first snow!!! It snowed really big flakes, but they all melted before hitting the ground.

Look at how HUGE Stella has grown! Our chunky monkey is now proudly sporting size 12-24 month sized clothing.

Kyle turned SEVEN on Sunday!!!!!!!

Again I made a HOT birthday item and LEARNED NOT to put birthday candles into HOT pumpkin pie...you know why???? THEY MELT! And then birthday boy does not get to blow them out, and husband gets upset because NO ONE likes to eat wax and no one understands why Mom has to learn this lesson EVERY year!!! I was able to scoop out the melted wax and Kyle happily blew out a single candle for his birthday.
Now at the EXACT moment poor Tom took this picture the midwest experienced a MASSIVE earthquake, totally off the richter scale...

Just kidding...
Kyle was just thrilled I made two pumpkin pies and they looked edible. He actually said he was confident they tasted good because they were not carrot cake and he knows I can make pumpkin pie.

We had a low-key birthday. Tom took them to the movies Saturday night and Tom ended up liking the movie more than Kyle and Reeve (they saw "Where the Wild Things Are." Reeve thought it was horrible! Kyle thought it was okay, but definitely wasn't what he was expecting. The boys take after their Papa and had NOTHING to eat at the movies. Lately, if it's not organic Reeve will refuse to eat it.
Kyle loves books and received 6 different books and magazines. He was THRILLED with his no batteries needed rocket launcher.






This weekend we picked all the apples from our trees. YUMMY!!!

The first weekend in October we were in Madison for the MadiSUN Solar Street Fair. We were met there by our good friend Christine!