Man it's been awhile!

Hi all!  Sorry it's taken so long to post, I will definitely try to get better at this.

But here's one really long post with a brief summary of a few things that have been going on with us.  

So here goes with the randomness!

I'm adding the picture below because 1. it's cute, and 2. there's a good story behind it.

One morning when Thomas was feeding the cats, he noticed that Rakeesh wasn't there waiting at the food bowls (which is VERY strange for him!).  After a thorough search through the house, I actually found Rakeesh squished between the window screen and the window pane!  Somehow (I still don't know how this happened), when Thomas was shutting the windows before bed, he didn't see Rakeesh and he shut the window with Rakeesh trapped between!  So all night, poor Rakeesh was trapped between the window pane and the window screen.  The funny thing is he didn't seem too bothered by the entire event.  When I released him, he simply ran downstairs to find his food!  Thomas apparently has a habit for trapping our cats.  He has trapped Biffy in a dresser drawer twice now.  It's a good thing Thomas doesn't do the laundry--otherwise we might have more serious problems! (I've actually seen a cat that got trapped in the dryer, and the owner turned the dryer on with the cat inside.  The cat suffered from multiple moderate burns, but ultimately survived and was fine after a bit of TLC!)

Here's a group shot (minus Dad who was napping!) during my latest visit to OK.  Here we are all decked out in orange--it felt good to be surround by a sea of orange again! :)

 Me with Meme and Papa after swimming on Labor Day.  ♥

And now a few pics from a pumpkin patch we recently visited.  We were able to watch the pumpkin weigh off-with the largest pumpkin weighing 1245.5 pounds.

  We also walked through the biggest corn maze I've every been through.  We had to carry large flags with us in case we got lost.  It took us about an hour and 20 minutes to get through the maze.

HOUSE UPDATES:  This is the desk Thomas built.  It took awhile, but turned our really great...and fit perfectly in the room.

Can you tell which side is mine, and which side is Thomas'? :)

This is our Thomas' current project.  He tore down the wallpaper, and is currently in progress of sanding the walls.  We are thinking of doing the bathroom in gray and yellow, we just haven't decided 100% yet.

Hopefully pretty soon I will have some before AND after shots of the bathroom! :) 

Here are some absolutely beautiful embroidered butterflies I snagged at my favorite flea market.  I fell in love with these, and got them for about 0.75 cents each--which is crazy when you think about all the time someone has put into these!  I have been debating on what to do with them--incorporate them into a quilt, pillows, or frames.  I really don't like the frames I currently have them in, but they were the only square frames that we available at the time.  So I am on the lookout for either nice frames for these guys, or a better idea of what to do with them.  But they are too pretty to not have on display! (btw, this is currently in our hallway)

Of course I have to add a few geocaching pictures!  Here are some pics of us with our friends Janet and David.  We met up with them to hunt for this particularly good cache.  The title of the cache was Raiders of the Lost Cache...and was themed after Indiana Jones, of course.  We had to squeeze tight to get into the cave, and once inside we found this 'treasure chest' among the spider webs and toy snakes.  We also grabbed a few other caches while we were in the area.

Here we are at the lookout point at the park we were hiking in.  We were pretty much exhausted at this point.  We had a pretty strenous hike through lots of brush and boulders.

Thomas as he squeezes into the cave with the Raider's cache.

The cache container:

Thomas as he climbs out of the cave.

And here's Janet

Thomas did not escape unscathed.  Here's an example of the danger that can come with geocaching. :) 

This is an example of some of the boulders we had to climb as we searched for some of the geocaches.

Janet and the boulder climb:

We also did a bit of geocaching at another beautiful park.  This hike was a lot less strenuous, and was absolutely gorgeous with all of the leaves changing colors.  We also walked through several beautiful meadows of wildflowers. 

Okay Mom, here's one for you!  The always-camera-shy-Rosie :)

Well that pretty much sums up what we've been up to lately.  We are definitely trying to take advantage of the nice weather and beautiful landscape while we can.  You'll probably have to put up with lots of landscape pictures in the near future.  

 Hope all is well back home!

And I hope you weren't too bored. :)

Please, keep in touch!

♥ Natalie