Last Week of October

I love October. I think it is my favorite month. Fall is definitely my favorite season, unfortunately, the state I live in does not understand it's role in the seasons. In Utah the weather is what I would consider "Fall-Like" for maybe two weeks. Three if we are lucky that year. Anyway, with colder weather comes sickness and we caught it. The girls are recovering from the Croup and spent the last week and a half acting, sounding and looking quite pathetic. It was heart wrenching in this house morning, noon and night...especially night, as Croup worsens at night.  Because her voice was so hoarse, Eden's cry didn't sound real at all and was difficult to hear if I was in another room. So when she was sleeping I was not because I was afraid I wouldn't hear her when she did wake up. Eden would whimper, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" as if there were something I could do for her but I felt so helpless. I just kept reminding myself how comforting my mother's touch was, and still is, to me when I do not feel good and hoped that she would feel some of that same comfort from my holding her. Thank heaven for medicine, because it starting working pretty quickly. Hope actually got sick first, and had a few scary moments, but wasn't quite as pathetic as Eden. I am sure her age is mostly to thank for that.

Here is a look at one of the low points this last week.

Daddy's touch is just as nice as mommy's. One night he even got her to sleep when I could not. My kids are quite lucky to have such a great daddy.

Surprisingly, there were moments that I found to make the trick-or-treat bags that I've been thinking about making the kids. I have to take a moment and do something I never do; brag on myself. I have spent such a long time being intimidated by sewing (damn you 7th grade TLC) that I am just now gathering the courage to give sewing projects a chance. This is my third project and I have to say that I am quite proud of myself for accomplishing this project with a final result that is better than what I was hoping for! I didn't have a pattern to work from, so I took some suggested measurements from people online and went to work. It was a lot of fun and made me feel pretty good about myself. Granted, it is a simple bag, but right now I need all the recognition I can give myself.

Eden's is the bag in the first pic. Being that I went a week and a half before Halloween, the fabric store had little to choose from in the way of Halloween prints. The fabric for her bag was my least favorite while I was in the store, but once I finished them all it is now my favorite. I got glow-in-the-dark fabric paint and embellished the print here and there on each bag and hers was the best fabric to do that.

I knew I wanted the bags to be "lined" too, so it took me a while to figure out how to place everything to sew it correctly, but it was pretty easy once I got it figured out. I used transparent ribbon for the handles, which is my only regret. When I started sewing the handles in, I realized that they probably wouldn't last long and might fray rather quickly. Hopefully by then I will be more skilled with sewing and can fix the bags with a different type of handle. We'll cross that bridge when it breaks. Noah's bag is the spider web pattern. I really liked this fabric and was disappointed with my glow-in-the-dark spiders that I drew, but I felt like it needed a safety mechanism, thus the spiders. Hope's bag is the pumpkins. I embellished the faces of a few pumpkins. The kids really liked their bags and thought it was awesome that they glow-in-the-dark. Eden really didn't give a darn, but hopefully she'll think it is pretty cool next year.

On Saturday we stopped by a local pumpkin patch and the kids picked out pumpkins. Hope just wanted to kick them and toss the little ones around. I don't know where that behavior came from, but luckily she didn't break any of them. At one point I found Eden hugging a green pumpkin but of course missed that moment with the camera. When I asked her to hug it again she hugged Noah instead. I got a picture of that which is cute too. Check out the bottom right picture. Click on the collage to make it bigger...MOM. :)

Noah took a break on a hay bale and Eden must have thought this looked like a good idea. She sat next to him and grinned really big like she was doing something cool. It must have been because Hope soon followed.

We saved carving the pumpkins for Sunday evening. I took no part, except documenting the event. Pumpkin insides are one of the most disgusting things....EVER. But it's one of those things that it is so disturbing that you can't help but keep looking at it. So I took a picture. :) Noah actually carved his own this year. I told him he could use a butter knife and he did surprisingly well considering how dull it was. Next year I will have to get one of those pumpkin carving kits so he can use better tools. Now that I think of it, I think I said the same thing last year. Oh well. One of these years it will happen.

