Family photos

We went to Agua Caliente park on Friday with our friends, the Reimanns, to take family photos. They took some of us and we took some of them. We ended up with a couple hundred to sort through between family photos and individual kid shots. And here they all are. Well, not ALL of them, but there are entirely too many pictures here, but I figure since this turns into our blog book, which is mostly the only time we have printed pictures, I'll include most of our most liked pictures. We'll get a few of these printed up nice, but for the most part they'll only be printed here.

Here is the winner family picture:


And now for a million individual shots, some nice, some showing goofy personalities.

 We attempted some sibling shots with marginal success...

 Ryan and Annie were doing "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?" in the following three pictures. I think the second one is the winner of the sibling pictures.

 We had bribes on hand: M&Ms and Craisins (M&Ms was a bad choice--melts in your and and all over your face if you're 2 or under).

 And now some family shots:

The park was beautiful, and I'm very happy with how our pictures turned out. Without even paying someone to do it all for us! :)

Rachel's Birthday Party

Rachel celebrated her birthday with some friends on the Saturday before she actually turned 7 years old.  I took her and some of her friends and Annie to a movie (Dolphin Tale 2) at the cheap theaters.  While we waited for everyone to arrive the kids got to build things with marshmallows and toothpicks.

The girls had a good time at the movie.  About half an hour before the movie ended Annie was ready to go.  She kept asking (in a loud voice): "is it over yet?", "how much longer?", "is it done?".  Fortunately there were maybe a dozen people in the theater.

When the movie was done, we came back home for cake and presents.  Colette made a "Frozen" cake for Rachel. Rachel helped decorate-notice how Olaf is holding up a little "7" in his hand.

While the girls were waiting to be picked up, they colored "Elsa" crowns and decorated them with glitter.

From left to right: Lydia, Isabel, Maryanne, Rachel, and Annie.

(Change in voice from Jake to Colette)
The next day we had a family birthday celebration for Rachel and Marie at Grandma and Grandpa Knight's house with a fruit tart instead of a cake. Then on her actual birthday we had another celebration, this time with strawberries and Nutella. Between all her birthday celebrations and a package arriving a day or two after her birthday, she managed to open presents 4 different days over the course of her birthday week. Not bad.
It's hard to believe that our little girl is 7. Next year she'll be getting baptized (everyone mark your calendars for Thanksgiving weekend 2015 in Tucson) and then our little girl will be all grown up. Or at least accountable for her choices. :)
Our wonderful 7 year old is a great friend and leader at school she does a great job at listening to the teacher and staying on task even with lots of distractions around her. She is a teacher-pleaser and a great help in the classroom, as well as excelling in school academically and socially. She frequently gets 13 out of 10 on her spelling tests (there are always 3 extra words the kids don't see beforehand that are slightly harder than the rest of the words). She won the spelling bee in her class and this coming Friday will be participating in the school-wide spelling bee. Rachel continues to do well in piano. She frequently is stressed out on Thursday when she is practicing new music after her Wednesday lesson, but by Friday or Saturday she usually has the new songs down pretty well and only occasionally needs to do the same song two weeks in a row to fine tune some dynamics or a few measures. She is really great at practicing on her own without me having to nag. It may help a little that if she gets her job (chore), homework, and piano practice done by 4:30 she gets to watch a half hour show while I make dinner. She is self motivated enough most days to get everything done on her own.
She is a good big sister and one of the best at making Megan laugh. She and Annie play really well together most of the time and it's fun to see them pretending to be princesses or orphans or whatever together. Rachel likes to spend her free time coloring and reading. She can read through a chapter book in a half hour and when we get 10+ new chapter books at the library she'll be done reading them within 2 or 3 days. Even with her overreactions and freakouts over little things, we are happy and blessed to have her in our family. She's our favorite first child. :)

Megan's First "Solid" Food

Megan recently had her first taste of "solid" food: some rice cereal.  At first she was angry because she was hungry.  But eventually she was loving the cereal.

Yum!

Annie's 4th birthday

Annie turned 4 on October 29th. She wanted to have friends over for a My Little Pony Party. Being 4, she had an opinion about how everything should go, and who all needed to come. Her list of guests included pretty much all of her preschool class AND her sunbeam class at church. There was some overlap, but if we invited them all that would be 20 kids, plus their siblings that weren't at school, plus parents (I wasn't about to try to handle any number of 3- and 4-year-olds without extra adult help). We settled on just preschool friends and family. And Jacob ended up staying home from work to join in the fun.

I attempted a homemade pinata a bit fancier than I had made before. The extent of my pinata making in the past was a single balloon. Annie wanted a pony, so I made one. Then adjusted a little and it became a hippo. Which is a waterhorse, so close enough. Here's Pinkie Pie, the hippo:

On the morning of the party Ryan had a fever. Rather than cancel the whole thing I texted everyone that we would just stay outside and the sickie would stay upstairs. He was so wiped out he didn't move from my bed the whole time, with a little help from pbskids.org, Super Why, and Daniel Tiger.

