Once there was a Snow Girl

Once there was a snow girl, tall tall tall... (and the poor thing was left undecorated for the first 24 hours):


In the sun, she melted... (and slouched over, but we finally put her face on). Did you know big carrots are only like 10 cents? Totally worth it.

Snowy Day!

Elise and Lydia were so excited this morning when they looked out the window. Elise made big plans for playing in the snow, and I hoped it would last until after preschool and lunch, which it has.

I think I'm going to count this as the first official snowy day of the season. We had one a while back, but it was on a Sunday (so we couldn't play in it) and it pretty much all melted a few hours later.

Stay tuned for snowman pictures. He is all built, we just need to find stuff for his face etc.

New Posts Galore!

I just spent a few hours catching up from AUGUST! Laziness is partly to blame, but also I ran out of harddrive space on my computer, and I couldn't get pictures off my camera. Luckily, Mike recently installed an extra drive to solve my problem!

For those of you with way too much time on your hands, feel free to check out what we've been up to the last 3 months!

(oh, and I finally figured out how to "fake" the dates of my posts, isn't that great?)

Trick or Treating

Trick or treating was fun. Between Mike's knee and my pregnancy aches and pains, it was hard to decide which one of us should take Elise and Lydia out. I ended up going, while Mike stayed home to answer the door.

Lydia got the hang of it pretty quickly, and as we walked away from each house she informed me "Mommy, I say [said] trick or treat!" Elise got a little too enthusiastic about the candy. The first few people who held out their whole bowl to her got robbed of a whole handful (or two) of candy before I realized and put a stop to it. It didn't even occur to me beforehand to teach trick-or-treat etiquette (besides saying "Thank you")!

The girls had a lot of energy for most of the time. Lydia was having a hard time lifting her little treat bucket once it got pretty full, but she insisted on carrying it herself. But then after a while she wanted me to carry her. That was about the time I called Mike and told him to turn off the porch light for a minute and come pick us up! We weren't even that far from home, but there was no way I was carrying Lydia all the way back.

The rest of the night, Lydia kept a firm grip on that bucket, and it was so hard trying to convince her to let go and change into her pajamas! She is so funny about candy! As you may remember from our Easter entry, she eats it immediately and as fast as she can. Elise takes a different approach. If she gets a sack of candy from a party or a roll of smarties from the checker at Macey's, she eats one and puts the rest away for later. She sometimes tells me her plan is to eat just one each day. Despite their quirks though, both girls are surprisingly generous with their candy!

First thing this morning, both girls asked for their candy buckets (from off the top of the fridge). I told them they had to get dressed and eat breakfast first. Lydia was happy to comply. Elise ate breakfast, but she decided she didn't need to get dressed, because she still had a stash of candy in her room from visiting Grandma at the elementary school! She stayed in her pajamas until 11:00. :)

The Pumpkin and the Pine Tree

Elise and Lydia's costumes have kinda fun back stories:

One day in early October, as I was walking Elise to school, I asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween. I think she must have looked around and said the first thing she saw, because the answer was "A tree." A few days later I asked her again, expecting her to have forgotten, and she was definite this time, and even more specific: "A pokey-pine tree" (somehow merging the word porcupine in her mind with pine trees). I suggested several alternatives as the month went on, but she was sure she wanted to be a pine tree.
The idea behind making it all frou-frou was that if I was going to all the work of making a pine tree costume, she had better not change her mind. I figured she probably couldn't resist a tutu style tree with a pinecone necklace.

Lydia's costume was not decided upon until much closer to Halloween. Up to that point, she didn't quite get the concept of "being something for Halloween." I don't know how she figured it out, but out of the blue one day she said "Mommy, I wanna be a punkin for Halloween." A couple days later when she was wearing a shirt with a butterfly on it, I suggested maybe she could be a butterfly for Halloween. "No, a punkin!" came the reply. I bought an $8 pumpkin costume at the grocery store, but returned it a few days later when I came across the pumpkin costume I wore as a toddler. Yes, my mom made it, and she saved it! How lucky for me. Isn't it cute? I just love that hat.