Hope thought the insides of the pumpkins were gross too and would have nothing to do with cleaning them. She enjoyed watching dad and Noah though. She requested one with a silly face and a cute little nose and daddy obliged. 

While the big kids made messes with pumpkins, Eden made a mess with yogurt.

She likes to put it in her hair. At one point she was slathering it on her arms like it was lotion. Silly monkey.
She also found Noah's gameboy entertaining. Although she used it as a telephone instead of a game. Noah thought that was pretty funny.

Here are the finished jack-o-lantern's.

Mickey Mouse even made an appearance.

Noah is spending Halloween with his dad this year but in just a few hours the girls and I will go trick-or-treating at dad's office.
Hope woke up a little earlier than usual this morning. She came into my room with a proud smile on her face hands on her hips and said to me, "It's Halloween! Can we go trick-or-treating now?" She has continued to ask me if it is trick-or-treat time every 20 minutes since we woke up.
Stay tuned for a post about the much anticipated trick-or-treating!!!

Fall Break

The new park is a big hit in our house. One day we went twice. Not really my idea, but I have to say I am glad that the kids are going outside to play without my having to bribe them. I suppose the cooler weather has something to do with it as well. During our first trip to the park Noah found that a couple of his friends were there playing and spent the rest of the afternoon playing with them at the park and at our house. This was the day we went twice. We went twice cause Noah and his friends decided they wanted to go back, but Eden was taking a nap so I told Hope that she would have to wait to go with me when Eden woke up.

Hope was actually starting to get sick this day (when she is wearing the pink) which is why she is lying on a bench eating a PB sandwich. She wouldn't eat lunch, which is not unusual for her by any means, but we had already spent all morning at the park and were going back for seconds so I told her that if she wanted to play she would need to eat something. It took her the entire walk there and about 10 minutes after we got there for her to finish.

Every time we go she makes a new friend. I am so proud of her! In the middle picture where she is wearing blue she is playing hide n' seek with Noah and his friends and she is hiding in the toddler play area under the bridge. I think she was the last one to be found during that round.

Noah was more difficult to catch with the camera unless I asked him to pose. He likes the new park a lot and I am really happy that he has good friends to enjoy it with. He didn't want to ride his bike to the park because he thought he would end up "ditching us cause he goes so fast". But on the way back he asked Hope if he could ride her bike. Little stinker. I love the first picture of Hope chasing him. Noah is old enough that I feel okay about letting him and his friends go down to the park alone. I will have to get him a watch though so that I can start giving him time limits instead of meeting him there when his sister wakes up. Even though he is ten years old (and I was roaming the neighborhood when I was a lot younger), I still seem to hold my breath when he walks out the door until I see him again. Oddly, I don't think that feeling will ever go away, even when he's an adult.

Eden really loves the park. Eden actually loves pretty much everything right now. She is a very happy little girl who proves to be worthy of her new "Destruct-OR" nickname everyday. She is really starting to grow up and I am finding it a little bittersweet. I am relieved that she outgrew her miserable infancy. She was NOT happy. I am proud and amazed at how fast she learns and is able to do things. She has an Evil Knievel streak which is a little scary because either she isn't learning from her mishaps (such as falling off the couch, etc.) or she just doesn't give a darn cause it's fun and exciting till it hurts. I am inclined to believe it is the latter. She will even do her own countdown, sometimes standing at the edge of the couch she will say "one two three!". Luckily she hasn't actually jumped off without someone there to catch her, but it is really only a matter of time. She is able to go down the slide all by herself now and will sit at the top anticipating what is about to happen (see the first pic). You can see her anticipation grow if you watch her closely. She sits there for a few seconds and a smile begins to spread across those precious little cheeks as her eyes dart from side to side. She slowly scoots her little body forward and puts her hands on either side and her smile gets bigger, it even looks like she is mumbling to herself under her breath. One more scoot and a little scream....then PLOP! She lands in the wood chips and usually scatters/covers herself with them. A few times she was able to land on her feet after sliding, but I think its going to take some more practice.

