Out of the mouth of babes

Tonight the kids were getting ready for bed. Kate was standing on the arm of the couch ready to jump down. "FWATCH (watch) MOM!" she yelled at me. After her jump, she turned to me and said, "Awesome? Awesome Mommy?" I needed a good laugh tonight, so thanks Kate :) I love that her vocabulary is still so small seeing as how she is still 1, and yet she has the most important words down...like awesome.

Halloween...Bonus Points for Being Posted Before Thanksgiving

Halloween Stop #1: Avery's Parade


I thought we missed this, so I was relieved to walk in just in time to see her at the end and snap this picture! She is a "Fairy Kitty"
Halloween stop #2: Dad's Office

John's work has around 200 employees. They have pizza and trick-or-treating there for Halloween. It is insane! My kids came home with their little buckets filled to the brim. Kate was astounded by the fact that she could just walk around and people would hold out bowls of candy for her to grab out of. The first few people she was walking hesitantly, wondering what was going on. But she is a fast learner. By the end, she was grabbing handfuls from everyone (which they encouraged since hardly any kids come :) and then she would be racing to the next bowl with us trying to keep up. Pretty funny.
Halloween Stop #3: Trick Or Treating

We hit a few houses around the block at an insanely embarrassing early hour because Carston was adamant that we do houses around our block. Then we went and hit the 3 grandparent houses. Then we did a couple blocks at my moms. It was raining and cold, and lucky for us we had TONS of candy from John's work, so we quit there. I love this picture of Kate and John.
Halloween Stop #4: The Haunted Garage

John's brother, Brett, does a haunted garage every year. He was even so special as to get featured in the newspaper this year :) He does a good job and spends a lot of work on it. Anyway, usually John spends the night working there while I finish Halloween stuff with the kids. My mom was nice this year and told me to run over while she kept the girls. (Not like she doesn't offer every year, but I actually took her up on it). So Carston, John, and I headed over. Carston was pretty excited because he decided he wanted to be part of it this year. Previously, he's been too nervous to even come anywhere near it, so this was a big deal. He and his cousin were werewolves and got to scare people. They took their job VERY seriously and thus ended up being completely adorable. I enjoyed watching him so much that I stayed the whole time :) My mom is so nice!
PS-Carston is on the left :)
PSS-We already bought his costume for next year at the Target 75 off sale and he chose a werewolf costume :) I think John can plan on having his help in the haunted garage from here on out :)
Halloween Pictures
Normally, I LOVE taking cute Halloween pictures of my kids in their costumes. Um....didn't happen this year. Maybe it was the yucky weather. Maybe I was tired. But these are the worst pictures I've ever taken. It was pretty funny because Macy was crying the whole time. You know I'm her mom because I still think she looks adorable when she's crying like a crazy :) The one of her smiling is from a different day :) And I don't know where my closeup of Avery is :)

I Made This Bed

A LONG time ago, we were needing to rearrange our kids sleeping situation. I'm a crazy lady who doesn't want to make her little kids sleep down in the basement (my husband thinks I'm bonkers). Anyway, Kate and Carston were in a room together, while Avery and Macy shared the other. It wasn't working out. Kate was around 10 months at the time maybe. It was a nightmare because she would wake up whenever Carston made a sound. So I did what any reasonable mother would do. I decided to cram three kids into one little room. Totally reasonable right?
Carston had a bed from Ikea ( I can't remember the name of it, maybe Kura) and I saw plans to build the same bed on Ana-White.Com (I LOVE that website!) having two sets of bunkbeds was about the only way I could fit three kids in there and have any room for them to play. So I built it. It cost maybe around 70 dollars to build and I greatly enjoyed doing it.
I made coverings out of a sheet with door flaps and windows so they could turn the bottoms into forts if they wanted. Right now Avery and Carston both have a top bunk and Macy sleeps on a bottom (technically the floor), and they have the other bottom area free for play. When we eventually move I will put some color on it.
Anyway, if you haven't checked out Ana's blog of free, easy, inexpensive furniture plans you should set aside a few hours and take a look.

2 Teeth in 2 Hours

Avery woke up Saturday morning with a VERY wiggly tooth. She was so cute. She kept sneaking off into her bed to wiggle it while no one watched, and then she'd come out and say, "NOW see how loose it is!" Pretty soon, it was in a position where it was rubbing her gums and causing discomfort. John asked her if she wanted him to pull it out. She had to think it over for about 10 minutes before she said yes :) He gave it a couple of tugs and it came out. She was pretty excited.

All that private wiggling in her bed had an effect on the other front tooth. Two hours later, the story repeated itself and she was toothless on the bottom. She is so cute. It was funny to see her take charge of the situation, making the decision to have her dad pull it out. I was glad it didn't drag out for the next few days like some of our past experiences :) So now she walks about talking with a cute lisp and some extra money in her bank :)

Macy and Kate

Bring on the Two-Wheeler!

