Style

The Thompson family has been all about expressing style lately.

THE MANLY MAN STYLE

...because only a real MANLY MAN can ride a pink motor scooter and still look handsome! My dad bought us these cool scooters for Christmas. I've mentioned his addiction to buying us toys for Christmas before, and this year he obviously didn't stray from his usual ways. He bought a pink and a red and we had to flip a coin for them.

We got pink. I'm thinking Aubrey will love her first "car" when she turns 16 ;) Until then, Justin looks HOT (pink) on it :)

THE CrAzY cLoWn STYLE

...because when you have blue curly wigs in the house, of course the kids want to wear them.

THE EMO STYLE

...because I'm addicted changing my hair and I may have taken it too far this time. In my defense, I asked for a warm brown tone with strawberry blond highlights. I GOT black with pumpkin orange highlights (just in time for Halloween). I had to curl it so it would look less goth. If it doesn't fade by the beginning of next week, I may be calling for some adjustments to be done.

A Season

Sorry about the brief hiatus from blogging. Life continues to just be...BUSY! As I was drowning in the busyness and chaos of life a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded by sweet Megan that this is just the season I'm in- and to try and get out of it just makes matters worse. We can't just throw the towel in, but need to try and gain some insight into who God is in the midst of what feels like complete ridiculousness. She went on to talk about how sometimes when we feel the loneliest, we're right in the midst of God's plan (Psalms and David). Sometimes I think it's hard to pinpoint the fact that it's loneliness that I'm feeling. I mean, I'm surrounded by a loving family and friends. It's not that I'm necessarily ALONE, but rather, just don't have the time to truly BE with the people I love.

This last couple of weeks has been better. I've tried to focus on doing the things I really wanted to do and enjoying them. I've been watching less TV at night (not that I watched a TON before), and instead I've been working on projects. We've enjoyed a couple of excursions to the pumpkin patch. We went on a REFRESHING date night out with friends to watch a concert/eat dinner. I got to spend a couple of hours talking over coffee with a precious friend. We enjoyed an evening with family celebrating Justin's grandparents 65th wedding anniversary. We took a day trip to the beach with the church (was supposed to be camping, but I decided to cut out the overnight stuff, so I'd feel less overwhelmed). It's been a good two weeks.

Much like this season in Bakersfield, I feel that as I thin out the old stuff, hopefully the new growth will be bigger and better. Here in our mild climate, just as I see the leaves falling off of trees and the lawns turning brown, my yard also had plenty of evidence of growth. The nasturtiums are growing bigger and some bulbs are already peaking out from beneath the surface. I'm working on figuring out what I can shed, so that I'll really be able to grow!

Enough of that deep stuff...here are the pictures :) Prepare for 2 weeks worth of pictures!

Point of Grace concert at the Crystal Palace

65th Anniversary....WOW!
Pumpkin patch visit #1

(with our little fam and Christy's fam *Brogan was way too busy for pictures)

Pumpkin Patch visit #2

(with the Thompson crew)

Pumpkin Patch visit #3 (with Alisha and the Murphy fam)

(The Bridge "camping" trip)
(Aubrey and her buddy Charleigh had a ton of fun together)

(The Seuss crew...more detailed pictures at a later date :) )

VOLKSLAUF

He did it again! For the second year in a row, Justin competed in the Volkslauf 10K mud run. His goal for this year was to beat his time from last year. With the help of an encouraging brother as a partner and a little training, he was able to finish about 30 minutes faster than last time, WOW! I'm so proud of Justin for going out there and running this race. With his new job and family obligations, he was getting up at 5:15am to go for runs in the morning. Justin's dedication and perseverance always astonishes me (I'd quit after one morning of running, I'm sure). Justin knows he's not a runner, but he still set a goal to improve his time and was able to accomplish it. YAY!

Check out the studly Thompson brothers:

While we were out there, we saw some other buff friends we know!

Kate is pretty much the most in-shape girl I know. She made Volkslauf look easy :)

The youngest Chambless brother and his team made haste, while his wife, me and Alisha chatted, snacked and compared photos :) They started 48 or so minutes behind Kurt and Justin and only finished about 5 minutes after them. DANG...

What a great day full of teamwork and fun! And despite the fact that Alisha and I really didn't do much except make signs the day before (that we only had out for like 2 minutes) and take pictures, we were ALL exhausted when we got home. Maybe next year we'll be trying to get rid of some post pregnancy fat so we'll join in the fun!