This time she seemed to be playing peek-a-boo with the wood chips. All around me mothers were telling their children not to play in the wood chips cause it would make them dirty. That was my first instinct, but I decided to ignore it and get out the camera instead. Which I'm glad I did. She enjoys washing her hands and gets a bath every night, so why not? ***This is something new I have been trying to teach myself; to just let the little things go. I've been cleaning up a lot more messes after the fact, but my children and I are happier for it and I am sure they learn something from making those messes. And if not I am getting some really cute pictures anyway.***

Speaking of Destruct-OR...I got a picture this time. I told Ben that I think this is the way she protests when I go in the bathroom and don't let her follow me. A shower is worth re-folding the t-shirts I suppose. :)

In this last one she is proudly looking at her accomplishments.
And a few more moments of her proving her worthiness.

There were moments that the camera didn't witness of shredded toilet paper and juice and milk that she would drink from her cup only to spit on the floor. When I say EDEN! this is her cue to move more quickly and efficiently at making her mess. Practice makes perfect and she's getting a lot of practice. Soon she will be a perfect little Destruct-OR.

I had big plans for Friday which fell through (more on that to come) and was pretty down about it. So first thing after the kids and I woke up we headed out. We stopped at Krispy Kreme for some yummyness and stopped by Ben's work to surprise him with his favorite donut: raspberry-filled. Then we headed up the Provo canyon. I intended to get out and walk around Bridal Veil Falls all morning and let the kids play and use up some energy, but as plans go (see the first sentence of this paragraph) that didn't happen. We had been out of the car for about two minutes before I decided we needed to get back in. The sun was not out enough to warm up the area we were in and it was really windy. Hope was more sick by this day, Eden just had a little windbreaker instead of a good jacket and I had my Raynaud's to consider. The kids were pretty disappointed that we were getting back in the car so early, but having donuts when we got in helped. I decided we would drive around the Alpine Loop and take some pretty pictures. Noah sat up in front with me and took lots of pictures. I was hoping we would see some animals but all we saw was a cute little squirrel.  Fall is my favorite season and this is one of the reasons why.

This too.



The New Park

For months now my children and I have been watching an awesome new park being built just around the corner from us. We would drive by it often and see the progress being made. Although, I must say, it seems that it was very slowly made as I'm pretty sure we've been waiting for it all year. I think there was some budget problems that slowed it down, but last week they had a very official ribbon cutting ceremony. The weather has been pretty good for the last week so I took the girls down to play a couple of times.

Here is Eden enjoying the playground. This area is specifically geared toward smaller children and the larger area for the big kids.

She finally decided she wanted to go down the little slide and would wait for me to hold my arm across it to slow her speed. Even though she was going pretty slow she still screamed as if she were going super fast.

Mostly she enjoyed playing in the wood chips, which I figured was okay for now since they are new and smell so good. :)

I was so proud of Hope the last time we went. There were a ton of kids running around and they were mostly older kids. I thought she would be scared since they seemed to be playing a pretty intense game of tag and were jumping from fixture to fixture. At one point she was up on the second story and it look as though she wanted to go down the slide but there were a couple of boys standing beside her that were talking to her and I just assumed they were being mean. I shouted up to her, "Hope are you going down the slide?" She said, "not right now, I playing with these guys." Serves me right to assume the worst of someone. :) They were indeed playing and seemed to enjoy having her play with them. It made me a little sad and a little proud all at the same time. Sad cause I realized how much she missed Noah and having her best friend to play with and proud because Noah has taught her so well to play "spaceship" and other big kid games so that she could join in. Also proud because she was confident enough to play with the much older children.

In this picture I was going down the big slide with Eden since she had wondered over to the big play place and Hope thought it was so cool to go down with me. I was able to turn and get this awesome shot.

Hope is in the middle by the boy in the black shirt. She is going from a pole to the floor of the play place. She maneuvered quite well on that stuff.

Noah is excited about this park too, so next time he is here we are planning a trip.