Each person in our family made goals at the beginning of the year. One of Carston's was to learn how to ride his bike-no training wheels. Learning to ride a bike is one of those events in life where your personality can show itself in full force. Some kids show that they have no fear, that nothing (like scrapped body parts) is going to slow them down. And then there are kids whose personalities mirror Carston's. He is a thinker. He likes to study things out until he knows just what to expect. He is not one to throw caution to the wind. He is a careful, cautious indiviual and that is a good thing. Although, that makes learning how to ride a bike a bit more of a challenge. I mean, how do you explain to a cautious 7 year old that you have to just get on the thing and go for it, that any scrapes received will be worth it?

John and I decided we'd better get a move on helping Carston reach his goal before the nice weather deserted us. Our plan was to have John practice with him each night after dinner. Well, one Saturday, I took the girls somewhere and John decided to get a jumpstart on the plan. I pulled onto our street and saw Carston riding his bike, all by himself, no training wheels! He was SO unbelievably excited to be riding his bike. He couldn't wait to spill the whole story to me. His friend has a driveway that slopes down. He went to the top, and tried going down once. He didn't quite make it all the way before he took refuge in the grass to avoid scrapes. Next time down was the charm. He made it to the bottom of the driveway and just kept going. He called all the appropriate relatives to share the news, which resulted in Grandma Robin taking him to the park where he could have a long proper ride around the track. Lucky boy. The next day he jumped out of bed bright and early, got dressed, and asked for permission to get out on his bike. He has been riding ever since.

I love that he got a huge boost of confidance because it only took him "2 tries." We could have really pushed him last year and I'm sure he would have got it, but it would have come with a price. Waiting another year came with a bonus :)

I'm living my mother's life!

When I was growing up, I remember a lot of grape juice. This wasn't the kind that you bought at the store; we had jars of it downstairs in the basement on the food storage shelves. My Aunt had grapevines and my mom and her would make juice and bottle it. My aunt called me about a month ago and asked me if I was interested in learning how to do it. Canning is one of those things I've always wanted to learn more about so I said yes. It was fun hanging out with her and my mom as they taught me the process. We used a steamer and that worked pretty well. It took quite awhile to do all the grapes she had, but my mom was so nice to come back another night and stay late while we finished. I also ended up making some jelly (or jam, I don't really know the difference!). I did that part by myself so I hope it turned out well. In the end, I ended up with over 3 dozen jars of concentrated grape juice and 1/2 a dozen jars of jelly. It took several nights, so I had to keep telling John, "You're going to LOVE this grape juice!"



PS. If anyone has a juice steamer or a steam canner they don't want, I'd love to buy them!

Macy=Daily Dose of Laughter

MooMoo, you make me laugh. You make me laugh when you insist on wearing your bright blue footsie pajamas to Target. You make me laugh even harder when you then decide to run around in circles in front of the store SNORTING like a pig as loud as you can (and we both know how loud you can). You make me laugh every single day. I can't wait to see the woman you turn into!

Kate is not to be dissuaded...

Please excuse the messy pantry, but do you see that red and white basket at the top left? Well, apparently Kate saw some treat wrapper sticking out of it while I was doing school with Carston. Seeing as how she is only about 2 feet tall, I would have thought she would have admitted defeat and moved onto the next item of business. No, not Kate. I guess it is a good thing that she feels so capable. She got the stool, climbed right up there, and helped herself to 3 suckers...

I love how she just looks at me like, "What? Why do you find this so interesting?"

PS. She has made it a habit everyday to take advantage of times when I am not in the kitchen. She pulls a chair over to the cupboard, climbs up on the counter, and helps herself to the treat bowl.

PPS. The night before we left for San Antonio, she fell off the counter-height table and got a deep gash on her head. She sat still for about 5 seconds while I tried to put pressure on it, and then she was fighting to get away from me. She is a crazy girl sometimes!

Jinxed

I always thought I'd never be one of THOSE people. You know who I'm talking about. The people who spend absurd amounts of money on their pets. Who does that? Pets are a dime a dozen right? Um.... I am ashamed to admit that I have joined that party. But when I walk in on circumstances such as these just about every night........what choice did I really have?

Sadie (our dog who now has higher medical bills than all 4 of my children combined) had been babying her back leg for a few weeks. It seemed to fluctuate, so I kept waiting, hoping it would go away. It didn't. I took her in expecting a broken bone or something (maybe from the bat Macy dropped on her leg!). Oh no, it was a torn ACL. The Vet (Orthopedic Specialist if you want to be specific) told me I had two choices: a $1200 surgery or a $2400 surgery. (John said their was a third choice but I stopped him before the cruel words left his heartless lips!) So yep, Little Miss Sadie got her surgery (the "cheap" one of course). I don't know what is more embarrassing: the fact that we paid this crazy amount for her surgery, or the fact that I got teary-eyed dropping her off!