Happy Halloween

They were the cutest Ninja, Flapper Girl, and ballerina at the party!

Fussy Baby

Who could imagine such a cute face could cause so much trouble! She was fussy baby extraordinaire today!! - Against my hopes and plans she is one of those babies that needs quiet to sleep - she just recently became like this. Its like all of sudden she knows that there is lots of stuff going on around here and she doesn't want to miss any of it - So she fights sleep then becomes overly tired - which makes it hard for her to fall back asleep and it becomes a vicious cycle - but with a face like that what can you do?

I'm not scared of you!

Well Benjamin is amazing - We went on the "haunted hayride" at Hunt Club Farm tonight - and can you believe it - HE LOVED IT!
I started working there just for the halloween 'season' on fridays and saturdays to make some fun/christmas money. Benjamin saw the complimentary tickets to the hayride in my purse and has been bugging me ever since - especially this sunday when we passed the place he was beside himself about going - so we started to really explain it to him - that it would be really scary, and showed him pictures of the actors on their website, and I even chased him around walmart with a scary mask in the hopes of talking him out of it - but to no avail - he had his mind set.
So as you can see from the picture of him waiting in line he was thrilled - I was prepared for him to turn to jello on the actual ride - but he really didn't - I just kept chanting "its all pretend - if they scream at you - you scream back" He kept his ears covered but wouldn't cover his eyes even when I tried to cover them for him - and when an actor even got close he screamed so hard he shook "I'M NOT SCARED OF YOU"
Daddy had to work so we went with Ms. Kristi and her kids Shawn and Mei - they did pretty good too - considering we had some of the youngest passengers - they screamed less than some of the adults. Ella refused to go - its a good thing I would have had to surgically remove her from me if she had.
The scary part for mommy came after the ride when we did the fun slide - you know that 3 story high big slide - I thought my big butt wasn't going to stop! - once I realized I would I wished I had more cash to overpay and do it again.
PS MOM - I didn't forget about you torturing me with the halloween masks when I was a kid!! - so Benjamin definitely got his bravery from his dad.

Giggles!

Someone is laughing! She first laughed with our friend Jill at church and a couple of times for her daddy - a real audible giggle! But mostly she does this silent giggle, her smile gets huge and her head bobbles but no sound comes out!

Its not for me but I understand homeschooling...

Everyday Benjamin seems to become more and more of a smartmouth! - He is thick with attitude and mutters under his breath - "Fine then" "Don't talk to me like that" (to me not vice versa) and his fav "that's just DUMB" - We are really getting sick of it - After one comment Kyle was over it completely he grabbed Benjamin made him apologize to me and sent him to timeout to "think about speaking nicer to people" - well apparently he didn't have much to think about because exactly 10 seconds later we heard him wandering around the kitchen - Kyle says "what are you doing? I put you in timeout" - "oh that's ok daddy I'm done thinking about that stuff"

Funny face

I am reading the manual to our camera in an attempt to take better pictures - I made Ella my guinea pig for about 20 minutes this afternoon - she laughed at this one (in macro setting - see I can learn something!)

Almost done bragging...

I volunteered at the Library Book Fair at Benjamin's school today - and it was fun to watch Benjamin from the sidelines - he was really well behaved in the library and when I snuck down the hall and watched him in his class. He was also very proud of Maiya - she was sleeping in the car seat in the corner of the library and the children were all drawn toward her and were checking her out - He had to bulldoze his way through to proclaim "THAT IS MY BABY SISTER!"
Now my Ella story - her memory is amazing and quite scary in a way - I almost wonder if she has a photographic memory. I was throwing away junk mail the other day, very quickly in fact - I was just chucking stuff in the trash can when Ella reaches out and grabs a postcard from the realtor that sold us the house - it was a small card with a thumbnail size photo of the lady, she says Mommy that is the lady that gave us this house! - I was stunned. Ella was only 2 at the time and only saw this woman once at night (in fact all we had were flashlights, because the electricity wasn't hooked up at the house) - But still she not only remembered her, she picked out a small picture of her in a flash and I didn't think the picture was that "natural" of a photo of this woman! She is also into naming plants so as we drive around town she points out things "hey there's pampas grass (sp?) out of my window and there are tulips in front of that house" In fact I don't know that much stuff - so I've just about run out of plant names to teach her - but we got a book from the library!