The only activity we did was decorating their own pony (or a regular horse for the boys), then some did pony races.

We had unicorn horns available to wear. Annie tells me often that Lizzy is her best friend. And of course her cousins are her other favorite people.

While the kids were playing Annie apparently went around to each of the kids asking, "Did you bring me a present? Did you bring me a present?" Gotta check out who your real friends are, I guess. ;)

Annie's pony cake:

After the cupcakes were all consumed it was present time. The presents had all been placed under the table when guests arrived, and we didn't think to move them, so before we could do much about it the presents were being opened half under the table.

She raked in the pony toys and was in My Little Pony heaven. She kept exclaiming "This is just what I always wanted!!"

After presents it was time to break the hippo Pony open. Everyone got a turn, and on Annie's second turn she managed to knock the head off the thing.

Her real birthday wasn't until Wednesday (we had the party on Monday), and we were planning to do a family party that evening that consisted of pizza (Annie's request), cakes, and presents. But that Morning Annie had gymnastics and her teacher had said they could wear their Halloween costumes to gymnastics if they wanted to, so we let her open one present that morning so she would have her Halloween costume. She got a Frozen dress up box with an Anna and an Elsa dress. When she tried on the Elsa dress, however, it was too scratchy, and even after she put a shirt on under it she was in a bad mood and it was "too poofy" which is never a problem for her when princess dresses are involved.

She decided she wasn't wearing it to gymnastics, so I let her open one other present that had her new gymnastics leotard, and that one was a big hit. She was an Olympic gymnast for her costume at gymnastics. :)

That evening we had our planned pizza, presents, and cake.

I love the look on the girls' faces here:

50 glow sticks from G&G Campbell!

And a My Little Pony puzzle! She was also very excited about the cash box with a combo lock that G&G Knight got her, filled with little treasures, including lots of coins!

Annie is a joy to have in our family. She's quite the jokester and likes to make people laugh, though her favorite punchlines involve potty humor more often than we like. She and Ryan are still the best of frenemies. They can be playing happily one second, then the next be screaming and punching each other. They both like to taunt each other and push their favorite buttons. Annie still absolutely adores Megan and when she sees Megan will most often run over to her and grab her hand and shake it back and forth. Megan loves watching Annie, but sometimes does not appreciate the hand shaking so we say a little too often, "Annie, leave her hand alone."
Annie is starting to learn how to read and can sound out words pretty well. She can read a lot of Bob Books without help, and we're working on sight words now to get her reading moving along a little. Annie loves preschool and loves her friends. She knows her numbers pretty well and can count up to 15 easily. She loves gymnastics and running around. Annie also has a TV addiction, mostly related to My Little Pony. She asks repeatedly throughout the day if she can watch a show. I do get an hour or two where she isn't pestering me about it when she gets to watch a show while Ryan is napping, and then for the hour or two after that is done she is satisfied with playing elsewhere.
Some of her favorite things to do besides TV are painting, playing with play dough, and putting together puzzles. She can do a 60 piece puzzle all by herself and frequently will do puzzles by herself at the table for 30 or more minutes at a time.
We love Annie and are happy to have her in our family. Happy birthday, big 4-year-old!

Halloween

Our ward's Halloween party was on the day before Halloween. All of the kiddos dressed up for the party.  Well ... that is to say the girls dressed up for the party and we were (barely) able to persuade Ryan to put on his duck hat and go as a duck.

Here's Megan as Wonder Woman ... er, Wonder Baby!

Here's Annie dressed up as Anna from the Disney movie Frozen.

Here's Ryan as a duck.

The Halloween party began with a chili and corn bread dinner followed by some games and activities for the kids.  At 7:30p, the trunk or treat began.  We forgot Ryan's pumpkin bucket and he didn't really care for the grocery bag we tried to get him to use so Ryan's haul was not as substantial as Rachel's and Annie's.

The following night was Halloween.  Annie was dressed as Elsa from Frozen.  Rachel dressed up as Sleeping Beauty and Ryan was a jogger. Ryan has an aversion to wearing clothing he doesn't identify as "his," ie. any new clothing or costume, so we had to go with something he already owned. He accepted the headband without complaint.

I took the older kids around our neighborhood to go trick-or-treating.  Colette and Megan passed out candy until we returned, then I and the older three got to pass out candy.  You can see the extent of my dressing up this year: glow in the dark ear hoops.

Our neighborhood gets a lot of trick-or-treaters and we were out of candy by around 7:30p.  At which point we turned off all of our lights and put everyone to bed.

October, month of insanity

I am so happy to have survived October. It was a full and very busy month. With fall break at the beginning of the month, our visit to the pumpkin patch, Disney on Ice, an overnight trip to Phoenix, birthday parties, Make a Difference Day, a ward BBQ, stake baptisms that I had to help at since our ward was in charge, the primary program, a ward Halloween party, and Halloween, we had every weekend full and multiple activities going on during the week, too. But we survived. But just barely.