Here are the girls with their cousins, visiting Mike's mom in her classroom. I had to laugh at the contrast between what most 2 and 4 year-olds would choose for costumes, and what my kids chose.

Marianne and Eric's Halloween Party

We had fun at Eric and Marianne's annual Halloween party. Marianne made yummy tomato basil soup, and the kids decorated pumpkins with fun foam stickers (a way cleaner activity than carving).

Carnac the Magnificent and Aretha Garlique

Mike and I were invited to a How to Host a Murder party the weekend before Halloween. Our sister-in-law, Ashley, really outdid herself. The decorations and everything were so awesome and spooky. I wish I had taken pictures of the decor. Everyone's costumes were so well done. For those who have never been to this type of party, a whole murder mystery with characters and clues comes in a box, and you invite 8 people to come dressed as the characters and solve the mystery. To make this a bigger party, all of the couples shared a character. Our character was Aretha Garlique - the "flamboyant clairvoyant" who always wears a wreath of garlic (get it? A-wreath-a Garlique).
To take advantage of my "condition" I disguised my pregnant belly as a magic 8-ball (Shaunda's awesome idea). I even had a pocket full of magic 8-ball answers, so you could ask me yes/no questions.
Mike, as Aretha's date, was "Carnac the Magnificent" like on Johnny Carson.
We were assigned to bring a fruit salad, and there was a competition for the most creative/spooky dish. This was the best I could do to make fruit spooky. The ideas came from Family Fun magazine. Unfortunately the watermelon brain lost to Cindy's kitty litter cake. :)

Pumpkin Patch

Usually we just get our pumpkins at the grocery store, but this year we decided spend the extra $.06 per pound and go to a pumpkin patch. It was so fun, and a great photo op. As long as this particular pumpkin patch stays in business, I think we'll make it an annual tradition.

On the way there I explained that each girl could choose any pumpkin they liked, and Elise told me she was going to pick a big HUGE pumpkin. I modified my original statement and told her that she could choose any pumpkin she could carry. You should have seen her disappoinment with the first few pumpkins she tried to lift. Even when she got a little more realistic (like this one), I had to lift them into her arms so she could make sure they were carry-able.

These were their final picks. The one on top, they picked for the baby "because he's a boy and boys like green".

Primary Program

Elise, who is a Sunbeam this year, had her first chance to be in a Primary program at church. She loves singing, and Primary songs are some of her favorites. Sometimes she bursts loudly into song in the middle of Costco, to see how many people will pay attention to her. Lydia has begun to join in too, and has picked up a lot from what she hears Elise sing.

So, I wasn't too surprised when the chorister told me a couple weeks before the program that Elise is one of the loudest singers. I was excited to hear what she meant. I was not disappointed, it was very entertaining to watch her sing her little heart out. The cutest thing about her singing was that she would tone it down when she wasn't quite sure of the lyrics or tune, and then when she was more sure she would turn up the volume again. People in the ward keep commenting to us about how well they could hear her, what a great job she did, etc.

She also had a speaking part, which she practiced a lot, but she froze when it was her turn to talk in the mic (wonder if that's inherited?). But if anyone would care to ask her, she will gladly repeat her part for you: "Teach me all that I must do."

Lydia had a fun time at church that day too, because my parents, Chris, Alan, and Alan's fiancee Dani, came to visit. Lydia just went from lap to lap as she pleased!

Emergency Preparedness and General Conference

I heard an idea recently and decided to try it out for a General Conference tradition. We ate the old food in our 72 hour kits, to rotate in new food. Most of it was expired, but edible (we're all still alive, so that's good). Most of it was bought when Elise was allergic to dairy, so that's quite a while ago.

We had:
Pop tarts ("Brown Sugar Cinnamon" held up better than "Frosted Strawberry")
Canned pineapple and mandarin oranges (both were a hit with the kids)
Vienna Sausages (surprisingly they ate these!)
Quaker chewy granola bars (I thought they tasted stale, but the girls ate them)
Chicken noodle soup (still good)
Shelf stable soy milk drink boxes (yuck!)

There wasn't nearly enough for 3 days of good eating. We pretty much had it all for lunch between sessions.