Eleventeen

We are busy counting these days - math homework is in full force. Kyle and I drove ourselves crazy teaching Benjamin to count to fifty by tens this weekend, and now we are working on counting backwards from 10 and counting to 30. Benjamin is really working very hard at it and he does great only he gets easily frustrated and gives up quickly if he barely hesitates. Ella on the other hand cracks me up - she NEVER loses confidence. She just counts away and never misses a beat no matter how wrong she is... "fifteen, sixteen, eleventeen, twenty"; No Ella seveteen, eighteen - and she gives you this look like you are the one who doesn't know what they are talking about almost like a teenagers "ok whatever" look, then on she goes "twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-thirty"

10 years!

Well it feels like it was yesterday and a lifetime ago all at the same time. We went to my 10 year high school reunion on Saturday. First, that day we had my birthday party at Aunt Beth's house and I got some great gifts! The cutest was a set of bears dressed up as wizard of Oz characters - even Toto! They are beyond cute! If the camera wasn't dead I'd post a pic. Meg gave me a total makeover for the reunion; pedicure, acrylic nails, hair, and makeup - I looked pretty good considering the raw material she was working with!
We had fun at the reunion - I was terrible with remembering names but it was fun to see everyone! - I was really mad that they didn't have nametags (seemed like a cruel joke). It was at Colonial Downs and Kyle and I really had fun putting a little money down on the horses - we were doing really well by race nine but lost it in the final race - but hey we broke even! Actually we did better than that - I won the door prize, 25 dollars at Applebees :) I did find out that Jason from my graduating class has since joined the Church and is in the Bishopric in his branch! - That was really neat to find out - Its so cool to run into people who have found and grown in the gospel. - little embarrassing that we found out while Kyle and I were doing a little gambling - but hey you can't be perfect ;)
Our annual Primary program was on Sunday and Ella had her first speaking part at church - She did great she stood tall and spoke clearly but you couldn't even see her over the podium! LOL Although the rest of the time her and Benjamin couldn't keep still. He did great with his part too - totally understandable! - And I heard him singing during most of the songs.
It was a long but very fun weekend - Kyle and I were exhausted and ready to go to bed at 6:00 last night but Maiya decided to have an extremely fussy night - she just wouldn't go to sleep! Finally a warm bath did the trick around 8:30!

Meg also made a great poster of awesome quotes, here are some of my favorites:

"As you go through life make this your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole" - Doughnut cafe in Melbourne

"When one door closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one that has opened"

"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else." Ogden Nash

Who could resist?

She is too cute for words... even in the middle of a diaper change!

Easily confused

I do think Ella is smart beyond her age but its easy to get confused sometimes - for those of you who are church members you probably remember the primary song/theme "Choose the Right" Ella missed the point about choosing good over evil she says mommy "we choose the right - we don't choose the left!!" And this morning she struggles down the stairs with three baby dolls in her arms and says "Look mommy I have three twins!"

Blog Envy

Since Ella saw Emilie's pedicure that she did for her mom on Ryann's blog she has been bugging me to paint my toenails too so this morning I let her. She was thrilled - as soon as she was done she said "there I did a good job like Emilie ;)" - Now my question is Ryann when did you finally take it off - its already bothering me a little but I can't risk hurting someone's feelings.

Can I play legos too?

