7 Quick Takes Friday

Happy Friday everyone!!  Here's the latest round up of news from our family this week!

**1**

It has been amazingly gorgeous fall weather here...granted we don't have the beautiful leaves that my sister does in the midwest, but it has been so so pretty here in LA.  Until today that is.  The Santa Ana winds have kicked up again, and that raises the temperature again...so it's supposed to be 90 tomorrow :(  That makes me so so sad.  I cannot even begin to tell you how depressing this is...

**2**

 But! In less than 1 week I will get to witness sights such as this:

  

and this... (my 3 year old niece and their golden...)

the little one and I are off to the midwest!  We fly into Minneapolis & spend 2 nights with my parents and then they'll drive us down to Iowa to spend several days with my sister and her kiddos before Megan drives me back up to Minneapolis for me to fly out.  I cannot wait.  I need fall, SO SO badly.  It is my favorite time of the year and the whole time I lived in Pasadena that was what I missed the most.  So, scarves, hot drinks, beautiful colors, crisp air, and introducing my baby to leaves....here we come!

**3**

Charles commented the other day that our little one will probably have flown more in his first year than he did before he turned 30...which is probably true.  But for now, while it's just Aidan and I don't have 2 kids I'm trying to travel with, I'm going to take advantage of it!  I always had this dream of getting to raise my kids in the same town as my family.  My grandparents lived in town while I was little and it was amazing getting to see them a couple times a week, having them be our main baby sitters, building those relationships and memories.  But since I don't live near family, I made a commitment that I was going to do whatever I could to help Aidan know his family, and that means a lot of plane trips right now....which yes, can be long days, but I'm getting pretty good at traveling with a little one!  Some flights go better than others, but that's to be expected.  I have my packing list saved to my computer that I adapt depending on the trip, and then I get going!  We'll see how long I keep this traveling thing up, but for now I love it :)

**4**

Life feels so different right now, and all because my baby is finally learning how to sleep.  Yes of course not getting up 8 times a night is nice, but honestly it's getting a little break during the days that is making all the difference in my world right now.  I never used to get him to sleep longer than 30 minutes at a time, so during that 30 minutes I would race around trying to get something done, feed myself, respond to an email etc and then he'd be up again.  I never sat down, I never took a deep breath.  I never did anything fun just for me.  Having time during the day now where he's safely in his crib putting himself to sleep and staying asleep for at least an hour or an hour and a half has changed my pace of life drastically.  I don't feel so frantic any more.  I actually made myself a real breakfast of eggs and toast today because I knew I'd have time to eat that and still get something else done before he got up from his morning nap.   I am much less stressed and cranky, praise God!

**5**

It's family fun night at church!  Trick or treating, carnival games, pizza, and my little bug in a Spiderman costume :)  Oh and the haunted house....which I won't go near.  Even though they tell me it's "not that scary" I don't do halloween or haunted houses!

**6**

One of the things I actually haven't done much in the past week or so is read.  I have extra time right now, but I've been having fun working on other projects--mainly my shutterfly photo albums that I'm behind on.  It totally brings back my yearbook days--designing pages, cropping photos, writing captions, trying to tell the story of our year in 100 pages.  I love it, it is so much fun for me.  I finally finished and ordered our 2011 album, and my goal is to make enough progress in our 2012 album so that I can actually order it when we get back from Hawaii the first week of January in 2013.

**7**

I'm trying to think of something creative & witty right now for item number 7....but I'm listening to my baby screaming trying to put himself back to sleep (it's been a rough nap time....thank you garbage man and silly shrieking college girls who decided to have a hysterical giggling fit right outside his window just as he was almost back to sleep the first time....).  So I got nothing.  Happy Halloween everyone!