* Randomness *

I am still alive! It has been a very busy past few weeks and blogging took a back burner to tending to my family, painting business, paperwork and my home.

 So here are a few shots from the past several weeks....enjoy!

***

I had the pleasure of helping decorate this wedding cake for some friends from church. They put me in charge of overseeing the decoration of 3o round cakes and this main cake. I had an awesome time of meeting and  fellowshipping with the sweet gals that were helping and I had a blast decorating all of these!

The autumn colours have been gorgeous this year! I have enjoyed photographing them. Here are some of my favorites!

 ... And a beautiful Indian summer sunset ...

** Day 2-Galena Trip **

Here are more photos from my girl's trip to Galena, IL. Day 2 we went walking around downtown, visiting the quaint little shops and having a fun time laughing and being goofy, as evidenced by this photo of Sarah....

downtown Galena

I love the contrasting colours of this building, so sharp and striking. But I thought it looked like it has a big nose (smile)

so picturesque 

I really enjoyed the awesome, unique architecture that this town has

. Girl time .

A couple of weeks ago my two friends, Sarah and Em, and I took a 3 day trip. The purpose was to celebrate our birthdays, which all happen to fall within the month (Oct. 2-Nov. 4) and to have some great girl time. It had been waaaay too long since all three of us had done anything together so this was the perfect thing to do!

Day 1 ~ Stopped in Dubuque, Iowa for some lunch and sightseeing/photo ops! We found lots to photograph there and had a great time!

.. a unique way to display a unique leaf ..

I looove old architecture and Dubuque certainly had plenty to choose from!

The camera freaks! You see, all 3 of us have digital SLRS and it was probably quite the site to see us walking around town looking like this.....

In fact, we had a lot of people ask us if we were photography students....well in a way, yes! We just don't have a teacher, we are simply teaching ourselves through trial and error!

The end of the day.......

our destination, Galena, Illinois...what a beautiful way to end a beautiful day!

 

To see more photos of our fun trip check our Sarah's blog, and here and here

WWWAT

I have never posted for a WWWAT before. This was fun! 

I love the architecture of my 108 yr. old house!

* fun at the orchard *

A week or so ago I felt the urge to get out and make a trip to the orchard. It was a cool day and one could smell autumn in the air. The forecast was calling for rain for the next 5 days so I thought, "we need to take advantage of this day and spend time at this beautiful place!" So I inivited a dear friend and her 4 little girls and off we headed to Wilson's Apple Orchard in Iowa City! The girls loooovvved it! They ran and ran and ran some more! They each were excited to have their own little buckets to pick their apples off the ground. That is, until the buckets started to get heavy and then it was," can you carry this, it is too heavy." Or, "I don't want to carry my bucket any more." But all in all they did very well and played very hard! And us mamas, well we left feeling refreshed from the abundance of fresh air, the joy and delight in watching our children enjoy themselves and the beauty of God's wonderful creation!

These four girls are the best of friends! They play and squabble together like sisters.

** cousins **

Alannah and I were back in Missouri visiting family a few weeks ago and we spent an entire day at my brother and his family's home. So it was a great chance for Alannah to play with the cousins, specifically Lorelei. Lorelei is 6 months younger than Alannah so they play very well together. It also helps that they both enjoy playing dress-up and talking and talking and well, talking....

Sister in-law Beth and I wanted to get some photos of all 4 of them...kinda a little photo shoot....but as it always is when the mamas are in charge of the picture taking, they tended not to co-operate as well as they would have for the professional studio photographer! But we did get a few really cute ones.

This is the only one where we came the closest to getting all of them looking at the camera at the same time...notice Alannah's hand on the top of Tanner's.

Tanner, Alannah, Rueben & Lorelei

Lorelei loves to pose for the camera