Maiya has become such a social butterfly - Here she is just sitting babbling away next to the girls playing legos - Its kind of funny with Benjamin I waited anxiously for each milestone - I just couldn't seem to wait for him to get bigger - with Ella I was so busy working and taking care of both of them things just went by in almost a blur - and now with Maiya being my third and being able to be home with her - I have become just the opposite as I was with Benjamin - I am thoroughly enjoying her babyhood. And no matter how much I want her to grow slowly she insists on changing everyday! I know I should be excited with each milestone but there is a big part of me with each smile, babble, better head control, etc that thinks 'oh no, you're growing up!'- I was nuzzling in her adorable fat cheeks last night - and it hit me - there will come a day that I can't do this - Not really appropriate to nuzzle up to your teenage daughter - who knows maybe I will anyway! Like that country song says "I don't care if you're eighty - you'll always be my baby"

Gingerbread Men

As you can see from the picture Benjamin had a dilemma - to eat or to decorate - it was so funny he was decorating a dwindling cookie!

THANKS NANA

Thank you Nana for the cool care package - the kids were thrilled with their paints and PJ's especially - I couldn't get Benjamin to stand still for a picture - he was running around in his Spiderman PJ's pretending to get bad guys. We love you!!

Need sleep?

Isn't it funny how kids describe things sometimes? - We had a late night at church and Benjamin didn't get enough sleep so I had a harder than usual time of waking him up in the morning - after 3 attempts to sit up and focus he says with half closed eyes " Mommy there is something wrong with my brain!" - No not really Benjamin, you just need to get more sleep!

Better Homes & Garden material we are not!

Before

After

Here is our 'weekend' project that is still not over - but we are over it! - We painted the walls & trim - 4 coats on the trim to be precise - as you can see from the pic it was this dark forest green - after the fourth go round though it could be hot pink for all we cared we were tired of painting! Then I put several coats of a gloss varnish on the wood door and our cedar chest - then to really exhaust ourselves we finally organized our "garage" or to those have you who have been in our house that ungodly mess in the corner of the living room. I didn't realize how big our living room was - its actually kind of nice now. And somewhere in between coats of paint I washed, ironed and scotchguarded the sofa slipcover - it better work! Now I still have to get everything back in its place - we haven't had a kitchen table for four days. Anyway after this I have stopped daydreaming over paint swatches for the other rooms - I have watched too many HGTV shows were they transform a whole house in one weekend - I make the mistake of thinking "hey I can do that" - Sure if we had four people and a carpenter helping us! - I'll just go back to trying to keep the dishes and laundry caught up!

Fire Safety

I got a new fire extinguisher for the upstairs and while Kyle was checking it out he started teaching the kids about what we would do if there was a fire in the house - with wide eyes the kids listened - Kyle explained that if there was ever a fire and Mommy and Daddy said get out or if they hear the fire alarm - run to the pool and wait - that will be our family meeting place. Benjamin says really concerned "Why wouldn't you come with us?" - Well mommy and Daddy might have to go get Maiya or Zeke or Popper - Then Ella says (really excited) "While we're waiting for you guys at the pool we are going to go swimming OK!

Bone tired...

...But boy did we have a good time!!

We had such a fun night - First there was a housewarming party for a couple from church. While there Benjamin kept getting in their dog's crate and cracking up the other kids - The adults looked at him a little strange but I thought at least he can't break anything in the dog's crate! There were a lot of babies there and it was fun to compare Maiya - and of course like all of my babies she is huge - There was a 2 month old that she could have swallowed up!

We left the party a little early to see the sand sculpture competition at the oceanfront for Neptune Festival - It almost turned out to be a bad night because I didn't read the brochure fully and we parked at 31st street and it turned out the sand castles were between 5th and 10th - but we took the trolley down there and that turned out to be the highlight! The kids were fascinated equally with the trolley and the sand sculptures! Ella was so funny as were were walking she says just like an adult (I think she was mimicking my comments to Kyle) "Mommy this is just amazing - I don't' know how they did it" - And they truly were; some were at least 10 feet high - Its makes me wish we had seen them every year. - anyway as you can see from the picture it was a late night and we were a little tired when we got back - but it was worth it!!