Happy Halloween!

The kids had a great time at the ward trunk-or-treat last night, once I convinced Luke that it was okay to wear his fireman coat and hat. I couldn't get the boots on him for the life of me.

Originally, Lydia was going to be a skunk (see last picture--it was way too big for Luke last year!) and Luke was going to be a peanut. But man, he went running and screaming any time he saw me come near him with the peanut costume. And I somehow managed to lose the skunk costume from last year. So we went to Goodwill and improvised. I'm sure I'll probably find the skunk costume this week :)

With a little help from the dollar store and some glitter paint, we made sure nobody mistook Lydia for just a princess or a fairy....she was "Fairy Princess Lydia," and don't you forget it!

Can it really be that these are the same kids? One year sure makes a big difference!

Hope you all had a very happy Halloween!

Why I Now Do My Shopping at Fred Meyers....

...because they have a Play Land, where my kids can play while I shop without them. The first picture was taken when we got to Lowes, otherwise known as the "tractor store" in our house. Everyone, including Mom, was happy and loving the outing.

Fast forward 10 minutes, after Luke ran away from me 15 times, climbed the huge metal stair thingy with the employees only sign on it while I was trying to find the right screws, and then got buckled in the cart due to aforementioned behaviors. If my memory serves me right, Lydia was crying because I told her she couldn't have any snacks since she had refused to eat more than 3 bites of breakfast. (May I add, I did warn her before we left that she wouldn't be able to have snacks at the store unless she ate more of her breakfast. But did she? Of course not.) Thank you Fred Meyer for making it possible for me to get groceries without this fiasco.

Luke's Getting Ready for Halloween...

I guess he's trying to tell me that I need to make the house look more festive. He took the liberty of decorating himself by eating an orange marker. Yes, you read right. He ATE the marker. He's still spitting out chunks of the spongy tip.

This is what I get for trying to be productive and make lasagna ahead of time so that I'd actually have dinner ready when everyone was hungry.

(Note said lasagna in the background. It better be good!)

I should write the Crayola people and thank them for making non-toxic products, so that people with weird kids like me don't have to worry when their child eats various coloring utensils.

UPDATE from Dad: Can I just take this moment to say how proud I am of my boy? Like father like son. (Nice find on the picture, mom.)

If you ever feel like.....

"my tummy is going up into my throat and squishing together"

or

"my tummy is trying to go up as high as the sky,"

beware.

You're probably going to throw up.

Ask Lydia. She knows.

Luke's second birthday

Tuesday was Luke's second birthday. Oh how I love that little boy! He is getting to be so much fun now; I definitely think two is my favorite age for kiddos. He loves to run and jump and play with trucks, and he gives good hugs and kisses when you're lucky and catch him in the right mood. His vocabulary is constantly expanding, and he surprises us sometimes with his sentences. Today he said, "I see a squirrel right now!" and (very forcefully) "Come down right now! Dinner!" He definitely isn't afraid to take charge. He also is very polite in that he almost always says thank you whenever you do something for him.

He has started singing a lot and now has renditions of "Rock-a-bye Baby" and "I Am Like a Star" added to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." He also attempts to belt out the hymns at church, and usually the little kids around us turn to look at him during the Sacrament hymn to wonder why he is being so irreverent. He has the best smile and I love his dimples. I just love him so much--even though he can be a MAJOR stinker when he wants to be!

I learned that when you whip frosting a lot to mix in food coloring, you should put it in the fridge to harden again before you frost with it. Otherwise you end up with melty frosting, fire truck windows that slide down the cake, etc.

Video Mania

Sorry for the plethora of videos, they're more for the grandmas and grandpas than anyone else. Luke has taken up singing/sing-talking lately. This isn't his best rendition but it's the best we could get without a loud "cheese!" when he noticed the camera.

Lydia is becoming uber-creative lately, with this just being one of the many ideas she's come up with lately.

Some of her creativity is not as constructive. This is her closet after I left her in her room alone with the instructions to pick up and put away everything the floor.

(I didn't take a picture of the floor where she dumped all of her noodles because she knew she couldn't have dessert unless she finished her dinner.)

Lastly, this is the fun toy that the kids discovered. Don't let Luke fool you, he's the first one who thought to climb up the table and slide down after the legs broke off my work table.

Retaliation

Do NOT take Lydia's mixing spoon when she is making mud soup.

What We've Been Doing Lately

First off, this is what Tyler and Lydia did this afternoon:

Very nice. Monday through Wednesday this week I took the kids to the Oregon Coast, where Tyler's parents had a timeshare rented at Otter Crest. Luke did not enjoy the morning walk out to the tide pools....