I have very low expectations these days for the cleanliness of our house. I can manage to keep everyone fed and clothed (ie. cooking, cleaning dishes, and doing laundry), but beyond that I mostly don't have time, or free hands (thank you, Megan, who loves to be held a little too much) to do other cleaning. At the beginning of the month we had a Relief Society service exchange where I snatched up 2 hours of baby holding real quick, and when the sister came to hold Megan for me I got muffins made and my floor clean (hallelujah!). And last week I called my mom to come out and watch the kids so I could go grocery shopping without them and try to get our house under control after Annie's birthday had left chaos in its wake that I hadn't managed to corral yet. She came and helped for more than 4 hours and got the kids rooms cleaned and vacuumed (the girls have actually been doing pretty well at keeping their room clean), and the downstairs all picked up and floors vacuumed/swept/mopped. It was a Halloween Miracle. I am so grateful for people around to help out when I just can't stand the mess any more.

And now for some pictures of our little mess makers:

A couple weeks ago was red ribbon week at Rachel's school (anti-drug week). One day was mustache day (I "mustache" you to stay drug-free, or something along that line).

Megan is a solid little girl. She must have been going through a growth spurt last week because she was starving every couple of hours and slept poorly for a couple nights, then the last two nights has slept all the way through the night, 7ish pm to 7ish am. It's awesome!

Ryan is Mr. Goofball, especially when the camera comes out. If I take a picture of someone else he'll say, "Take a picture of me!" then, "Lemme see it?" After he looks at his picture he then takes the camera out of my hands (sometimes remembering to ask first) and proceeds to take between 10 and 50 blurry pictures of random stuff around the house. At least he's not wasting film.

Movie night continues to be one of the most loved traditions every Friday night. Ryan continues to be a little jealous of attention either Annie or Megan gets so when both were sitting by Dad, he had to climb up there, too. I'm sure that makes Jacob feel so loved.

Happy Megan.

Megan has grown a little, so the girls' headband flowers are no longer as big as her head, but just slightly smaller. Jacob thinks it still looks a bit too ridiculous, but it's growing on me a little. Rachel and Annie loved it, however, and insisted on taking this picture (notice the finger in the corner).

Ah, the primary program. Here's a little background for this photo. The last Sunday in October we had the primary program. Being in the Primary Presidency it was my job to do the seating chart. We have a rather large primary, so we end up filling all the seats on the stand, all the empty spaces with seats, and have one class sit down in front of the podium. We also have a rather large sunbeam class. 12-14 kids. So I put half of them just to the left of the podium, and the other half back a little, just as you come up the stairs. I made a huge error and put Annie in one of the chairs right up front next to the podium. And Rachel just happened to be down in front of her a little to the right, not quite out of arms reach. You know how primary programs usually have one or two kids that are their own little sideshow? Annie was that kid this time.

Her headband came off, or she took it off and was playing with it for a while and I kept trying to tell her to put it under her seat. Finally she decided to put it back on her head and somehow made a spectacularly crazy new hairdo. I tried to have her re-create her *special* do to take a picture the next morning, but this is as close as it got. In the primary program it was huge and reminiscent of the 80s. A one time phenomenon, I guess. It made me laugh so hard I had tears running down my face. But that was just the beginning.
Annie noticed Rachel sitting in front of her and started poking at her and pulling her hair and being generally obnoxious. At one point she pulled her arms inside her shirt, then as she was trying to find the arm holes to get her arms back out the dress started to come down lower and I could see when she realized she could just take it all the way off. Thankfully the adult sitting near her noticed and stopped her from undressing in front of the whole ward, though she tried again after that to have "princess shoulders" with her dress coming off her shoulders. They put an end to that, too. As a grand finale to her Primary Program shenanigans she was playing on her chair and knocked herself over backwards and hit her head. When she got herself back up she started to cry, so I went and grabbed her just as the closing hymn was starting and her show was over. Primary program entertainment at its finest. Next year she's getting a seat at the back, hidden behind everyone and no where near her sister (assuming I'm still in this calling and have any say in the matter).

Finally, Megan is enjoying her Bumbo seat occasionally. Like anything, she only is happy if someone is there talking to her. But she is getting more dextrous with her hands, so can be entertained a half a minute longer than she used to if there is something she can hold. She turns 4 months old this week and is getting to the fun laughing, almost mobile stage where babies are no longer a blob, but actually becoming a real person with a personality. Even though she keeps me from getting anything done, she sure is fun to have around.

Megan laughing

Last week we finally got Megan to laugh. We've only gotten her to laugh once or twice since and the only thing she'll laugh at is peek-a-boo with her feet covering my face. Any other variation just isn't funny, I guess. Babies laughing are the best.