Come in for a Bite!

Good Evening! Ah, ah, ah! (Said with a Transylvanian accent.) I hope your Halloween was a smash! Ours was Fantastic! First of all, just to set the mood, we had a nice little furry bat come and use our porch entryway as his pit stop for a night.

We enjoyed all of the usual festivities including the Fall Festival, Trunk-or-Treat (love how festive Chris was with Kate's pumpkin hat on his head), Class parties, the school dance, and of course, the pumpkin carving (see Chris' awesome upside down faced Jack-o-lantern below). On the actual day of Halloween it was our primary program. The girls did a fabu job and one of Aly's friends came to watch her.

Also of note in the middle of all this craziness . . . it is official. We now own our home in Florida. Yippee!! So now we are in the semi-mode of trying to get ready to move (in 6 weeks!). It's going to be crazy with Aly's b-day and Thanksgiving and Christmas and all, but what else is new? On top of everything else, we've been a bunch of sick-o's over here for the past two weeks: Kate had the croup, Aly lost her voice, Lise had a cough and runny nose, Chris had a sore throat, Kylie was sneezing and coughing, and I had a combination of all of the above. We are all almost all better now though, which I am so grateful for, because I don't have any more time to take naps on the couch trying to get better. It's time to crank things up a notch, de-clutter, and get ready to move!

Headstands are the latest craze at our house, with many a headstand contest going on before dinner and bedtime. Can you believe that after 10 years of marriage Chris did not know that I knew how to do a headstand?!? Blasphemy! Anyhoo, Chris feels that he needs to stand on his head just to think straight and get to everything he's got going on. He's trying to finish his thesis with his group this week so that he can start focusing on the move and all that. He's been getting the cars oiled and lubed and ready to go, along with scheduling packers and movers and giving our 30 days notice, etc. There are just always so many things to get done! No wonder Chris can't tell which way is up!

When I was little, I loved playing with and designing things with my brother's legos. (Possibly one of the reasons why I got my degree in civil engineering?!?) I kept telling myself that I would wait to get Legos "when I have a boy", but since that is looking slimmer and slimmer, last Christmas I bought some for Kate. All the girls love them, which makes me so happy! Aly has recently gotten into building all sorts of creative towers and villages with the duplos and the legos. It is fun stuff. I sure hope Santa brings us some more this year!

Another thing I've gotten Aly into is reading "The Little House on the Prairie" series, which she loves as well, and I love reading it with her. Doesn't it just make you so happy to see your kids enjoy some of the same things that you did as a kid so that you can enjoy them together and not be the "un-hip" mom who doesn't know anything that's cool? Just the other day Aly said to me, "Hey Mom, don't you have any other movies we could rent that you liked when you were a kid? They are always really good!" That just gave me a warm fuzzy all over. :) (And in case you're wondering, some of the movies we've rented from my childhood are Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, The Neverending Story, A Little Princess, Labrynth, Hook, Jumanji, The Secret of Nimh, etc.)

Another fun pastime around here lately is Aly, the human chair. Both Lise and Kate love it. And I love their imaginations.

Well, it finally happened. Lise lost her first tooth! She was super-duper excited, the tooth fairy came, and all is well. And guess what? The other bottom tooth is already loose. Once they start you just can't stop 'em!!

Lise is also back on the scene with her jokes . . .

"Why did the Mayor put a popcicle in his lunchbox?" "Because he didn't like melted popcicles!"
She's got a definite career ahead of her as a Laffy Taffy joke writer.

Lise has been having fun playing with her friends here as well. They do some crazy stuff, like one time they were making mudpies and they kept coming inside to get mouthfuls of water and tried to walk outside and spit the water on their mudpies without swallowing. Ever heard of a hose?

Kate, as always, is dealing with some control issues. Even though Kate doesn't like being told what to do and wants to be in charge so badly, she often ends up shooting herself in the foot with it. Consider the following conversation Kate had with my brother Spencer when he was here:

Spencer: You need to take 3 more bites of your cereal.

Kate: No! Five.

Spencer: Okay, five. Here's your first bite. One . . .

Kate: No! That's Zero.

So, in the name of being in control, Kate ended up taking six bites, instead of the required 3. I often wonder if I am not just like this sometimes with Heavenly Father, making things so much harder on myself than they have to be just because I want to do things "my way." It's amazing the things you can learn and the perspective you can get as to the way Heavenly Father sees us and deals with us just by being a parent.

Kate has been asking me to put her hair in a ponytail and I tell her we can't because she cut it too short. So this was the best we could do. She's giving her Tinkerbell doll a piggyback ride in the picture, I believe.

Also, Kate has recently learned what the lights on a stoplight mean, bless her heart, and has taken it upon herself to yell at the driver "It's red, we need to stop!" or "The light's green, Go!" Unfortunately, Kate is often looking out her side window at the cross traffic's light, rather than the one straight ahead, which leads to arguments about what color the light really is for us. Gotta love driving with Kate.

And finally, Kate is always telling us about what happened, "Last Morrow". It took me awhile to figure out that "last morrow" means yesterday - or anytime before today. I love the stories that start out, "Remember last morrow when we . . . " I'm gonna miss that.

Kylie - holy cow! - is 3 months old! I can't believe it's time to pull out the 3-6 month clothes already! She is showing interest in toys now, tries to grab onto things, and likes to laugh and giggle for whoever will give her attention. She's especially happy when she first wakes up from a nap! The funniest is when one of Kate's temper tantrums wakes her up and so she's just in her swing smiling as big as can be while Kate's screaming. Ya gotta love that!

And finally, here's the girls pumpkins that they decorated for Halloween. They're trying to make the face they drew. Gotta love it. Holidays are so much more fun with kids.