Lydia also had a rough time going up the bajillion steps because "there's something in my shoes and socks and I can't wear them!" She solved her own problem though, as you can see.

They both enjoyed throwing rocks into the tide pools and hearing them go "ker-plunk!"

Before we left I fulfilled one wish for each of my kids. Luke's was to go around in his diaper all day:

Lydia had been requesting that I make her a play dress, so I did out of dollar-a-yard fabric. I was actually quite proud that I put in the sleeves and a zipper all by myself, with minimal seam ripping involved. And as a bonus, it twirls enough that she will consent to wear it.

Tyler and I also fulfilled one of our wishes, which was to refinish our deck. I didn't take any before pictures, but here's a few pictures of after it was all sanded down. (I think my hands are still shaking from holding that hand sander for so long!)

And a few after pictures of our deck "a la Cedar Naturaltone" stain and water protector. And can I say, I detest painting railings or anything like unto them.

And here's a little video of the kids at the Coast. Don't ask me why I can't move the video up to where the other Coast pictures are, or why this is underlined. Blogger is frustrating me right now but I'm too lazy to work on it anymore!

Back from the (blogging) Dead

Howdy everyone. I'm lacking the motivation to sort through the many pictures of our wonderful family trips over the last two months, the first with Ty's family to the Oregon Coast, and the second with the Smith side in McCall, Idaho. So today you don't get pictures of our trips, you get videos of what we've been doing recently. Hopefully that will suffice and eventually I will get my rear in gear and post more frequently!

We spent a few hours at the Washington County Fair. Lydia loved the ponies; she came up and told me all about it (I wasn't there when she saw them the first time): "I put out my hand and he sniffed it and his whiskers gave me kisses!"

Luke has gained a new skill--riding a bike. He seems like such a big boy to me, riding his bike around the cul-de-sac in his little yellow helmet!

This last video is Luke's attempt at Red Light, Green Light. The kids love to play that game when we're grocery shopping; I have to stop the cart every time they yell "red light!" (Sometimes shopping takes a long time!) It was interesting to me to see his little brain equate moving in a shopping cart to moving on a bike, and to know that the same game applied in both situations.

Please drive slowly if you're ever on our street--his steering skills and "watch out for cars" skills are still developing!!!

It has begun....

I am becoming my parents. I realized this as I listened to myself tell Lydia "If you wouldn't pull all the clothes out of your drawers, you wouldn't have to pick them all up." Oh, the memories of hearing words like that growing up. "If you just stand right here and put the clothes in your hamper when you take them off, then they wouldn't be all over the floor." "If you would do the job right the first time, you wouldn't have to come back out here and do it again." Go ahead and laugh, Mom and Dad. I'm just doing my best to pass on the gems that I learned from you!

You know you live in Oregon when....

Your kids have rain getup like this:

And you randomly stumble on waterfalls with hiking trails like this:

And you overhear this conversation at Target, after the sales lady remarked that the customer's daughter was very petite for her age:

"Yes, well, she's been strictly breastfed since birth, and she only eats organic baby food, so you know, she IS more petite than SOME babies...."

(I wish I would have been buying baby formula and sugar-packed snacks for my kids. That would have been awesome.)

The facts of life according to Lydia

Today as we were driving to Costco Lydia informed me that she had had a baby. When I asked her where her baby was, she replied (in a tone implying that I was an idiot for asking the question) that he was still in her tummy. "See, it's getting really bigger." She also told me he was wearing pink jammies. "He is wearing pink jammies? In your tummy?" I asked. Yep, was the response. When I told her that she and Luke had been born wearing nothing, she tried to sound appalled. "We were NAKED????" she yelled. Nice try at trying to sound modest, little girl. Not after you dropped your pants and took off your shirt in the middle of the Children's Place outlet last weekend because you saw some clothes you liked.

As we pulled into Costco she told me her baby "just popped right out." That was easy, I said. "Yep, it's not hard, I just pushed and he came right out." And here it is, my favorite part of the conversation--

"And now he's drinking milk from my brain."

I hope I'm there when she has her first baby, who will pop right out wearing pink pajamas and start nursing on her lactating brain.

Crib antics

I took down the crib after we watched the kids do this Sunday night. I'd really like to avoid broken bones this year.

Happy Birthdpy, Tyler!

On May 6th our loving and totally awesome Tyler turned 33, and we love him 33x more than we did last year!

Whoever packed my package of birthday candles can't spell--either that, or I've been spelling 'birthday' wrong my whole life. Happy Birthdpy!

