Fall Fashion at Chez Barrett

It's been a season of birthday parties, potty training, and solid foods here at Chez Barrett, and we've got the pictures to prove it! READ ON to see some of the highlights of fashion from this fall:

Take the above picture, for example. Here's Aurora sporting a lovely puffy-sleeved flowered top, accented with a bright yellow bib w/purple trim--ooh, a bold choice indeed! However, eating solid foods while cutting 4 teeth in one month requires bold moves to stay relevant and fabulous.

Speaking of fabulous, how about this ensemble Celeste is rocking right here?? Oversized jingoistic USA sunglasses, flowered muumuu dress, jingling bead bracelet, topped off with a pink leopard-printed baton used as a walking stick? What does this outfit say, Celeste? Answer: "I'm GRANDMA." Exactly which Grandma she was emulating remained unclear...we'll leave it up to you the reader to guess.

A lot of exciting looks were on parade at Lorelai's birthday dinner. Lorelai wore this energetic striped playdress, and sported the Pollyanna look with her two braided pigtails. It helped keep the hair out of her face as she played with her new Barbie dolls!

Aurora's flowered onesie was not to be outdone, though...plus, the youngest Barrett decided to reveal her newest trick: she can stand up! These days, Aurora can pull herself up on just about anything, and she can even take steps while holding Mommy's hands. Here, in this picture, we see the tip of that mobility iceberg.

As for Lorelai, those cute pigtails would soon be a thing of the past...

...because she took her very first trip to the salon to get a big-girl haircut!!

Just look...she's so sophisticated! So mature! Words...words fail me. Lorelai liked it, too!

But she's not just pretty as a princess...Lorelai also has the heart of a WARRIOR. At a friend's birthday party, Lorelai found time to don her pink princess crown, kick off her shoes, and mercilessly SLAY the terrifying dragon-pinata that crashed the event. There was much rejoicing thereafter. (thanks, Kristen & Deidre for the picture!)

Celeste's favorite look this season was "flowered hats & sticky fingers while outdoors." She demonstrates the versatility of this look by messily devouring a hot dog at Apple Annie's...

...and by demonstrating it again, this time with a lollipop, at Buckelew Farms (more on that later)! How can one girl be so sticky sweet everywhere she goes??

But the Barrett girls also have adventurous spirits to match their fabulous duds. Like this lovely play-tent, for example! Lorelai and Celeste had been clamoring to spend the night outside in their tent for months, so we finally gave in...on the coldest night of the fall to that point! They still had a good time, even though they picked up some not-so-fashionable souvenirs of their adventure: lots of tiny bug bites (luckily, they cleared up soon).

And finally, some more birthday-party haute couture--this time, from a kindergarten birthday bash Lorelai, Aurora, and I attended at Pump It Up, in north Tucson:

Frilly dresses & hair bows won't do for a jumping castle party: Lorelai wisely decided on this low-maintenance combination of jeans & green T-shirt. Let's see this ensemble in action!

HINT: if you replay this video over & over about 25 times, you'll get a general idea of what Lorelai's time in Pump It Up was spent doing.

Aurora also got involved in the proceedings, by debuting her Halloween onesie. Take a look!

With a hot pink flair, a coquettish black cat emblem, and warm yet versatile striped sleeves, Aurora is deckedout in a daring, exciting holiday surprise. And just look at the mobility it allows her!

As you can see, the boys couldn't stay away from Aurora. Just imagine how many heads these three Barrett fashionistas will turn in the next several years!

Just wait until you see our winter lineup! Stay tuned...

Aurora's Growing Up!

Before I post our Halloween pictures, I wanted to show some highlights from our littlest girl's life. Aurora is one big, healthy baby, and she is growing and learning fast! Throughout the summer & fall, she's hit many major milestones--and since I'm discovering the joys of video recording, I have a few preserved for posterity, like this one:

Yay, she can sit up! (and smile, and flap her arms around, but mainly with the sitting up...)

About 2-3 weeks after this (early September), she learned to crawl--first, by doing something I call "flumphing" (getting up on all fours, rocking back & forth to gain momentum, then flinging herself forward, then repeating it over & over again until she gets somewhere). Here's a clip of Aurora "flumphing" AND crawling--she moved on to crawling pretty quickly!

Some other highlights: Aurora has started taking baths with her sisters now; she loves them!

