Halloween at the Library

Yesterday we braved the wind advisory and the crummy weather and went to the library for the Preschool Costume Parade.

The activity started off with some poems, movement, and songs (it’s hard to tell from the pictures, but they really WERE participating!):

Next it was time to go Trick or Treating around the library:

I never really got any good pictures of Max because he got a little too distracted by everything going on and then had to just quickly grab his prize so the other kids in line behind him could have a turn! : ) But the kids ended up with some fun things—a candy corn pencil topper, pumpkin clapper, a pumpkin squeaky toy, Halloween stickers, Halloween bookmark, and a coloring page.

Afterwards the kids enjoyed a doughnut and apple cider:

This has to be the cutest puppy I have ever seen! If all puppies were this adorable, I would have to talk Austin into getting a pet! ; D

The activity ended with time for socializing and a Halloween Dora the Explorer movie. I had to snap a picture of my two kiddos watching the movie. They are SO cute together! Half the time they were either holding hands or had their arms around each other. I don’t think you can find two siblings that are better friends than these two!

After the library, we ran home for a quick lunch and then went to our Play and Learn. Our theme was on “All About Me” and the kids did different activities and projects. One project was to look in the mirror and to draw/create a face that looks like their own. Max wasn’t super interested and just stuck a few dot stickers all over his circle. We told him it didn’t look like him and he said, “I’m a Snowman!” So I guess that was that! : ) But I actually thought Makenna’s picture turned out great and looks a lot like her!

She, of course, added long hair and two bows and blue earrings. Do you also notice her lips? She said she had LOTS of lipstick on! Ha ha, that’s my girlie girl! : )

Primary Program

Today was our ward’s primary program. The primary program is always a super great Sacrament meeting, but we were extra excited about it this year because it was Miss Makenna’s very first primary program! Makenna is AWESOME at memorizing and had her part memorized before she even made it home a few weeks ago. She said, “I choose to follow the prophet by helping my brother clean up his room and by helping him make his bed.” So cute.

She was SO excited about this program. However, once it was time for her to go up front in Sacrament meeting she started crying. I’m not sure what was going on there—if it was her nerves or what was going on. I took her out in the hallway to talk to her and she said she wanted to do it, but she was still pretty upset at first. During the first song, she covered her face with her hands and wouldn’t sing. I was pretty disappointed. However, for some reason she started acting normally the very next song. From then on she sang her heart out. I don’t know if it is because we are her parents and know her voice or not, but we definitely could hear her singing over each of the 50 or so other primary children! I LOVED it! She also said her part with no hesitation, absolutely perfectly. It was fantastic!

I asked her afterwards if she saw us in the audience (even though we were sitting on the third row, dead center, so I KNEW she saw us) and she said, “Max kept waving, Dad kept smiling, and you kept crying the whole time!” Ha ha, it’s true! I boo hooed during the whole program! I sent Austin to get me some tissues and he came back with paper towels—so not only did I have swollen eyes and a stuffy nose afterwards, my whole face was on fire from using those rough paper towels as tissues, ha ha.

We are so proud of our grown-up girl, Makenna! She is honestly so smart and so grown up and such a cutie pie! I cannot believe my big girl is old enough to be in the primary program! (And next year both she AND Max will be up there—crazy!!!)

Trunk or Treat

Oh Halloween. We love Halloween—getting costumes together, eating candy, and going to all the fun parties. This year we had quite the issues with costumes. Months ago, Makenna and Max decided they would be Beauty and the Beast. They were watching the movie quite a bit at that time, and Makenna wanted to be the beautiful Belle and Max wanted to be a “scary” beast. Well, a few weeks ago (after I’d already bought the pattern to make a Beast costume) Max decided he no longer wanted to be Beast. Now he wanted to be Spiderman. Makenna was a bit bummed for a while—she didn’t want to be Belle without her Beast. However, when I showed her a pink Spider Girl costume, she decided that was what she would be instead. Well the day we went to buy Halloween costumes, we walked out with a Pumpkin Girl costume for Makenna and a Puppy costume for Max… Umm, yeah… So I guess we are done with the “themed” Halloween costumes—they are big enough now that they each have their own ideas about costumes! It was fun while it lasted! : D

We kicked off our Halloween festivities yesterday with our ward Trunk or Treat. It was a CRAZY busy day, but we still managed to get the kids dressed up in their costumes. When we got to the party, the kids had fun posing in front of the backdrop.