There is a little grassy hill in part of the field of the park and I can just imagine all the kids sledding down it in the winter time! It turned out to be worth the wait and opened just in time for the weather to cool down. Now hopefully it won't get too cold too fast.

Farm Country

Today the girls and I went to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point. We met some friends there and had a great morning. We've never been to the Farm Country part of Thanksgiving Point, but now that I know how much the girls enjoy I will have to go more often. Of course next time it would be nice if Noah and daddy could join us.

Hope LOVES horses right now. She has a whole herd of little toy horses that she carries around with her everywhere. I was excited to see that a pony ride was included with the purchase of the entry ticket and I was sure that Hope would be too. That wasn't really the case. The pony ride was the first stop we made and although she seemed to enjoy watching the ponies and the other kids ride the ponies, she didn't want to do it herself.

However, her cute little friends were very excited to have a pony ride and eventually, at the last minute, Hope gave in and agreed to ride one. I was carrying Eden in one hand and trying to take a video with the other hand while making sure that Hope didn't fall off the pony so I didn't get very get pictures or video of it. I felt bad that Ben wasn't there for Hope's first pony ride experience, so I was trying to take as many as I could.

Hope's friends: Aubrey, Brooke & Zoe

Next we went to see the donkey and goats. The girls fed the goats. Well actually Hope watched her friends feed the animals. She "didn't want them to tickle her" so she just threw a few kernels of corn in their general direction. The goats were really funny. They all seemed to have silly personalities and made me laugh inside. I can see how being around them would make someone happy. Unless they were cleaning up after them, I guess. :)

Eden got brave enough to get down from the safety of mom's hip and got pretty close to some of them a few times. Every once in a while she would get a little freaked out and come running back to my side. I love how she is crouching down in one of the pictures to look at the the animals.

Then the kids ran around the little grassy field and played a game of "Boo" with the haunted house prop. The girls would take turns peeking through the window at the other girls and say "BOO!" Then all the girls would scream and giggle and run around. It was pretty cute.

There were about three little play houses set up to look like an old western town and Eden found the jail to be quite interesting.

A carriage ride was also included in the ticket purchase and we chose to ride in one that looked like Cinderella's carriage. Look at Hope taking up all that space and her friends are all squished to one side. Love her smile in the bottom picture though.

Our last stop was the produce play area. It was set up for the kids to see how things are planted then harvested then taken to a big farm truck with a conveyor belt. ;)

They had lots of fun. Thanks to Heather for the invite!
One last thing....

Toes!

Ben went to an MBA meeting at UVU last night and didn't get home till around 7 so the girls and I went for a milkshake and did our own pedicures. When I was a teenager I constantly had my toenails painted and that was one of not many "girlie" things that I liked to participate in. It has been a really really long time and we were bored waiting for daddy so I busted out grandma's foot bath. I knew before I got it out that it was a disaster waiting to happen with DestructOR running rampant. Oh, by the way, I have nicknamed Eden "DestructOR". (Insert previous disclaimer here.) But I thought Hope would enjoy it and water messes aren't too bad to clean up so I went for it.

DestructOR was just as excited as Hope, and I knew she would be. She didn't even make too much of a mess. Don't get me wrong, she was soaked and the towels that the foot bath was sitting on got soaked, but better the towels than the carpet. She liked splashing in the water and thought it was funny that I would try to get her to stop. You can see her trying to get her foot in it in one of the pictures.

Hope thought that the foot scrub was halarious and she even let me put lotion on her feet. Usually she is very anti-lotion. I started painting Hope's toenails when she was 12 months old. I didn't realize what an accomplishment this was until I tried to paint DestructOR's toenails (who is 18 months). But we'll get to that in a minute. Hope has always sat almost perfectly still and seemed to understand even at an early age that she shouldn't touch anything until the paint was dry. She would even blow on her nails in an effort to make them dry faster. She is doing it in one of the pictures above. Hope insisted I paint her fingernails too and didn't get my joke about have to pay me for a mani/pedi instead of just a pedi. Usually she likes to alternate colors on each finger, but this time I talked her into just one color for her fingers and one color for her toes.