Even more importantly, she can now "pull up" on just about anything: couches, chairs, Mommy's legs, and pianos (both real and the noisy toy variety):

As you can probably see in this picture, Aurora's teeth have started to come in, too...the first one came on Sept. 1 (after many tearful days), and 3 more have (slowly) emerged since then. It has made eating and chewing a lot more fun (not to mention prodcutive) for Aurora.

But it gets better: two nights ago, Aurora actually took a couple of steps by herself!

At this rate, she'll be our earliest walker (she's almost 10 months; Lorelai started walking at about 11 1/2 months, Celeste at 13 months).

On many occasions this year, I have been a very flustered, frazzled mama, wondering what I got myself into by having 3 kids. However, watching Aurora grow, change and become happier each day answers that question for me. I am not sure what I did to deserve three such beautiful, sweet girls--but I'm grateful for them all the same.

Apples & Peaches & Pears, Oh My!

In early September, we gathered a bunch of boxes, piled the kids in the car, and drove an hour and a half east to Willcox, Arizona, for our (sort of) annual trip to Apple Annie's Orchard/Produce Garden.

It was the low prices for bulk produce that initially got me interested in Apple Annie's; thanks to them, I got started on my current home-canning habit. More than that, though, I absolutely love picking my own produce--there's something very satisfying about getting your food straight from the source. It must be the farming/gardening genes handed down to me from my father & grandfather. It's also educational (and fun) for the kids; we enjoy showing them where food comes from, and how it travels from the earth to the table.

Our first stop (as usual) was the produce garden, a few miles up the road from the orchard. Dark clouds gathered overhead, but it never rained--it was almost too bad, because it was a pretty hot day! Oh, well--we still enjoyed ourselves. Usually, I pick the peppers/tomatoes/etc. for my salsa at the produce garden, but since I canned my salsa earlier this year, we just decided to let the girls choose what they wanted to pick:

Here's Lorelai with one of our buckets (you pick these up at the garden entrance; if you're picking a LOT of food, they've got wheelbarrows too).

Celeste really enjoyed this part of the day...we got fresh green beans, chile peppers, a cucumber or two, and some summer squash.

After checking out at the produce garden, we drove back up the road toward the orchard--the larger & more developed portion of Apple Annie's:

Apple Annie's has over 10 different varieties of apple trees growing in their orchard, as well as peaches & several varieties of pears. Usually they had just grown Asian pears, but they finally have trees that grow Bartlett pears as well. Off to pick the fruit!

Yes, that IS a smile on Aurora's face. She really enjoyed the baby backpack!

Look at the beautiful peaches in those trees! Unfortunately, those particular trees were off-limits that day (as you can see by the string marking off the row). Nevertheless, we were still able to find enough peaches to satisfy us (but not a lot; they were pretty picked over by the time we arrived).

One of the tools Apple Annie's gives you is this neat "claw" that can reach up to the tops of the trees & yank out high-hanging fruit--which then falls into the small basket below the claw. We were able to get a lot of apples this way...

Lorelai was a big help getting the peaches & pears. Here she is sitting next to our fruit buckets. The pears in particular (on the right) were DELICIOUS. I already love Bartlett pears, but wow...these were super-sweet and amazingly good. I will definitely get these next time!

We also bought lunch while at Apple Annie's...some pretty delicious apple-wood-smoked hamburgers. Tasty...

...but not as tasty as dessert: apple-cherry pie with a MASSIVE scoop of ice cream on top:

Mmmm...it makes my arteries thicken just looking at it, but it was worth every bite.

That night, after returning home, I was feeling ambitious, so I whipped up an impromptu dinner with some of our fresh-picked produce:

Sliced peaches & cucumbers, along with a cheesy squash/zucchini casserole. Delicious!

We were pretty pooped out after a hot day picking fruits & vegetables, but we were still very satisfied with the results. We may wait another year or so before returning to Apple Annie's (we're thinking of letting our kids get a bit bigger first), but we'll still be excited to come back. It was very satisfying to live off the land...even if only for one day! (And even if it's not technically our land, haha!). Thanks, Apple Annie's!

Family Highlights From Late-Summer On; aka, Time To Catch Up On The Blog

We're a little behind on this whole blogging thing. I think we'll try to keep it short & simple, stick up tons of pictures of our cute kids, and plow through the last few months for the benefit of those who may care what's going on in our lives...