Austin and I also (kind of) dressed up. However, Austin didn’t want to take any pictures. : ( He did take one picture of me as I was walking around, and the picture shows our costumes. He and I both went as Traffic Lights. You can’t see in this picture, but our lights actually lit up. : D

The Trunk or Treat started with a Cupcake Walk/Costume Parade. The kids didn’t win a prize, but Makenna had fun dancing around the circle. And Max mostly just looked cute. : )

After they participated in the activities, Makenna ran around playing with her girl friends while Max just wondered around outside.

Doesn’t he look like such a sad puppy? Max sometimes gets sad because he ONLY wants to play with Makenna and he wants her to ONLY play with him—so he wasn’t happy she was playing with her other friends too. But even though he was sad, I think this is the CUTEST picture, ha ha.

Finally it was time for the Trunk or Treat. I didn’t decorate our trunk that much, but tried to throw together some “spooky” decorations.

Austin took these two scaries around to trunk or treat while I stayed to to give out candy at our own trunk:

It was a fun time and the kids are SO excited with all their loot.

After the Trunk or Treat, we continued our partying at one of Austin’s co-residents house. They had a Halloween party with food and fun. Loved it! It was a great start to our Halloween!

Surprise!

This morning we had our anatomy ultrasound. Makenna was SO excited about this ultrasound, she couldn’t sleep last night! This morning she was attempting to rush Max along, “Max, hurry up and get your jobs done! Don’t you want to see what kind of baby we are having?” Max’s response? “Yeah, maybe it will be a baby monkey!” Ha ha the kid was dead serious too! Oh, Max!

I was a little disappointed going into my appointment. Austin had told me he wouldn’t be able to make the appointment because he had surgeries all morning. This bummed me out SO much because he hasn’t been able to attend any of my appointments so far, and I really wanted him there for this one. Well then this morning he said maybe he could switch things around and come (my doctor’s office is in a building connected to the hospital where he works). Then he sent me a message and said the schedule was weird so he probably could NOT make it after all. Yet I still hoped. I sat in the doctor’s office with the kids and each time the door opened I eagerly looked and hoped it was him. Well they called my name and the kids and I went back for the ultrasound. I have to admit I teared up a little bit because he wasn’t there. They started the ultrasound and someone knocked at the door—sure enough, Austin had arrived! I teared up AGAIN because he was there after all!!! I was so happy that our whole little family was together for our ultrasound!

Everyone knows I have thought the whole time we were having a little girl. My symptoms this pregnancy are SO much like my symptoms with Makenna—I have had extreme morning sickness, back aches, and a million other identical symptoms (basically I’ve been miserable; sure sign it is a girl, right? ha ha). Even though I have had dreams that we were having a boy, I was 97% POSITIVE that we were having a girl.

So imagine my surprise when the technician told us the news:

We are so completely and totally shocked, but so incredibly excited! Makenna has thought the same as me, pretty sure we were having a girl, so I was afraid she would be disappointed when she heard the news. However, she instantly switched gears and was thrilled to be having a baby brother! When we left the ultrasound room she told the tech, “Thank you so much for telling me I have a baby brother!” Both kids seem happy and excited and SO hyper now!

As for me I am excited but I definitely have to switch my mind set over! It’s a shock to my system to go from being SO positive that we were having a girl to knowing it is another boy. I have to switch over from pink to blue in my head now! But whatever the case, I am thrilled to have seen my sweet baby! I haven’t felt a lot of movement so far this pregnancy, so it was nice to see him kick and move around and to know that everything looks healthy and great. I am also already certain he will be just as gorgeous as his older siblings!

Look at this sweet little hand!

It is crazy how an ultrasound makes everything seem more real! We are already in love with this little man!

Busy Day!

Yesterday was quite the busy day! First thing in the morning we met some friends at the zoo. The zoo is currently decorated with Halloween decorations and pumpkins and the kids seriously spent about half a hour just running around checking out the decorations! When we finally got them to be done, we went into the butterfly house. We spent OVER a hour JUST in the butterfly house. When we got there, some of the butterflies just happened to be emerging from their chrysalis.  It was very neat to get to watch this happen—I had never even seen it before! Then the kids were able to see the zookeeper take all the recently emerged butterflies and put them in a big net and then release them into the butterfly house.

I was surprised by how much the kids enjoyed all of this. In fact, both kids now say they want to be zookeepers who take care of butterflies!

Next we made a quick run through the aviary.

And then it was already time for lunch! We had packed picnic lunches, so we went to a grassy area and had lunch and then watched the kids run around and play. They were having so much fun, we just let them play for the next hour and didn’t even go see any of the animals! When we left, I asked Makenna what her favorite part of our zoo trip was. She said it was playing with her friends! Ha, we could have saved the time and effort and just played in the backyard! : )

The cute kiddos enjoying their morning at the zoo:

We had to leave the zoo at 1 and rush over to our Play and Learn at 1:30. Today the kids had fun with apples and pumpkins but we were SO tired from our morning at the zoo! Unfortunately, afterwards we didn’t have time to go home and rest—we were off to Makenna’s dance class! Max and I played at the park (well, we mostly just sat in the park… we were SO tired!) while she had dance. I found out at dance Makenna was HIGHLY emotional over every single thing and acted tired the whole time. We were all truly exhausted! We came home, had cereal for dinner, and had early bed times. The kids were sound asleep by 6:30!

