The Halloween Festivities

Well for us the festivities of Halloween are already over - before Halloween has officially come. We started the activities at Miles' school on Friday: attending his school's parade of costumes and his classroom party. That nite we went to our ward's Trunk or Trick. Today we carved pumpkins (no pictures, whoops) and went to Main Street and Trick or Treated at the shops. Tonite we watched "How to Train a Dragon." Pretty fun times. Full of candy. Here are some pictures of it all:

Here is Miles strutting his costume at his school's parade.

His school class. Awesome.

And here was Miles' costume: a scuba diver. I love how it turned out. I got the idea from several different places on-line. He was super cute, I think. :)

I was going to say "the whole bunch." But, technically, it's not our whole bunch. So how about "the whole walking bunch"? A scuba diver, a princess (she would be nothing else), and a pirate.

There's our other little pumpkin.

This very sweet lady is Mary Lou. We pass her house as we come and go from Miles' school. She loves to visit with us. She wanted the kids to come by her house to trick or treat and so we came by before heading to the Trunk or Treat. She had a good loot for the kids - pencils, Indian sticker books, and 2 suckers. A great way to start the trick or treating!

Arrr Matey!

Here they are on Main Street.

Happy Halloween!

Blessing day pictures

The family.

The whole family again.

Daddy-daughter. Too sweet.

Mommy-daughter. Not as sweet as Lucy was done being happy!

4 generations - me, my mother, Lucy and Great-Grandma Phyllis.

Lucy being held by my lovely Grandma. (Don't mind me!)

Ben, Lucy, and Grandma Diana.

Oh My. She is just too darling.

P.S. Lucy was blessed in the same dress as Emmy, which is the same dress that my sister and I were blessed in.

Weekend Fun

We had such a good weekend. Ben's parents and my parents, plus my sweet Grandma Phyllis, all arrived in town on Friday evening. Just in time for dinner, perfect. Saturday was a busy day spent at a soccer game, primary program practice, Target, raking leaves, scootering down to the hard ware store, dinner at Chilis, and just lots of visiting.

On Sunday we had Lucy's sweet baby blessing. Lucy Dee Maxwell. Such a sweet little babe. She did great during the blessing and didn't make a peep. Then we had a good afternoon visiting some more, the 2 grandboys went on a walk with Grandpa Max and Wilson, we watched the cop-show across the street from us and saw the cops arrest our neighbor (uh not so cool), prepared dinner, and then ate the yummy dinner (pumpkin soup, french bread, and crabapple pie - all homemade and all delicious). After dinner Emmy entertained us with some rousing songs. We ended the evening with us all singing "Called to Serve." What a fun, special day with our family.

Emmy twirling in her Sunday dress and amidst the leaves.

Playing in the raked leaves.

End of Soccer

Well Miles had his last game on Saturday. It was a pretty fun season and Miles actually began to enjoy it. Now, Miles was by no means a soccer-star, but he sure did improve a whole lot from his first game to his last. He never aggressively went after the ball, but if it came to him he would kick it and he actually would track the ball and follow after it - though never really trying to get it. But at least he wasn't just standing there - like his first game. He was cute to watch. I am pretty positive, however, that his favorite part was the after-game snacks. Oh yeah.

See, Miles is actually close to the ball. Big improvement.

The team huddling after getting their medals.

Such an adorable soccer boy!

Quote of the Week: It's a stupid one

Emmy: "We don't say Stupid."

Emmy says this a lot throughout the day. I think she says it for the sole reason of being able to say the word stupid.

The Annual Trek to the Pumpkin Patch

We met up with a bunch of our good friends and had a grand ol' time at the pumpkin patch:

Roasting marshmellows. . . yum.

Definite YUM.

Making sure he gets every last bite. . .

Exploring in the trees.

Jumping off the haystack!

And just plain being cute.

Real Life

So my blog mainly highlights the highlights of our lives. The fun stuff. The good stuff. The interesting stuff. Not the average doldrums of our every day lives. Not the crud I have to deal with every day. Nor the cruddy mom the children have to deal with every day, as well. So here are some of the lowlights of our lives - just to put a different perspective and glimpse in to what goes on at our home and with us. Just so you know our lives are not very glamorous after all.

1. Sometimes I yell at my kids - not a lot and not often, but sometimes.

2. I often raise my voice at my children. Excluding only Lucy. Unfortunately, I'm sure her time will come.

3. Emmy talks back to me. Example: "Emmy if you continue to scream you will go to your room." Emmy - "No, you'll go to your room!"

4. Emmy pees her pants all day, every day. Little squirts. She smells bad a lot.

5. My boys often don't want to go to the bathroom (ummm, #2) until it's too late. A little bit escapes. It's disgusting. Luckily they are big enough to clean up themselves and their underwear.

6. My patience runs thin - especially by the time Ben comes home from work. I don't know why he thinks I'm a good mom because by the time he gets home, I've usually had it.

7. I've got piles of folded laundry on my bed waiting to be put away - they've been there for 2-3 days and will probably be there for 2-3 days more.

8. I've eaten too many candy corns the past month.

9. Emmy can make incredible messes in her closet - taking all her clothes off the hangers and on to the floor. It's annoying.

10. Frankly, I'm bored of playing "princess."

11. Our boys sometimes have to be separated at bedtime. Miles is currently sleeping in the basement. They have all "slept" there, including Emmy. Excluding Lucy. But we do take them back up to their rooms when we go to bed.