As many of you may know, Lorelai started kindergarten this year. She was admitted into a local charter school here in Sahuarita called Great Expectations Academy--we decided to try it out mainly because of the smaller class sizes (attendance cap: 20), since we thought that would keep Lorelai from being overwhelmed or overlooked. The school year started EARLY, too...as of July 21 (about 3 1/2 weeks before Lorelai's 5th birthday!!), she began school.

Not surprisingly, Lorelai loves school (even if it still tires her out some days). This picture was taken on her very first day; when other kids were crying around her and being peeled off their parents' legs, Lorelai was all smiles, tackling her blocks and ready to go. She even told me to "go away now"!

Surprisingly, I haven't burst into tears myself yet--almost 5 months later (yes, this blog is reeeally late). Maybe because she was so happy to be a student, and I was happy for her; however, I will admit I've gotten misty-eyed on several occasions, dropping her off at school and watching her walk away from me, towards whatever adventure that day holds. She's not my baby anymore (although, 2 more babies later, I guess I knew that already), but there's also a part of her that is exclusively hers now, that I'll never fully be a part of. That knowledge makes this control-freak momma a little bummed.

This melancholy, however, is more than made up for by seeing the joy Lorelai gets from school, and how excited she is to learn things. Her creativity has gone to a new level since school started--she always wants to work on a new picture, or transcribe one of her books now that she knows her letters, or make her own puzzle/word search/etc. I have loved her beautiful and goofy drawings, many of which she makes just for me. The object on the left is a dog, if you're wondering. And the blue "sky," of course, is "up." It's neat to see the way her brain is developing.

And now that she can read & write, of course, she's coming up with even kookier stuff, like this picture above. Once, she left Nate a note that said, "Daddy, I love you so much I can't believe it." As you can guess, he's keeping it close to his heart! I remember how wonderful it was for me to learn to read and write--it opened up worlds of discovery, and I am so happy the same is coming true for my firstborn.

Okay, I said I'd keep this blog post short, but I just wanted to brag about my daughter a little bit! I'll have more specific stories to tell later, but I just wanted to say how happy I am Lorelai is hanging in there with her class and loving every minute of kindergarten. Here's hoping the rest of her year brings even more enjoyment!

Dude, Where's My Minivan??

Short answer...moldering in a junkyard, waiting to be picked apart by scavenger mechanics for its various spare parts.

Long answer...well, I thought I should get back to our blog, and catch our readers up on our lives, seeing as I haven't written in over a month. Most of that is due to football, which has seriously cut into my Sunday blogging time. In addition to that, we had some automotive "issues" during the month of September that took up a lot of time and drained a lot of emotional energy. I'll elaborate below...

Last November, about 2 months before Aurora was born, we finally sprang for our family's first minivan and became, in Nate's words, "a REAL Mormon family." It was a blue-gray 2006 Toyota Sienna, and (in retrospect) we got it for a screamin' low price. It had only one previous owner and had been very well cared for when we got it. It had a power door (which came in handy when carpooling) and a 6-CD changer, which came in VERY handy on the long family vacation we took this last summer. In short, it was a nice car and we really loved it.

Fast forward now to Sept. 8, 2010:

 

(photo from The Sahuarita Sun; yay, I made it on their website!)

Here's what happened...

I had just dropped Lorelai off at school, and was heading back north on La Canada Drive, a 2-lane street that runs north-south on the west side of Sahuarita. On this morning, I found traffic slightly slowed down, as there was a school bus heading north on the road at the same time. Then, we approached a point where railroad tracks cross the road, and the school bus came to a complete stop...as did the 3 cars in front of me as well as myself.

I can't pinpoint what happened next, other than that I was dumb and inattentive. I noticed the school bus start to accelerate, and something caught my eye on the left side of the road briefly. Or maybe it was my kids in the car making noise...I don't know. The point is, I let myself get distracted, and started to accelerate too fast. By the time I finally faced forward, I realized that the F-150 in front of me wasn't accelerating as fast as I was, and then--BOOM. The nose of the van slid underneath the bumper of the truck, knocking it forward into the car in front of it, and so on....four cars in all took damage, mostly minor.

The truck's rear bumper was bent downward pretty badly, and the driver was yelling and calling 911 while complaining of neck pain. In the picture above, you can see the paramedics loading her on a stretcher and taking her to the hospital (I haven't heard anything more about this driver; I have to assume she was all right and therefore never pursued the matter further via my insurance company). However, the truck and the two cars in front of it all drove away from the accident. Not so with our poor van.