We went to one of Tyler's favorite restaurants, La Hacienda Real, one of which they conveniently just opened in Beaverton, saving us the hour drive to Salem. We had yummy Mexican food and loved it, or as Ty would say, "that was some pretty good crap."

(I figured since I had blogged Lydia's contribution to Ty's cake, I should blog Luke's, which was licking the beaters after I made the frosting. He found something he can excel at.

Happy Birthday my love!!!

Dee Dee Unplugged

Can I just say that I love this little lady?

I love hearing how her mind works and how she tries to label new sounds/ideas with ones she already knows. For example, today after lunch her stomach was gurgling. (Sidebar--one of my favorite medical terms from nursing school is the technical name for that--borborygmi. Use it in a sentence today, I dare you.) She turned to me and said, "Mommy, my stomach is snoring!"

Today we were making Ty's birthday cake and Lydia was "reading" the recipe to me. Some highlights:

• 3 cups of oil
• 1 thing of sugar
• one hot chocolate
• whipped cream
• water--"boiling Mom, it has to be boiling hot"

After playing dress-up she voluntarily picked up the clothes and put them away. She ran in to tell me about it while I was making dinner and I just said, "Awesome!" She replied with, "you're welcome Mommy." A gentle reminder that I forgot to say thank you!

Yesterday I was doing her hair and she wanted two little piggytails in front and one ponytail in back. I did the two front ones and got up to leave, at which point she used her most dramatic voice to tell me, "But Mom, I need my other piggytail. I don't feel beautiful!"

Yesterday she was scooting down the stairs on her bottom when she said, "Mom, my bum just made a stink in my face!" The rest of the day was spent reminiscing about how she ate too many strawberries and "now my bum is full of gassy."

Looking at this last picture made me sad. They both look so grown up and as much as I may say otherwise, I love the ages my kids are at right now. I want them to stay young and cute and innocent, and realizing that they're growing up so fast freaks me out!!!

McDonalds

Sorry, no pictures for those of you who don't read blog entries without eye candy to go along with it. Tyler's been gone since yesterday afternoon on Boy Scout Camporee, so I've been staying busy with the kiddos. They were really good this morning going to Lowe's and "helping" me weed/lay down fabric weed barrier/spread mulch on part of my yard, so I promised them McDonald's for dinner. It was a funny trip.

First off, when I pulled in the parking lot there was one of those mini-semi trucks pulling a long trailer PACKED full of steers and heifers. I found it ironic that there were all these cows parked outside an establishment where the people inside are consuming cows all day long. Maybe it's not funny to anyone else, but I found it amusing.

Lydia is very aware of the fact that there are certain privileges tied to behaving well (the McDonalds trip being one), so all today she kept saying, "Mom, am I being have? Mom, I am being so have right now!" I never had broken the word down before, but I totally see in her mind how it works.

After the kids inhaled their happy meals, I let them play in the play structure for a few minutes. Another little girl about 7 or 8 went down the slide and must have been going way too slow for her liking because when she reached the bottom she said, "Mom, my butt doesn't work." I love it!

Benefits of Living in Oregon

How often do you see a double rainbow? (BTW, the outer rainbow had faded considerably by the time I got the camera out.) I can live with the rain if it will leave a few of these babies every time it dumps on us!

On a completely unrelated note, I need to change my hairstyle. I haven't cut it for literally a year and it needs something done. Recommendations?

Sicky

You know Luke is sick when you find him passed out on the floor. The boy has a cold and an ear infection but is on the mend and back to his destructo ways. Hooray!!!

Sew Crafty

Ha! Such a clever title, I'm proud of myself. Here's what I've been spending my time on lately:

I made this for my friend Annie, who is giving it to her little girl for her birthday. It will match the curtains in the play kitchen she's making her. Annie gets all the design credit. Of course, Lydia wants one as well so I let her pick out the fabric for hers today. It's a hot pink leopard print--it's going to look fabulous, at least to Lydia!

I saw a tutorial for a little girl's dress made from a mens dress shirt, so I gave it a try. Lydia was asleep when I finished it so I put it on Luke to test the length, because it looked pretty short to me. You can see how happy he was about it.

Obviously I measured wrong at some point, because it's more like a long shirt/tunic on Lydia, but it will still work with leggings. The white ribbon is in place of the red waistband that has yet to be applied to the shirt/dress.

I love those rosy cheeks!

At the prompting of my friend Gemia, I made a Peeps bunny ribbon garland thingy for Easter. I decided I hate cutting anything out of felt.

More baby wraps for friends having babies.

Yes, that is a cabbage patch doll. I learned after the picture below that Luke is way too heavy for a stretchy wrap.

Happy crafting everyone!