The actual nail painting was more of a task than the foot bath because DestructOR was intent on grabbing the open nail polish. After many attempts I finally gave her a closed bottle to carry around and she thought that was pretty cool. She even put it up to her and Hope's toenails acting like she was actually painting them. She sat somewhat still while I quickly painted her toenails. But the moment I was done she sat on her knees....toenails down on the carpet. Surprisingly, none got on the carpet and a little even stayed on her toes. She kept looking down at mine and Hope's toes and then blubbered some non-sense while grinning at her own painted toes. All in all I am glad that I ventured pedicures.

 Maybe if I do it more often DestructOR will get used to it and learn to sit still like her sister did. I'll let you know how it goes.

Hope's 4th Birthday

We celebrated Hope's 4th birthday in Texas this year! It was extra special because we got to have her party with my family that we don't see very often. Hope really enjoyed being around all of her family.

The Decorations & Carousel:

Ben and I put up purple streamers and got a few purple balloons for the kids to play with. Hope thought this was really cool.  Then most of us went to the one of the malls there in Houston where there was a two story carousel. We rode it a couple of times and then walked around and Hope got some cool pink sandals that she doesn't like to wear. :)

The Cake:

Since January Hope has been telling me that she wants a Tom & Jerry birthday cake. Since her birthday isn't until August I thought for sure she would forget and change her mind. No, she reminded me at least once a week from January til the day of her party. Of course Ben and I were going to make one, until we decided to go to Texas. It would've been too much trouble being out of our element and with so much other stuff going on, so I finally convinced Ben to order one. We ordered a Cinderella background and found the Tom & Jerry ornaments at Hallmark. I know Ben was disappointed, but I think Hope thought it was great and she really liked having the little figures to play with after the cake was eaten.

She really only wanted the frosting anyway, which we got to coordinate with her favorite color and the rest of the decorations which were purple. Love her dimples in the bottom pic where she is blowing out the candles.

Presents:

Everyone spoiled Hope with presents and she loved every minute of it. Luckily, we were able to fit it all in our luggage for the plane ride home. Thanks for all the presents!!! I would list everything that she got but I am afraid I will miss something. I will just say that it is obvious by the pic in the top left that she is very pleased with all her gifts!

My happy little Sunshine.

She is already talking about what kind of party she wants for her next birthday. At least she knows what she wants.

Last Week

In relation to my last post, I am trying to be better at updating my blog. With my siblings being scattered all over North America I often wonder what their day to day is like and miss not being able to spend lazy, just hangin out kind of days with them. When we were growing up we would always say that we would buy a bunch of land somewhere so that we could all build houses on it and live next door to each other. My sisters and I wanted to take our kids to the park together and on shopping trips and have our children be close in their relationships with each other. Yes, we were that kind of family. We still are, but shopping trips prove to be more difficult when you are about a thousand miles apart. I suppose pictures are the next best thing to actually being there, so here you go. 

 The girls and I go for walks regularly. There are a couple of ranches near by and we usually go check out the horses. The horses have only been near our side of the fence once though, so we don't have pictures of them yet. Sometimes Hope likes to push her stuffed animals in the grocery cart instead of riding her bike. Today may have been the last shopping cart trip though because the wheels have stopped turning and Hope doesn't like to put a lot of effort into pushing a non-willing buggy. :)

 As soon as Noah got home on Friday he and Hope started right where they left off the last weekend Noah was home. Noah likes for me to save diaper boxes so that he can make things out of them. This weekend he made armor and a little sword for Hope. He is so great about including her in his play.

I love Hope's "deer in the headlights" look in the top right picture.

 Hope and Eden are always so curious about what he is doing and follow him everywhere. I love it. Noah and Hope kept telling each other how much they missed each other while Noah was at his dad's house. Is there ever a better moment as a parent than hearing your children express their love for one another?

Other noteworthy moments this weekend:

Eden found a new place to look at her books.

Noah reading a story to his sisters before family prayer.

If you look closely you can see that Eden has a huge smile on her face. She loves sitting with her big brother and sister.