Trick-or-Treating till ya drop!

Finally the big day had arrived (the countdown was just killing us)! And The Dalles does this awesome thing where they have trick-or-treating downtown from 3 to 5. Downtown is like 4 blocks by 4 blocks, which I didn't think was much until we tried to cover it with the kiddos and heavy bags of candy! It was great though, just going from storefront to storefront in daylight (apart from the one that turned out to be a serious Haunted House without warning, and you couldn't get out once in because of all the people behind you - Cooper will probably have nightmares tonight. Poor girls), and being totally done by 5! We went home, had dinner and then carved our pumpkins. Yes, we are that lame. We had not yet carved them, but now we have! I did learn at least one thing from the afternoon though. If your child is going to be a butterfly, when it comes to the wings, bigger is not better. Beautiful though they were, they posed a serious health hazard to any and every person within 10 feet. But, enjoy the pics, grumpy little dragon and all:

And now that the kids are in bed, time to take a closer look at their candy bags. You know, to make sure it's all safe and such. Yum. Kinda felt like it was a bit of a sham though, having people put candy in our little dragon's bag. As if I'm going to let him eat all that!

Happy Halloweenies

J was very proud to finally finish her "fluffy" tissue paper pumpkin. Let's just say good thing Halloween is at the end of October or it might not have been finished in time. I'm not sure we'll be making more "fluffy" projects any time soon :)

 Aren't these the most adorable treats? I saw the idea on somebody's crafting blog (I'd link to it but, let's be honest, I don't remember how I got there in the first place). I was a bit naive in not realizing the sticky mess M and I would be by the end (sometime J misses out when she's at school - we might have to destroy the evidence so she's not upset ... or make more!). 

 I wish you could see all this artwork better. They've worked long and hard on it. Thankfully Halloween is almost here though because we're running out of window space!

Next on the docket ... carving pumpkins.

Ah kids

 (M tangled up in necklaces ... for no particular reason)

Yesterday my parents and Coop's parents came to surprise the girls to watch them in our congregations' Primary program (where the kids pretty much do the whole meeting with short little talks or lines and lots of songs they've been working on all year - so cute!!). We hadn't told them but as they got close said that we had a surprise for them. They started searching the house and we said, nope, it's not here yet, but it's coming. They asked, "how will it get here?" Coop answered in a car. "What?!" And then I added, "and then it'll walk in here on it's own 8 legs." 8 legs?!? They sat dumbfounded for a minute and then M whispered in awe, "I think it's an octopus." Minutes later they arrived, and J went running out to give hugs while M ran out jumping up and down joyously announcing, "they brought the surprise in their car!" "No, no, no, THEY are the surprise, go be happy to see THEM!"

 This is the view I get a lot whenever I feel a tug on my clothes. Except here he's smiling.

Also, our darling, barely one-year old is proving that he's all boy. If anybody burps, his head pops up with eyes huge, and he immediately starts alternating between laughing and fake burping. This goes on either until the girls stop laughing or he loses interest. Both of which take awhile. How has this happened already?

This morning when Coop said, "time to go J," she opened the front door and said, "Ok, let's hop!" and was off.

No pic of J in this post, but I did find this book she'd been making. Not a school project. Just for fun. It was hole punched in the corner and stuck together with a big ring. So cute!

Oh and we went to the dentist last week, and as we left, J told everyone that would listen, "I use to want to be a ballerina but now I think being a dentist would be even more fun." Not sure where she got that idea but, you know, go girl.

Back to Lee Farms

Wahoo! The weather actually cooperated and we were able to go to the pumpkin patch with my mom on the one day we were in town and had time to go! And by cooperated, I mean it drizzled all morning, and let up enough for us to jump in the car in the afternoon. Little muddy, but that didn't stop these 4 cousins from lovin' it!

On the big bouncy thing, M went into wussy mode and spent most of her time like this, so the other girls spent a good chunk of time taking turns dragging her back up.

Hey look! They're actually all on their feet at once!

And now they're all sitting at the same time ... although one of the four is actually sitting on air.

On to the hayride, of course! What's a pumpkin patch without a hayride? And yes, we're having smiling issues at the moment. We have forgotten how. Let's not even talk about school pictures. Oi.