12. I usually am up for the day by 5- 5:30am.

13. Many times the worst part of the day is toothbrushing time.

14. You want to hear my last Tuesday morning? Okay, a little bit of a background: I AM PETRIFIED OF BIRDS OUT OF THEIR CAGES. K. So we walked Miles to school. Then on the way home we stopped by an elderly friend's home to say hi. It's been a while and so it was good to visit with her. We stayed for almost an hour and then headed back to our home. We went inside. I'm in the kitchen getting snack and heard some rustling going on. What the? THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN A BIRD FLAPS OVER MY HEAD. I'm freaking out (thus the CAPS). I scream and then run out the back door. Jonas runs out, Emmy runs out screaming because I'm screaming. Ha. It wasn't our pet-bird; this bird was big and black. I see the bird in our window and scream again - tho I am outside and the bird is inside. So then we head back to the lady's house and call Ben. He's in surgery and we have to wait. But when he does call back he is able to come home in 20 minutes and save us! So we walked back to our home, waited for Ben, hoorayed for when Ben came, hoorayed even louder for when Ben caught the bird and released it back outside. Sheeesh. (The bird got out through our fireplace - the fireplace was not securely latched and birds tend to get stuck in our fireplace).

15. Want to hear my morning today? Emmy crying before 7:30AM. Scrambling to get us all ready to leave to take Miles to school. Lucy crying the whole time. Miles suddenly has to go to the bathroom. Miles doesn't have shoes on. But we made it on time. We come home and. . . a BIRD! LUCKILY our fireplace was securely latched and the bird is just inside the fireplace. I put our giant couch-chair on the hearth to even more securely lock the bird in there. Golly.

16. My kids hardly ever listen to me the first time I ask something.

17. My house is a mess.

(so you can't really hear the bird on the camera. trust me, it's there!)

18. and that is only the tip of the iceberg. . .

2 months already

So I lied about my post title. But it's still just as uncreative. Anyhow, Lucy is 2 months today. 2 months. That's 1/6th of the way to becoming one. Whoa.

So what's new with Lucy? Not too much really. She does get more and more adorable with each and every day. I'm not joking. Her round-face is so yummy. Every so often she flashes the sweetest little smiles. Just today she was making faces at me by raising just one of her eyebrows - a trait she must have inherited from her Grandpa G. She doesn't mind bath-time. She doesn't mind tummy-time. She watches her siblings like a hawk.

She hates her crib in the day-time. Loves it at night-time. While I should count my blessings (for I am so lucky she sleeps there at night!), she drives me CrAzY during the day. She sleeps wonderful in my sling - and so when we go places and she's cozied next to me in the sling, she's awesome. But at home and in her crib - she's awful. She'll maybe nap 20-30 minutes (max) and then cry out. And it's not that she's done napping because as soon as she's picked up, she's back to sleeping. I can't accomplish much at all during the day. She's not so newbie anymore that she'll just sleep right along with whatever I am doing at the moment either. So it's a little tough. Sometimes she just has to cry in her crib because I can't cut up dinner holding her, I can't read books to my other children while she's screaming, etc. I think she'll survive. I hope I'll survive. It's not that bad, really, I guess. But slightly annoying, in a cute baby way.

Like I mentioned in my other post, my house is in a state of constant clutter. CHAOS. Ugh. It just drives me wild having "things" all. over. the. house. I'm cringing right now as I write this. That's the one thing I have not been able to keep up with since Lucy - an orderly home. I know a clean home isn't oh-so-important in the scheme of things, but it sure does make me happier. I've got to come up with a better system. And too bad it's not Miles making all the messes (since he's away at school all day) because Miles can clean awesomely. Emmy? Well she's not so good. Jonas? He's okay once he stops whining.

Anyways. . . back to Lucy and the crib. Awful in the day, great at night. She'll go usually about 4 hours during the night (sometimes 5 - but rarely)! Amazing, I think. And I even got her to go to bed around 7:30 or 8. I had to do the whole cry-it-out approach. Some people hate this, others love it. I hate and love it. It is so, so, so, so hard to do (especially with your "baby baby"), but so, so, so, so worth it - for both mom and babe. The first nite Lucy screamed/cried on and off for about an hour. I felt sick. The second nite? 20 minutes. The third nite? 5. The 4th? 0. We'll see if it continues, but I'm loving it.

Lucy coos and goos too. (How's that for "o"s?) It's about the sweetest sound on the planet. She grunts excessively as she poohs. Sorry, but it's true. It's also a little embarrassing. Loud grunts. It's nuts. But also pretty cute. Yes, mothers are endeared to weird little quirks their children have.

And that's about that.

I Love Lucy.

Glasses and braids

I used to be slightly more creative with my titles. Now I am not. To every thing there is a season. This is not my season of creativity. It's my season of living in a constantly cluttered home. Constant. But that's for another post. (Lucy turns 2 months on Saturday. And since she is part of the cause of the constant clutter, maybe you'll hear more about it then when I give a Lucy-update. Lucy-update. That will most likely be the title of my post.)

Anyways, I braided Emmy's hair into a french braid for the first time. So I thought I would take a picture. I know a french-braid is not necessarily news-worthy, but the pictures are darling to me and so post away I shall. She put on my glasses for one of the pictures - so cute:

Our pumpkins holding their backyard pumpkins