LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW!!

We had a little snow flurry yesterday afternoon but nothing stayed around. This morning we woke up and found 10 inches outside! Yay!!

Check out Kayla's amazing bundling job on Lucy... no catching a cold here!

Do you think Lucy likes the snow?? hmmm...

Lucy having a blast with her mommo

awww, what a cute little snow angel:)

Snow!

Well, I noticed that it's been over a month since I've blogged. No excuse really this time, I'm feeling better these days, which is excellent!! No more morning sickness for the most part, as long as I keep my tummy full :)

Now that it's snowing right now (yipee!!), I thought I should catch up on the last two months or so. Nothing too eventful, just ordinary life for the most part. Lucy's getting bigger of course, saying more words, pretending a lot with her toys, and is as active as ever!

Think these first two pictures are from late October. The leaves in Nevada City are so beautiful when they change color. We didn't get too many pics unfortunately, but you get the point. This first one is of the freeway here. Yep, you'll notice there are NO cars on it. Now it always has cars on it, but I thought (coming from LA) that it was pretty amazing to be able to take a picture of the freeway without any cars in it!

This next one is just a little side street in Nevada City.

Here's a picture from Halloween. I took Lucy downtown Grass Valley to do some safe trick or treating during the day. Here she is dressed like a princess (original I know - but I didn't buy her an outfit!) with her two Grandma's, Oma and Nana.

And here's an update for all you who live far away of baby #2, due May 14th. Just joking, that was a stuff the pillow under the sweater "am I really going to have to get this big again" moment. We have bets, Justin doesn't think I was that big with Lucy, I feel like I was. So we'll see if I end up getting that big with #2 :) Haven't taken any real pictures of the belly yet, but I've definitely "popped".

Lastly, here is an awful picture of it snowing outside right now. Hopefully when we wake up tomorrow the ground will be all pretty and white and I can take a better one!

Big Sister

We've been dying to let you in on the secret we've been holding for weeks now: Kayla's prego!! Yep, she's about 12 weeks along now, has definitely been feeling the effects of the little tyke's hormones (!), and Lucy still can't get over the fact that she's going to be a big sister!

Watch out little brother/little sister... Lucy's in charge and that could be pretty intense:)

We're so excited to welcome the new little Pfaffisto (sometime early next May) and can't wait for you to meet him/her. Hopefully we can start adding to our sleep reservoir... I'm already feeling exhausted just thinking about the early AM hours again. Please keep us in your prayers, especially "mommo" as she endures the nausea. If I were in Kayla's shoes, I'd be crying like a big fat baby over all the sickness she's had! :( She's a champ though and the nausea should be coming to an end pretty soon here (fingers crossed), yay! More pics to come later. Love you all. - the pfaffs

Fall Update

Here's some pics from the last few weeks. We've visited a few different local pumpkin patch's and harvest festivals in the area. We've been to the Beirwagon's pumpkin patch twice now (once with each set of grandparent's :), which is where I grew up going every year as a kid. They have the BEST carmel apples, apple juice, apple butter, ok you get it, anything apples!

Lucy loved the "neigh-neigh's"

Lucy's pumpkin of choice..currently on our fireplace with a little face on it. She really liked it that day, now, not so interested in it.

This was at a different harvest festival. Now anyone from GV recognizes this yummy ice cream bar. They are sold at pretty much every Grass Valley/Nevada City event. My bar of choice: predictably, mint chip with dark chocolate. Justin's: black raspberry. Since that was "healthier" we let lucy down that one :)

Now these don't compare to Diddy Reise in price, but come visit us and we'll go get one!!

I think this was Lucy's first real sugar high. Luckily there were a lot of activities to burn off some energy, but she was pretty crazy. She even broke out a "crazy lucy" face for us, something she doesn't do much anymore.

And I think she definitely wants a farm. She LOVES animals, not just dogs anymore, all animals. She is fearless of them. I on the other hand am a chicken, for some reason, even though I grew up with some animals, they are very intimidating, i'm always waiting for them to bite me.

Then came the rain, and rain, and rain. This is something we are going to have to get used to up here.

I can count on one hand the number of days in the past 4 years I had to actually use an umbrella in LA because it was raining hard enough. Now many people in LA break out an umbrella at the sign of one drop. Cars halt to a stop on every road down there and traffic is worse than usual. Life stops in LA when it rains. (ok, that's a bit dramatic, but we really did notice that people there freak over a day of sprinkling :).

Up here, it doesn't just sprinkle, it POURS. And I'm talking side to side rain due to wind, not just light showers. First thing we noticed was how difficult it is with Lucy. How do we get her (semi-dry) from the house, to the car, carrying both her and an umbrella? Then, even harder, into the car and car seat buckled. This is going to take some practice to perfect. Next thing we noticed, drivers. Drivers up here are used to the wet, winter weather. We hopped on the freeway and life was like normal, other than the torrential downpour of the rain. And roads up here actually become hazardous, with fallen tree branches here and there, it really is an obstacle course. All I can say is good thing we are starting with the rain, because snow is going to be a whole other ordeal :)

And here's Lucy on what I think was day 2 of down pouring rain. Any ideas for what to do with a 1 1/2 year old all day inside? I'm going to need some tips to get through the winter :)

Houseboating

I think we nabbed the last hot weekend of the summer this past weekend. We spent the weekend with our friends the Paynes, who we know from SLO, at Lake Englebright on the houseboat.

We had an awesome time with them, their son Tobin is only 1 day younger than Lucy, so those two always have a blast playing together. Here are some pics...