They were just all smiles all day, and even though we were there way longer than we were supposed to be, making my cousin Elena late in leaving for home in Salem (she had to leave during rush hour - ouch), we actually were shuffling the girls along. It's just that there was so much to see! We saw a ton of stinky baby pigs, goats that literally were eating M's shirt while she as laughing her head off, horsies and bunnies from the hayride, baby calves 2-3 weeks old, and fluffy little chicks. One of the time problems was that they got unlimited access to the hay maze. They'd still be there I think if we hadn't made them leave.

See what I mean about the smiling thing? No pic of J because I was the only adult there and she had a tendency to throw the chicks the second I put them in her hand because they might peck her. So I couldn't man the camera and protect the chicks at the same time. As I dragged the girlies away, they all announced that they all want baby chickies of their own. Too bad they grow into chickens.
Picking out pumpkins also took eternity because M had to handle every single one on the farm before being sure she had the right one. You think I'm kidding, don't you. I'm not. Her little cousin even mumbled, M is sure picky, as we followed her around. But it all works out. Thanks Nana!

Ever had conversations like this?

They happen at our house all the time.

Seriously entertaining

Lately M has been saying and doing the funniest things. For example, the other night at dinner as she was crumbling her toast into her soup she says, "When you put pieces of bread in water, it turns into tuna fish." As we all stared at her dumbfounded for a few seconds, she lost a little of her certainty and added, "I think, right?"

Also she REALLY loves her alone time with me in the morning when J is at school and Dude is sleeping. She is such a chatterbox during that time! The other morning we did her giant princess puzzle. Except I'm not allowed to do any of the princess pieces. That naturally includes the princess, her horse, the castle, and the butterflies, rainbow, and swans because they're pretty and pretty is for princesses. That leaves me with a corner piece that has a frog, a couple of grass pieces and one or two sky pieces. She then gets upset at me for not working/helping her more. It's a pickle.

She also enjoys playing charades with me in the morning. They have a stack of charades cards that have words and pictures on them so it works even though she can't read what they say. But she doesn't like when I guess it too quickly, so she intentionally doesn't give good clues. "I want it to be tough for you Mama." Okay. And it was getting tougher and tougher. She tried to get me to guess ballerina by boinging around like a jack-in-the-box. Her puppy dog looked much more like a hungry lion. Her guitar impression made me think she might have been electrocuted. For one she poked the air a few times and then just stared forward with an extremely confused look on her face. That was computer (Guess I can't give her a hard time for that one though as it's most likely me at the computer that she was impersonating!). But the best was when she put her arms out and slowly flew around the room. None of the normal guesses of airplane or bird were right, so she "helped" me out by explaining that she was floating, not flying. I threw out a few others like bubble and then she got clumsy and tripped over some toys on the floor a couple of times. I asked if that was on purpose and she said, "Yeah. I'm bumping into planets." Well that kind of threw me for a loop and after a few more unsuccessful guesses I gave up and she shrugged her shoulders and said, "I'm a human."

Candy Corn Delight

 So in preparation for General Conference this weekend, we had printed Conference packets from sugardoodle, laid out crayons and a new gigantic Dora coloring book, and prepared a few crafts to keep the girls quiet and in the same room so that they might soak in a few words. Might. At least they're there, right? We do ask them to sit reverently and listen when the prophet is speaking, but we can't expect them to sit arms folded for 8 hours in two days. Anyway, I diverge. One project that required my assistance was this awesome Halloween wreath. I'd seen it on the cover of some magazine my mom had bought, and thought it was fantastic! We didn't have the magazine with us of course, and couldn't remember much other than the rows of candy corns, so we did what we thought was best. To be a little dramatic, we first wrapped our styrofoam wreath in black ribbon, pinning it for extra security into the back. Then we glued away with our low-temp glue gun.

 The girls loved it and were amazingly persistent. We only had to remove candy corns a few times when they were facing the wrong way, but they stuck with it!

 Needless to say, Buddy wasn't involved but was more than happy to pose for a picture. Doesn't it look amazing?! I love it! It makes me smile to see it. We added a bow because it looked like it needed something more. Now if we can just work on closing the door a little softer our wreath might make it to Halloween!

