Halloween B.C.

Tomorrow is Halloween! Yay! One of my favorite holidays EVER! It's also a special one because it's AleXander's FIRST. The kids wore their costumes the other night at a ward Trunk or Treat. I was grateful for the pre-Halloween event because it helped reveal any kinks in the costumes that could be remedied by tomorrow. Here is AleXander in his Caveman outfit. I've avoided trimming or having his hair cut so it could be all messy for the festivities.

I wanted to let Christian's hair grow out too, but it doesn't really grow "down". It's more coarse and grows "out". About two weeks ago, I couldn't stand it anymore and I had it cut. Hey, I love Halloween, but I'm also impatient! He looked adorable anyway!

LOVE Christian's face and X-man's hair in this shot!

More Primitive Poses....

Where is Mikelle in all this? I haven't forgotten her. She just rebelled against the Barbaric theme, so for this entry, she had to wait until I was done with the cavemen. Actually, the good picture I took of her in her costume turned out to be out of focus, because my nighttime eyesight is horrible (when the picture was taken) and I didn't realize the camera wasn't on auto focus! Ugh! Therefore, she'll get a really good (focused) picture taken tomorrow night. In the meantime, here she is with her brothers:

And because he's just too cute, here is more of X-man to close this Halloween preview.

More Halloween fun to come in the next entry! Happy Spooking!

Catching Up With October

Dang…I got way behind! So much has been going on this month! I’ll try to bring things up to speed.

I am about to bring a new Circle Motif (below) to SunDust and a new Triptych is currently being matted and readied for the gallery (also below). None of the motifs have sold yet, but I hear they make quite an impression to those that come in the gallery.

Sorry about the Copyright C's. You can't trust anyone!

And here is the Triptych currently being matted (in a vertical frame with three separate circular mattes). It's Paris-London-New York theme. The times on the clock are not significant, but the times are in synch with the time zones for each city.

While the kids were on Fall Break, their cousin Mikkel came to town. We had Chinese with him and a buddy of his. Mikkel is the oldest cousin on the Henrichsen side and AleXander is the youngest! The pictures are not the best, We took these with the back-up camera and apparently it was on a less than stellar setting.

During the kids’ second week of Fall break, Chris was working crazy long hours which occurs bi-annually. I’m never happy with the October one because it hits while the kids are on Fall break. At least when it hits again in April, the kids are in school (Spring Break is in March). This time was even more difficult, because the week before, Chris was sent to Orlando, Florida. I told him to not let them send him on a trip right before the week of the insanity ever again. However, I just loved the Thing 3 T-shirt Chris brought back from there for AleXander.

Therefore, with Chris being mostly MIA, the 3 kids and I went on a little escape. My friend Billie from student housing days lives in St. David with her family. St. David is in Southeast Arizona near Tombstone. We crashed her place and spent one day at Tombstone and the next day in Bisbee. Bisbee is a fun artsy little town and I would love to go back. Tombstone was fun as well. We need to go back and see the actual O.K. Corral and do the touristy tour part of it. That is one thing we didn’t get to on our little trip.

Here is Alexander enjoying Fred the Snake in Tombstone:

Mikelle and Christian, near the O.K. Corral.

Hilarious sign in Tombstone that I couldn't help but photograph. I just loved sharing kisses with this Military Macaw (Tombstone)

Petting Zoo at Tombstone

Alexander turned 10 months 4 days ago! I’m relieved he hasn't started walking yet. The way he was going with the pulling up on things and standing (by 7 months) I thought for sure he would be walking by now. Thankfully, he hasn’t. I’d like to see him wait until 11 months, but if it happens before then, it’s not too terrible. But still, he’s my baby and he’s in such a hurry to grow up! (cry)

10/22/11 10 Months Old!

Chris and I went to a Halloween party the other night. We decided to go as Hippies and we brought Granola. I don't think many got the Granola connection with the treat we brought, but oh well!

Road Trip and "Official" 9 Month Pictures

This week has been quite eventful. First of all, AleXander and I accompanied Daddy on a business trip. Where, might you ask? The beautiful beach? A mountain resort? Sadly, no.

Primm, Nevada.

Where in the hell is that?!

Primm is on I-15 on the Nevada/California border. It's about a 1/2 hour SW of Las Vegas.


We stayed at one of the three hotels there on the surface of the moon - I mean in Primm. No, I'm not complaining. Really, I'm not. I've just realized that yes, I might live in what I call hell, but it's not the center of hell. There is at least vegetation and some color and scenic views in the Phoenix area. Not so in Las Vegas or Primm. Therefore, I live in hell's outer rim. However, even though Vegas and Primm is uglier it's still a few degrees cooler than here. Go figure.

It was an adventure in our typical hotel room with a baby. Yes, he fell off of that bed too. He is a quick and determined lil' guy! Christian was too, but falling off beds wasn't his issue. However, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, we arrived in the late evening and we met Chris's friends from work at Hofbräuhaus. AleXander quickly woke up from being in a car for hours to a lot of noise of people having a good time and a band playing just feet away. Here he is with a mini-stein. (Hey, there is nothing in it! The table next to us gave it to him because they thought he was so cute!)

Mom and her X-man
(he's looking at the band)

Who says Vegas is just for Grown-Ups?

The next day was marked with more Primm stuff (not much you can do there if you don't drink or gamble, but there is an outlet mall there). Here is AleXander exploring the room's bathroom. Notice how clean it was at first.

The aftermath (yes, we cleaned it up)

Of course, you have to get to know the room's A/C unit:

On Tuesday, we decided to drive home from Primm instead of going through Vegas. I'm so sick of the road between Vegas and Kingman. Well, while it was different doing the NV-CA-NV-CA-AZ way home, we discovered that you don't want to be on I-40 between Needles and Kingman right now. The interstate is supposed to be the fastest way, but not when they're doing construction and it's all down to one lane.

However, the craziest thing that happened was on the way home in Wikieup. If you don't know where Wikieup is, it's on 93 about an hour north of Wickenburg.

(this is a good map, though I don't know anything about Dazzo's Restaurant)

It's pretty much one of those towns in the middle of nowhere and only has a few houses, gas stations and dive restaurants. Coming home, and trying to make it home quicker than we were accomplishing, we stopped there and I had to make a bottle for my X-man. I come out of the bathroom and a young lady is standing there. She askes, "Do you remember me?" Well, she looked familiar, but it was out of context (I mean, this was Wikieup, AZ!) and I felt like an idiot not knowing her. She said she was one of my students at Heartland. (In Coolidge, well over a hundred miles away, probably 200 miles away). Her name was familiar, and it all started to come back to me. 4 years ago (2007-2008 school year), she was one of my 8th graders. I began to remember more about her and that class.

It's so crazy how it's a small world sometimes. I also feel bad for not remembering her at first, but that's what happens when you have hundreds of students per school year. It was fun reminiscing for a few minutes. I wanted to stay longer and talk, but we were already behind schedule returning home (we still had a good 2 hours to go) and relieving our friends who adopted Christian and Mikelle for those three days. If we already lived in Wickenburg, we would have cut off an hour and a half getting home! haha

Official 9 Month Pictures

2 days before AleXander turned 9 months, we had his official pictures taken. We already knew he was adorable, but just in case you didn't think he could get any cuter, check these out!