Even though I hadn't been going very fast (probably about 15 mph maximum), the angle of the nose and the truck's bumper caused a whole lotta damage. In addition, the driver's side airbag deployed in my face, and how come nobody ever told me how stinky and dusty airbags were? The whole inside of the car was dusty and smelled like burning metal, and Celeste was crying in the backseat, and I wasn't really scared so much as mortified. How could I have done something so stupid? Heck, even writing this right now is making me angry again. I can't believe I wrecked the car (and put my beautiful girls and other drivers in danger) because I wasn't paying enough attention. If it had been a fast-moving accident, it would have undoubtedly been scarier, but the embarrassed guilt probably wouldn't gnaw at me so much...

Well, luckily I have family living nearby and friends too, and they are awesome. Two other moms also carpooling their kids to school stopped their cars nearby when they saw the accident, checked to see if we were all right (nobody in our car was hurt), and then offered hugs, moral support, and dinners. Another passerby offered me her cell phone so I could call Nathan's parents, who came and picked us all up, loaded our belongings into the trunk, and drove us home. Then came the tearful calls to Nathan, other family members, the insurance company, etc. etc.

For about two weeks, we were a one-car family; that was tough. Fitting 5 people (including 3 kids and 2 car seats) into a teeny 2002 Toyota Echo is not an easy task; in addition, Nathan had to take the car to work most days, and so I was stranded at home. I really have more sympathy now for one-car families; I have taken it for granted most of my married life that I would have my own transportation. I am not the world's biggest homebody so staying at home all day with my kids was a little tough. I also really appreciate my carpooling partner (thanks Miranda!!) who graciously offered to drive both ways each day until our vehicle situation was sorted out.

As you can tell by these pictures, the car was pretty torn up. Nathan and I assumed the car would be totaled; our friend reinforced that opinion when she found out the airbag had deployed.  Apparently, when that happens, a vehicle's entire steering wheel column needs to be replaced. Sure enough, just over a week later, our insurance company called us with the news that the car had been totaled, since it had more than $7,000 worth of damage. Ouch. It was tough to bid farewell to the car; we hadn't owned it for long, but we'd really enjoyed it!

However, there was good news as well (warning: State Farm unpaid advertisement ahead). As it turned out, the settlement State Farm offered us was about $2,500 MORE than what we'd originally paid for the car in the first place! On top of that, it turned out our premiums wouldn't be going up, since we are allowed one at-fault accident every 10 years! Yay! Now, I just have to drive extra carefully for the next 10 years and not let our kids behind the wheel EVER... :). Hey, that's doable.

As a result of all this, we were able to go car-shopping about 10 days later, prepared to make a larger down-payment on a vehicle than the first time around. And here's the beauty we ended up with:

Does it look familiar? It should--it's another Toyota Sienna (hey, we liked the make/model and we wanted to stick to what works!). This car is a 2005 (one year older than our previous vehicle), but had about 20,000 fewer miles than did our previous car at the time of the accident. Plus, it has the all-important power door that I've become so attached to...

...plus a new option the last car didn't have; a rear audio system (I assume it's radio only, by the look of it, but we haven't really played with the device yet), complete with remote control in a handy foldaway slot!

Sadly, I find myself nit-picking this car and unfairly comparing it to the last one ("THIS minivan's power windows are too sticky!", "THIS minivan only has a single CD player!", "Why does THIS minivan make that little noise when I drive too fast??", "Why does the tire pressure gauge light KEEP TURNING ON, even though the tire-store guys say my tire pressure is fine?? WHAT'S WRONG with this dashboard?!?!"). Most of these nitpicks, as you can see, are very minor and silly; maybe it's my way of punishing myself for destroying our last minivan (I still miss it!!).

Truthfully, though, it has been a dependable car so far, with no real problems; I am confident it will take good care of us as long as we take good care of it. I have learned (the hard way!) to be more attentive on the road; in addition, I am very grateful that everything has worked out well. Firstly, of course, we were all safe and sound. Also, despite having a somewhat stressful September, we now have lower monthly car payments and will be able to get our credit a bit more under control. The "setback" has turned into a blessing in disguise...I hope we can fully appreciate and take advantage of it.

Not that I'd want to make wrecking my car a regular thing...