Boo!

We kind of slacked on pumpkins this year. Having to drive at minimum 30 minutes every where we go makes me never want to go anywhere. So, we used these two itty bitty pumpkins this year. Julia won hers playing Bingo at Kevin's family night at his school and the other was purchased a month ago for a grand project that never happened. Kevin was semi disappointed, but made the most of it. He opted to do most of his own carving this year, choosing a Minion with a K on it's chest as his final product. Julia opted out of carving, but did do the dejunking of the pumpkin. Lacey wanted to do everything but deep down didn't want to do anything. She was mostly whining through the whole experience and Elena only made it 1/2 of the way through before falling asleep, which meant we didn't get our yearly photo with our pumpkins. :( Sad! Since Laners was sleeping I did grab a quick picture of Cody and the kids on the front step with their pumpkins, as you can see, Kevin has red crying eyes because he had just dropped his pumpkin down the stairs and the top part of his overalls that he had been so careful about while carving broke off. :( In all actuality, it looked better without it. But after all that hard work, it was next to impossible to convince him of that. This last week we were able to all spend time in Kevin's classroom. It was so fun to see him in action with his peers. They performed the cutest play, The teeny, tiny women. Kevin played a Ghost. After which, the class showed us the words they are learning to read and sang us several of their most favorite songs. It was so so fun being there. 

The girls have been spending hours and hours each week dancing circles around me. It is their new favorite pass time. The picture in the kitchen captures them perfectly. Julia is 100% all of the time. We had a really rough week with her this last week. Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of teeth. It was hairy scary! At one point she screamed for a solid 15 minutes because Kevin turned off her bedroom light when she was NOT in her bedroom. Once the screaming stopped, then she sobbed and sobbed about how her life was ruined and no one could fix it. It was great. On Thursday morning Kevin woke up early, early so he could carve a bar of soap with his pocket knife. While he was doing that Julia and I made a red hand out of paper and on each finger it has a different sign. When she is feeling frusterated or upset she can look at the hand and find ways to deal with her frusteration, we caught her sitting on the couch or hiding behind the couch several times in the last few days reading out her frustrations. It was beautiful!  Thankfully, the week ended on a high. Ive been trying really hard to spend quality time with Julia. If I am not watching her dance, I am usually getting my hair done by her. She loves to use the pretend "Curling Aron" as she calls it, and is longing for the day I let her practice with the real one.

Lacey is changing so fast, today I gave her a piece of a York Peppermint patty to which she wrinkled her nose and said, "Mom, is that hot pepper!?" A few other funnies from her. She calls the umbrella the Bumbrella. Peanut Butter is Peterbutter. Hiccups are Makeups. She loves wearing her Sparkle Pants and I'll hear her several times in the day say, "I'm wearing my SPRINKLE pants!" She calls Kevin- Kev, Julia is Julia Gulia, and Elena is Laners. And more often then not she calls me Baby. My favorite is anytime I hand her something she will say, "Oh, Thank you, Baby!" She is a HOOT!!!!!

Laners it the big 7 months. She's into everything and has now eaten everything but dairy, peanut butter, and honey. Although, she is making the switch back over to regular formula. She  is currently half soy half regular and seems to be tolerating it well. And when I say she has eaten everything, I'm not kidding. She's had pizza, all veggies, jam sandwiches, soups, all meats, and today she celebrated 7 months with a Swiss Roll. Not by my choice, but once she got ahold of it and had eaten a decent amount, I decided to just let her finish. She is on the move eating, chewing, or drooling on everything in her path. She is also good about pulling things off of the couch if it is near the edge. Today she went into her room and pulled everything off the rocking chair. She really doesn't love being held for long periods, she'd rather be on the floor and she will let you know by making it nearly impossible to hold her.  She is wearing mostly all 12 month clothes. She's still waking up for 1 or 2 bottles at night. And she has ZERO ability to self soothe with is about to drive me battyy!

Daddy- Well, he is a busy bee. He is the Young Mens President and the Sunday school teacher in our branch. He is also working on his Masters and is currently in two online classes. Plus, he's working full time, and some days it feels like all the time. AND... he's rebuilding an engine on a skid steer. Resulting in very, very little free time. AND now that the snow is in the air, he's on crunch time on the skid steer. I had the garage cleaned out and parked my car in it for maybe two days when that beast took over my parking spot. I've pretty much committed to moving to a tropical island if I can't park in the garage soon. He's also hunting in every hunting season he can. Thankfully, he can do that on our property and so it's not such a huge time commitment. (I think the kids scare the birds away beforee he can get to them... so not complaining!)

I'm busy being a Mom. (That says a whole lot, without really saying anything!)

We are blessed and we know it! I adore this family of mine.