Here they are playing in the giant inner tube. The part where the kids are has a mesh bottom, so it was perfect for them to get wet, but not have to swim.

Here's nap #1 for Lucy. Naps were definitely our biggest problem out there. On Sat. we decided to put both kids pack n' plays downstairs, since it was blazing upstairs. We all headed upstairs to bask in the sun...or die in the sun...it was 95! As you can imagine, neither of them napped. For about an hour and a half, they just stood up, talked to each other, laughed, then we would try to put them back down...no success. So we went on a boat ride and that did the trick, they each got about a 1/2 hr nap I think...not enough!

Oh, and you can see in some of the pictures the baby gate, technically dog gates, that we used on both open ends of the houseboat. They worked really well, just gave the kids some kind of boundary so we didn't have to worry about them going overboard the whole time!

I like this next one of them. It was first thing in the morning, Tobin was trying to be all sweet holding Lucy's hand, and, well, you can just see her expression about that.

Here the guys are trying to ease the kids into the lake. Now this lake is one of the coldest lakes in our area...I barely swim in it, usually only to do something behind the boat (tube, wakeboard, those kinda things). You can see how much they both enjoyed the short dunk :)

Poor lucy...she came out right then!

Nap #2, Sunday, another boat ride did the trick :)

River Rats

We've spent quite a few days since we've moved up to GV at the river, the Yuba River that is, which is right outside of "town" :) Sometimes we just hang out in the little swimming hole next to the main parking lot (below), and other times we hike a bit down the river to other swimming holes. Don't worry, when we hike we walk PAST the nude beaches! Yes, there are parts of the river that are clothing optional...not for us Pfaffs though, we like our bathing suits on!

Here we are a few weeks ago with Allison and Aurelia Acton. They were down visiting from Seattle and it was fun to catch up with them. Here Allison and I are after swimming Lucy and Aurelia across the deep part of the river.

Here's a pic of Lucy on the way back to the car...the river always wears her out!

And we just love this picture. We tried to get her to wear this floaty ring...needless to say it came off right after this picture!

Daddy Style

Just wanted to give a shout out to my hubby. Some of you may know that he is color blind, but did you know he is also pattern blind? Check out some of these great outfit combinations below...

All in all though, I am thankful that he gets her dressed :)

huh?

OK, we've been in Grass Valley for over a month now and there is something I don't get.

Los Angeles has a population of 11,000,000.

Grass Valley has a population of almost 11,000.

Why don't people stop at crosswalks for pedestrians in Grass Valley?!!

In LA I walked to work for over 3 years and crossed a crosswalk on a major street daily - one with no stoplight, stop sign, or crosswalk flashers...and drivers would stop for me!! Now I know I'm not that good looking in my tax accounting outfit to have cars stop for me daily, but they would. In the "fast paced", "horrible driver" LA world, I never had a problem.

Then, the last year, with Lucy, we were like gold there. People would be cruising down the big streets going 30-40 mi/hr and would stop because of the stroller...ahhh the good ol' days!

Now to my point...Grass Valley. In this small town, where people drive maybe 15-20 miles thru "town" - NO ONE STOPS for me and lucy. Now I'm not talking about when we jaywalk...which tends to occur due to the lack of crosswalks, but that's another issue. I'm talking about at actual crosswalks! Do they think I just enjoy standing with my baby in her stroller at the crosswalk? They just drive on by. Now according to some friends of mine who live in Oregon - that would be a ticket there, pedestrians have right of way.

Ok, I'm done complaining...I'm just in disbelief. For those who live in GV, no offense...I'm sure you stop for pedestrians :) For those in LA, enjoy those "crazy drivers" who stop for you when you cross the street.

Camping in Tahoe

So...haven't got to posting pics of GV yet, but I have tried to post pics from our quick camping trip to Lake Tahoe last week 3 times already! Our darn internet...they say we need to bring them the modem to switch it out, it keeps shutting down all the time. I digress...

So, think it's time for a bigger car? Don't worry, lucy was back there...somewhere...in her carseat.

This was the first time we have taken lucy camping since our road trip to Seattle when she was 2 months old. Ahhh, the good old days, just used to swaddle her and pop her down by our feet and she was good to go. Camping now...a little more complicated, but still fun.

Yes, I know, the pigtails are a little out of control. Don't worry, now they are much better. Most of her hair fits in the two piggies now, so they aren't as "pointy"

The first day we were there the weather was beautiful. We found this great little creek near our campground and lucy had fun catching fish with Justin.

"Crazy Lucy" - if you haven't seen this in person, it's hard to describe. Basically if anyone says "crazy lucy", she does this really big crazy smiley face...it's halarious! I die laughing everytime! So, in a lot of these pics, you will see crazy lucy, click on the below one here, it's hard to see from far away.

Mountain girl!

Day 2 - not as warm as day 1. It began with a bright and early wake up call by lucy at 5:45am. We didn't want to wake the whole campground, so we headed into Tahoe City to get some much needed coffee and breakfast. There was a great little farmers market that morning (see the below pic - to the right of Justin), and we had fun playing at the playground at the beach there.

Here's a peek into our tent. Yep, that's the pack n' play in there, and no, that did not leave much room for Justin and I to sleep. But lucy doesn't sleep well with us, so that was our best option. We did stay warm though in our trusty tent.

The trip ended with some thunderstorms, rain, and even hail...good time to leave.

OK, i'm hitting "publish post" now before our internet fails again...hope it works!