Apple Picking

Our fall fun calendar hasn't been working out as planned. Our first outing just happened to fall on the busiest weekend of the year with our church grand opening and Sam Cham's 1st b-day. As far as I know no one showed up. Despite this little mishap, I was still super pumped about apple picking in Tehachapi the first weekend in October. This is definitely one of my favorite activities of the year. It's really not that exciting, but just something about driving out of town knowing that it's officially fall makes you all warm and fuzzy inside.

Plenty of friends were on board for the day with their families, when the forecast threw us all for a loop. In the midst of our beautiful (sarcasm) 80-95* fall days, a quick cold front was sweeping through with RAIN on THE SAME DAY AS APPLE PICKING! Not sure if anyone was still planning on going, we decided to brave the weather and head up to Tehachapi anyways. Kurt and Alisha were adventurous and came along with us. The weather was as predicted...COLD, WINDY and RAINY, but it was still a blast.

After setting out our food on the picnic table, the rain started coming down heavier and we had to head for the beloved mini van to enjoy a picnic and some Thomas the Train... (Thomas, he's the cheeky one...) We laughed about our adventure and decided to brave the rain for a few cute pictures. After we made the pregnant lady give up her sweater, Aubrey had a blast running in the rain (thanks Auntie for graciously taking care of your niece and volunteering to distribute your clothing;) ). We bought our freshly baked apple crisps, still warm from the oven and, of course, the fresh pressed cider. We headed back for the car (we even passed a few apple trees :) ) and within minutes were in line at Starbucks!

We had a great apple picking, I mean dripping, with Kurt and Alisha!

Hopefully the fall fun calendar will still serve it's purpose. It's breakfast by the fountain this Wed! I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Strike a Pose

I was checking out babyGap the other day, and I spotted the Gap casting call.

HELLO PEOPLE...how fun would it be to have your kiddo be the new face of babyGap AND win a Gap wardrobe for them. So fun!

Seeing as I think that the bloggy crew has pretty much the CUTEST kids ever, I thought I'd put the link out there for everyone to check out. There are some things to keep in mind...like you can't enter a picture that has been posted publicly before...so DON'T put the picture on your blog if you plan on entering it.


Here are the kiddos from last year.
Pretty cute, but when we all win, it will be cuter! :)

Project Completed

So I finished the pillow tonight thanks to a $3.50 clearance pillow from Ross. It was the perfect color, and Alisha made a good point when she said that the stuffing for pillows costs that much. It also matches the glass knobs perfectly.

glass knobs v

Big girl room update

Thanks to all of my blog buddy advisors, I made a decision on the big girl bedding. Last weekend we took a little road trip down to The Grove/ Farmer's Market and purchased the Brooke quilt and sham from Pottery Barn Kids. The colors are much more vivid than I expected and I just love the bedding! In addition to being excited about the bedding, the little road trip was a perfect mini getaway. If you haven't been to The Grove before, you must go. It's such a fun shopping center and it's right next to the historic Farmer's Market...so fun! Highlights of the trip for Aubrey were playing with all the kitchen equipment and toys at PBK and of course visiting the American Girl store. I can't wait till she's old enough to appreciate and care for one of those dolls.

We also visited Anthropologie while we were there and splurged on some adorable glass knobs for Aubrey's "new" old armoire. Auntie Christy gave us her old, rustic cabinet and I was so excited to paint it to go in Aubrey's room. It's been sitting in the garage ALL summer and this last week, we've been working on getting it painted. I think it looks great and will look even better with the cute knobs.

We still don't have a bed for her room, so if you know someone who is looking to get rid of a twin bed...let us know. I found one on craigslist, but I'm just not 100% sold on it. I'm looking forward to really starting to decorate the room. Grandma Kim already has the smaller owl pillow on back order and Alisha and I started to make a pillow that looks something like this (totally different colors though).
We've made the owl, but after bringing home the quilt, I decided I need to buy a different fabric for the pillow part. The quilt doesn't really have owls in it though, only birds. I'm thinking of making a bird applique pillow instead and I'll do something else with the owl.

Any opinions on wall color? I was leaning toward green, but I'm not totally sold on that. Also I found these really cool wall stickers. I think one would be cute in a corner of the room somewhere, what do you think?

In other news, if you're looking for some cute fall digiscrap downloads, check out this blog party of freebies! Just follow the link to the ones you like and you can download them.