So here is the moral of this story—do NOT plan a zoo day when you have other things planned for the same day. The zoo wipes everyone out!!! It was a fun day, but a bit much for all of us!

I actually took some pictures!!!

Yesterday we went to the library for the preschool program “Shake, Rattle, and Roll.” I ACTUALLY TOOK PICTURES WHILE WE WERE THERE!!! Can you believe it? Ha ha. They are just with my phone, so they aren’t the best pictures. But I can now actually prove my kids get to do fun things every once in a while, despite me being sick! : D

(I didn’t get too many good pictures of Max because he was too busy jumping around and shaking his booty!)

Too bad this picture is blurry; it would have been really cute!

Towards the end of the program, Max stole my phone and decided to take goofy pictures of himself:

We have arranged our school schedule so we can go to the library on Tuesdays for the preschool programs or storytimes, so maybe I will start taking more pictures again. : D

Here are a few other, random pictures.

I just loved this snapshot of this handsome man. It wasn’t for any particular occasion, but it sure was cute:

The girls in our family have been trying to get in better shape. Makenna and I have been doing pregnancy Pilates (ha ha, they may be pregnancy but Makenna LOVES them!) a few times a week. (By the way, Max could exercise with us too, and he sometimes starts with us, but he doesn’t stay with it for more than a couple of minutes.) Makenna has also been practicing her stretching for dance class. She is not very limber yet, but I am so impressed that she—on her own—practices and works at it every single day.

Max broke his glasses for the millionth time recently. Unfortunately this time the glasses couldn’t be fixed. He had to go without glasses for about a week until we were finally able to get him into the eye doctor. It was his first visit with this new eye doctor (remember the insurance change? We had to change all our doctors—including his eye doctor). The visit went pretty good. Max’s vision is actually a little bit worse, so he had to get a higher prescription in his glasses. We also have to continue patching until his vision is perfected while wearing his glasses. After he reaches perfect vision with glasses, we will see if his eye still crosses. If it does, then he will have to have the surgery to correct. So I guess we will see—I just hate he has to continue to patch. We have patched for over a year now and he HATES it and still throws a fit about it every morning. : ( After his appointment, Max picked out new glasses. The lady who was helping him put a pair of thick sports glasses on him and told him they were Super Hero glasses—well that was that! He refused to try on anything else—he wanted Super Hero glasses! I definitely don’t love this style and I think it takes up his whole face, but he loves them so I guess that is all that matters! (By the way, Austin thinks these glasses are hilarious and he really likes them as well. It must be a boy thing!)

Things are improving with my pregnancy I think. I am still on my medication and I still throw up at least once a day, but at least it is not ALL day throwing up. I still feel pretty queasy and sick most of the time, but I am functioning pretty well I think. Austin is still in charge of cooking meals when he is home and cleaning the kitchen and dining room because I still get sick from kitchen smells and food. But I have taken back over most of my chores (I just don’t do them as much and as well as I used to!). We are also getting out of the house more. I have been taking the kids to the library, Play and Learns, and to Makenna’s dance class on Tuesdays. I also decided to fit our four day school week into three days so we can go to playgroup on Thursdays. I can’t handle grocery shopping on my own still, but I can walk into the grocery store and go with Austin and the kids on the weekends. I can go to church on Sunday but I still don’t attend all of Sunday School because of all the different odors from people in a tighter space. Anyway, so things are still not great yet, but I am definitely better than what I was.

The baby is also definitely growing because I am definitely looking super pregnant already! I am only 19 weeks but good grief do I have a big tummy!

(Another picture I took for my sister)

My tummy is already so big Makenna said to me, “Hey, Mom—the baby must be going to be born tomorrow because your tummy is already REALLY big!” I can always count on Makenna to tell me how it is! Most people are also shocked that I am only 19 weeks—I definitely look farther along!

Austin’s doing well I think. I have to brag on the man—he is dropping weight like a crazy person! Pretty soon he is honestly going to be smaller than I am! His clothes are just hanging off of him and mine are getting tighter--I think we need to switch clothes, ha ha. He is back on a podiatry rotation this month, which he enjoys. I have to admit I don’t like it quite as well because he gets home later in the evenings, but I guess I should just get used to!

And that is that!