Quiet November

The last 2 weeks of October were so fun and family-filled that November has felt very quiet. 

 I have been exercising with some neighborhood friends early in the morning and one day the view from our second floor landing caught my eye. Below is a picture from the top of an ascent on the trail by our house.

 Millie has started to sit at the counter on the bar stools. She is somewhat reckless and falls off occasionally, but don't you worry, she always succeeds in making a huge mess. I should never have let her start because now she refuses the high chair. When I try to put her in a high chair or booster she arches her back and straightens her legs so I cannot put her in. One day she and Lou were in matching outfits and being very cute together.

This big girl is also in a forward facing car seat. She is much happier about going in the car. She can even climb up herself. Before she was throwing a tantrum most of the time when I tried to buckle her in rear-facing. She is in the 97th percentile for height, so while I recognize that the recommendation for turning forward is 2 years old, I made a different decision.

 At Chick-fil-a Camille refused to sit in the high chair and she actually did fine in the booth. This was also the first time she ever used ketchup correctly, which is a huge milestone.

 Lou's preschool picture

Millie slept in until 10 AM one morning. I kept checking on her to make sure she was ok

 A trip to Lowe's Extreme Air Sports for one of our Thursday adventures and the only picture I got was Camille on the little playground.

 One day while I was getting ready Elise came in and started telling me about how Camille loves laundry and she likes sitting in it. I wasn't listening very closely but I assumed she meant Millie had dumped out a basket of laundry and was playing in it. When Lou mentioned something about spinning and asked why it wasn't spinning I became alarmed and ran into the laundry room to find Camille in the dryer. The dryer was on, but without the door shut it wouldn't spin.We have since had a couple good talks with Elise about how we don't play in the washer and dryer.

 Another Thursday adventure to the BYU Bean Museum with Quinn Sullivan. There happened to be a story time where they brought out a few live animals. The kids got to pet a snake and lizard. Camille actually crawled under the ropes of several exhibits, which forced me to then go into the exhibits as well. It was awesome.

 
Millie likes for me to use the front facing camera lens so she can see herself on my phone.

 I took Sadie and Lou to see Tarzan at Lehi High School. My cousin Scotty was Tarzan. He was incredible. Below you can see him swinging on vines around the set. He actually sang while swinging on several occasions.

 
Mills, your bedhead. Woof.

 An organization project partially done. All the papers/homework that were all over the refrigerator and kitchen counter are on these magnet boards in the mudroom. I still want to add some more stuff to the mudroom but my kitchen is feeling much less junky.

At first glance this just looks like a pretty picture, but you can see some big equipment to the right of the center. They have started to put in roads for the neighborhood that will go in across the street from us. We knew a neighborhood would be going in when we bought our house, but it was still a sad day. 

Halloween

Finally....only a month late, we have Halloween. 

I am not one who gets into holidays but kids make holidays a lot more fun. No matter what. 

Sadie went to a birthday/Halloween party and dressed up as a bat/vampire combo. She and I both really liked her hair like this. We were trying to see how many hair elastics we could do- 9. 

At the school costume parade the day before Halloween she stuck with the bat/vampire costume but it was cold so she wore clothes under the leotard. As I mentioned before, both Mimi and Papa were here for the parade. Sadie walked by quickly and this was my best picture. 

Elise also had a school Halloween party where the kids were invited to wear costumes. I am not sure why she was exhibiting this range of emotions, but that's just life with Lou.

On actual Halloween day the girls both decided on different costumes. This is why I don't spend any money on costumes! I tell the girls to find something from what we have, which works fine when you have 25+ costumes.

 Elise decided on Cinderella, which is easy to step up a notch. We added a top knot, blue headband and black ribbon around her neck. Throw on some dress-up gloves and she was good to go. 

Sadie chose our Ariel costume, which is slightly less obvious as to who she is, but it's a cute costume along with a starfish headband.

The Millster was a hamburger. I don't think we ever dressed up Lou in this costume, but Sadie wore it when she was the same age.

 Daniel was a great sport and walked around in the hot dog costume all evening. 

The older girls lasted much longer this year and got a lot more candy. 

I love trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood and seeing our neighbors all around. 

One of Elise's best friends, Madi, was also dressed as Cinderella. I am guessing that may have influenced Lou's change of costume choice. We ended up walking with them for a while and they looked darling together. 

We'll see which costumes they choose next year...

Papa's Quick Trip

 The same day that Courtney flew out of Utah my dad flew in. He came to celebrate his mom's 85th birthday. Millie put Papa to work reading books repeatedly. The next morning he attended Sadie's school costume parade (along with Mimi- Sadie had 2 special guests fly in, lucky girl), and then went to visit his mom. That night Dad took us and Matt to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and we came back and visited at our house for a while.