Oh, and if you have a sec, hop over to Sew Dang Cute and click on the link for my wreath. I've never entered a craft in a contest before but there are prizes (for those who's pictures get clicked on the most) and I happened to actually have made one for once that is super cute, so hey, why not? Thanks! Happy Halloween!

Yummy Mexican food!

So last week we had to bring our car into a Mazda dealership to get some stuff fixed under warranty. Saved us a few hundred plus, but the nearest dealership is back in Portland so we had to make a last minute trip. Course they found other stuff to fix that wasn't under warranty, but that's a different complaining story altogether. Yesterday they called to say it was ready for pickup - not too convenient - and Grammy and Papa very kindly decided to drive it right out to us, AND take us out to dinner! So nice!

You can't see the half of the mess in this last picture. This might be one of the reasons we don't go out much. Did anything actually get in his mouth??? We asked if they had an extra cleaning fee for people like us. I think Papa left a large tip. Oh and I almost forget to mention, speaking of dude's bad behavior - our waiter kept trying to get him to smile or wave at him. Dead pan. The whole time. I actually heard the waiter walk off mumbling, what's wrong with this kid. Happiest baby in the world. Just not too friendly. Don't take it personal.

We're still here!

 So I've been REALLY lame about taking pictures lately. I'm not sure why, other than the fact that I feel like I spend all my time shuffling my kiddos to and from school, feeding people, and trying to convince the little guy to sleep enough so he doesn't become our little Tazmanian devil. Which, by the way, is NOT making him sound worse that he becomes when overtired. This whole boy thing is a bit crazy sometimes (He doesn't stop moving anytime, anywhere!). But here are a few things we've been up to, along with some random pics of the little guy:

1. Both girls ran in an elementary school cross country race last Thursday. It was a huge affair with 3+ elementary schools involved. Just imagine the chaos of all those kids! They both ran in the K-1 division. You should've seen the start. They were all cram-packed together and there were so many out-of-control collisions and unintended tackles. Oh well. It was just on grass at the park. But they both ran their hearts out for the .6 mi course and J placed 5th for her age girls, and got a ribbon which, of course, will be treasured forever (to give you an idea of how many kids there were, M placed 83rd in the K/1st grade division. She did have the disadvantage of starting after everybody else because she got trampled before it even started so we pulled her out and let her jump in after they'd all gone by, but she was by no means last.)

2. J's growing up too fast. Today she requested that I please put metal spoons in her lunch instead of the IKEA colorful ones because her and her friends think those are for babies.

3. She's also got a little too self-conscious. She does not want anyone at school to know her nickname is Jelly because "they would probably laugh at it. Please don't tell them!"

4. I volunteered at M's preschool to teach a fun Eric Carle art project. Check out their awesome "very hungry caterpillars." It was a blast, although I definitely need to brush up on my Spanish a bit! Vocab such as tissue paper, glue, and caterpillars just wasn't coming to mind! Can't imagine why. Used it all the time on my mission :) Or since.

5. Dude is walking. As a trick. We have video, but let's be honest, i don't know how to put it on here. Hopefully Coop can soon. It's adorable, and he really loves to do it to show off (he makes sure everybody is watching the whole time), but really does just think it's a trick like blowing kisses or clapping hands. Crawling is for getting from point A to point B. Lazy boy.

6. We went to Bend for the weekend because Coop had a work conference there, conveniently 10 minutes from my parents' vacation house. Fun times! No pics. Sorry! Bopa introduced the girls to mountain biking though. Ai yi, yi!

7. The girlies started a tap/jazz class. Hilarious. Love how they think they're doing the right tap moves as long as they're making noise!

8. We're done canning for the year (we might've got a bit ambitious this year, and by we of course I mean me, but hey, if the world ends, we'll at least have fruit for a long time - which by the way, whenever I use any food storage in an effort to rotate, J gets very distressed and says, "Mom! What'll we do on a rainy day if you use that all now?!"). Hallelujah for being done. I know Coop seconds that. Loudly. Although the fruit flies that have taken up residence in our kitchen are a bit disappointed.