A Tiger

Colette purchased a tiger costume for Ryan. He makes a cute tiger.

Here are some photographs of Ryan playing with two of his favorite "toys": the bathroom scale and the bathroom doorstop.  Ryan likes the scale because when you touch it red lights flash.

Ryan likes the doorstop because of the wonderful noise it makes sometimes: boing.  Before the boing:

After the boing:

 

Halloween Prep: Costumes and Pumpkins

October is here and so we are in the midst of Halloween prep.

This probably won't be Ryan's costume, but Rachel thought it was a good look for Ryan.

Since Rachel was changing her mind 5+ times a day as to what she wanted to be for Halloween, I decided to take her shopping to get her costume and stop her flip flopping. She found what she deemed to be the PERFECT costume: a pink witch. Costumes in Annie's size were slim pickings, so we were just going to have her wear her giraffe pajamas and be a giraffe, but at Target I took one last look and they had a Minnie Mouse costume, and since Annie loves Minnie Mouse so much and I plan on making a Minnie Mouse birthday cake for her at the end of the month, I got it for her. Now she can be Minnie Mouse while she eats Minnie Mouse at her party. :) They both, of course, had to model their costumes. Cuties.

Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch at Buckelew farms to let the girls pick pumpkins and to enjoy some time together as a family.  We arrived about 10 minutes before the farm opened for business and so we had to entertain ourselves for a little while.  Here are some shots of Annie and Rachel doing pilot and co-pilot duties.

The girls were excited to be in the pumpkin patch.

Ryan is always happy to be outside.

Annie found a big pumpkin and decided to take it for a ride.

Rachel was gung-ho to pick the biggest pumpkin she could find until Jake proclaimed that the girls could pick whatever pumpkin they liked as long as they could carry it themselves.

Here are some shots of us on the "hay ride" back to pay for our pumpkins.

The farm had a place set up for portraits and a kind gentleman took a picture of our family.  Rachel is holding her "ghost pumpkin" and Ryan is holding Annie's pumpkin.

The farm had lots of other places for taking pictures.

The farm also had a petting zoo and free animal snacks.  Annie was a little skittish around the animals.

There was also a mountain of hay bails to climb on: a playground made out of hay.

All in all it was a fun Saturday morning adventure although it threw off everyones nap schedule later in the day.  On the way home we stopped at Eegees for some lunch.

Funny things they say

 
Kids are always saying funny things. I haven't been that great about keeping track of them, but recently there were a few really good ones I've got to record.

Out of the blue....
Rachel: How old will I be when Annie is 8?
Me: 11
R: What about when Annie is 11?
Me: Then you'll be 14.
R: Then I'll be old enough to be a mom!!!
Me: Um, no. That's still a little young. Maybe when you're 20ish.... Are you excited to be a mom?
R: Yeah! Then I can tell my kids what to do and teach them to choose the right!
Rachel often talks about being a mom and really looks forward to it. It's fun to see. Today she told me that she was almost as tall as Marie, and Marie is a mom, so soon she can be a mom, too. She's 4. I think she'd better wait a little. :)

Saturday we were watching General Conference and during one of the songs it showed the man playing the organ. From the angle of the camera you couldn't see that there were actually two men playing the organ, but shortly a third arm, then a 4th arm came into view, so I joked with Rachel a little.
Me: Look, Rachel! That guy has 3 arms! No, 4 arms!
R: No he doesn't! Everyone has 2 arms.
Me: Not that guy. Maybe he's special and has an extra arm or two.
R: No! We're all made like Jesus!
Smart girl. Good to see that some of the teachings are sinking in.

Since my brother's kids came out at the beginning of September Annie has been so happy to have McKenzie (2 1/2) around, but has been kind of mean to Peyton (15 months). She would push her down for no reason if she was near. She has gotten better and is nice to Peyton sometimes now. (Though in general she's a big bully and likes to make both Rachel and Ryan cry a little too much.) Yesterday we were getting ready to go in to my parents' house for lunch and the afternoon session of conference, and I told Annie we had to get her shoes on so we could go see Grandma and Grandpa.
Annie: And Kenzie and Peyton! Make her happy!
Me: Do you like to make Peyton happy?
A: Yes.
Me: Are you going to push Peyton down?
A: No. Make her happy!
Me: Are you going to share with Peyton?
A: No. Make her cry!
Well, at least she's honest.

Messy and dirty

The other day after I had swept and mopped again, the kitchen floor was disgusting by the end of the day, and I commented to Jacob on it. He said something about our kids being messy. I had to correct him. Our kids are dirty. And they make our house dirty. And messy. But especially dirty. Messy I can deal with. You just pick up the toys and paper and crayons. Dirty requires more time and effort. And by far, Annie is the dirtiest and messiest of all the kids at the moment.

She can make a mess with chocolate.

 

 

With markers (and this is a mild example of some of her marker shenanigans).

 

 

And with paint. Yes, that is paint, not blood and gore.

You can't see how she got both of her arms covered in paint, too. Besides getting my shirt, the table, chair, and everything she touched between the table and the bathtub, including the bathtub covered in paint. She was not happy to be stopped in her mess-making and threw a good long tantrum while being cleaned up, and afterwards.

Funny Kids

Ryan is getting himself into all sorts of trouble now that he is a master army crawler. He heads straight for the bathroom whenever he gets a chance, and we try to keep the door closed because if he gets into the bathroom the first thing he heads for is Annie's little potty. The good news is Annie has used the potty for #2 five times in the last several days by her request. The bad news is Ryan wants to play with that potty. We try to keep him out. :) He does manage to get himself stuck in other places. 

 

Rachel decided to make a pretend beach one day after she saw the idea on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. The tan blanket is the sand, the blue blanket is the water, the papers have sea shells on them, and she is holding a paper that she drew a cup of lemonade on.

 

Showing off her lemonade:

 

The other night the girls got on their matching PJs then got goofy. 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course they had a hard time calming down for bed, but that's not completely out of the ordinary in our house.

Dancing

Rachel has been doing dance again lately and her dance performance was last weekend. This time she was in the 4-5 year-old class this time, instead of the 3-4 year-old class, so everyone had a long enough attention span to actually learn and do the dance pretty well. 

For The Circle of Life, Rachel is in the back, far right in the yellow. I had pretty much the worst place to video her based on where she was. She kept getting hidden behind a girl in front of her.

Annie was a huge fan of the dances. When one was going she just sat staring at the dancers, and when the dance ended she would say "Again! Again!"

Ryan, on the other hand, didn't care one bit what was going on around him as long as someone was paying attention to him.

Jake held Annie for a good part of the performance so she could see better. She was not her usual squirmy self, being mesmerised by the dancing, I guess.

Rachel's friend Maryanne was in the same class.

Rachel posing for the camera:

The Animal Cracker song was her favorite dance. She's front and center in this one.