 The next day we had a mini John family reunion for Grandma's birthday. Many of my cousins were there. It was fun. My dad and his siblings got my grandmother a computer for her birthday. Grandma seemed very surprised.

 She has never used a computer before. I am interested to see if she learns how to use it. I will be so impressed. She did friend me on Facebook, so she already has that going. 

We said goodbye to Papa after lunch because he was catching a flight to Kansas City to see the Johns. Cousin Elliott had his baby blessing and Anthony was called as the Bishop for his ward.
We'll see Papa again at Christmastime so we let him go without too much protest.

Coco & Care Care

We were happy we got to see more of Courtney and Carolyn in Utah in October, even if we weren't happy for the reason they came out here.

Elise immediately put Coco to good use on the swing set.

We went to Kneader's for lunch after Lou had gymnastics and she insisted on wearing her tank top. It doesn't matter how cold it is, if Elise is wearing a tank top she likes to show it off. She was also happy to show off her Frankenstein cookie. 

Sadie came home from school one day excited to show Mimi her spider hat. 

 

Courtney came over and carved pumpkins with us. Both girls were terrified to touch the inside of the pumpkin so I bribed them with ice cream. I just knew once they did it they wouldn't be scared. Sadie took the ice cream bait immediately and stuck her hand in. She was happy to discover that it wasn't scary. Elise was not swayed by Sadie's assurances and below you have one of my favorite series of pictures. 

 

 Once the pumpkins were cleaned out the carving went quickly. Elise chose a pre-made template and Sadie wanted a 2-D shape pumpkin because that's what she had been learning about at school.

Not sure what day these are from, but Carolyn took them on a nice day in the backyard. The nice weather is a distant memory now.

Somehow Courtney got a good picture of Camille. Usually when I show Millie the camera she moves to try and touch it.

Coco did bedtime reading with Millie. And Millie happened to pick a book Courtney bought for us when Sadie was Millie's age. 

 

On Coco's last morning we all had brunch at Jim and Sharman's new house, 5 minutes from us. 

The day before Carolyn left she watched the younger 2 girls while I helped with Sadie's Halloween party at school. I signed up to help without noticing it was during the time Lou would need to be driven to preschool, so Carolyn drove her to school and put Millie down for a nap. Man, how nice it would be to have family closer to help with stuff like that. Below she was helping Elise with her take home reading before her school Halloween party.

Good thing Mimi will be back here in 1 week. We got used to seeing her around here. 

Hee Haws 2015

The Monday before Halloween we finally made it to Hee Haw Farms. Sadly, we never made it to Jaker's this year. Maybe next year. 

The girls remembered everything well and ran from thing to thing, wanting to do it all as quickly as possible. We did the slide multiple times. It was hard to tell if Millie liked it.

 Camille climbed through this random pipe while we waited for pony rides. I don't think it was meant to be an attraction. 

 The pony rides are always very exciting, even though it is the same thing every year.

 This year we all braved the petting area. Millie has no fear of animals yet. I am sure it might come as she gets older. But she was just walking around in all those goats and sheep with no trepidation. Sadie and Elise fed them straw, but got a bit nervous each time.

 We planned it on a Monday this year so we could go on the candy hay ride. There was only one other family on the ride so we got lots of candy. Too bad they don't give out any good stuff.

 The other attraction we did a lot was the animal train ride. While the girls rode around, including Millie on Sadie's lap, Daniel and I played a game trying to knock down milk jugs with a tennis ball. I owned Daniel. He claims it is because the milk jugs were at my shoulder level so I could just throw straight across, but we all know it's just because I have a superior throwing arm.

 After Hee Haws we hurried to pick out pumpkins at the patch by our house and called it a night. For the first time in 3 years- no tantrums on our Hee Haws visit. It was a Halloween miracle.

Are you ready for some football

Sadie had heard some of her male friends talk about BYU football at school and she decided she wanted to go to a game with Daniel. We picked out the game that would work the best and she looked forward to it excitedly. It was made even more exciting because Daniel offered to take some of our neighbors and Sadie on the field before the game. 

 I was nervous Sadie wouldn't last very long during the game since they tailgated with the Blood relatives a while before the game started. I was hoping she would make it to at least half time. Instead, Sadie made it easily through the whole game and even learned the rules of football. Daniel said she asked lots of good questions and of course, she was very competitive. Luckily, BYU pulled out the win for her.

Daniel said he legitimately had a good time and he is looking forward to taking Sadie to more games in the future. Who needs sons? We don't need no stinkin sons