Appropriate Reactions to Emotions

Emily got in trouble for yelling at me the other day, so I was very pleased yesterday afternoon, when even though I knew was she very angry at me (I made her throw away a broken toy because there was no hope of fixing it and it was something dangerous around the baby left out as it was), she calmly walked back to her room, quietly shut the door, and that appeared to be THAT. Until she came out and handed me this drawing and explained that first she was happy and I was happy, but then I was a big meanie and made her throw away her "FAVORITE" toy and then she was very angry at me. "And look at how loud I'm yelling at you mommy!"


I'm fine with her yelling at me in drawings... LOL

Halloween Party

We attended a Halloween party over the weekend at a friend's house, and had such a good time! NO KIDS. How often does that happen?

Here's the punch. Isn't it neat? We were warned about the punch from last year, but I guess this years' was different. I had a glass. It was GOOD. And I have no warnings for anyone about it!


Dan was supposed to take a nice picture of Lacy and I, but he kept taking pictures that did NOT include our faces, so Lacy decided to take our picture herself, at which point Dan decided to comply with taking our picture...


Here's Dan!


Dan bobbing for apples (no easy task in a giant ape suit!)


He got one!


group picture of most of the girls in attendance


I wasn't going to share these figuring I'd shared enough Halloween pictures between ZOO BOO and Trunk or Treat, but I found myself with NOTHING to blog about today, so more Halloween pics found there way on here afterall. LOL

School Pictures

I finally realize how spoiled I've been getting the kids' pictures done at JCPenney's Portrait Studio! I have the say-so on what pose to order, if I don't like any of the poses, I don't have to order; and most importantly, I get to be involved in getting the REAL smiles...

The kids got their school pictures back recently, and I guess I should be really happy that even though I didn't get to be involved in getting the REAL smiles, and I had no say-so on what picture/pose I ordered, we still managed to get some decent pictures...

Emily (she's not AT ALL showing off that she lost that tooth the night before, is she?)


Jared (notice, no fresh wound on his nose? I had the photographer edit it out figuring if I was going to pay $35 for pictures, they should be WOUND FREE pictures! LOL There IS a color difference where it was, which you can see IF YOU LOOK FOR IT in person, but it's WAY better than the bright red scabbed up wound that SHOULD be showing!)


These were the pictures I had to cover up in the frames to display the school ones (as cute as the school ones are, you can see why I feel a little spoiled with the JCPenney's ones...)

PUMP IT UP!

The kids were invited to a birthday party at a place called Pump It Up. It was GREAT! There were two separate rooms with giant inflatables and you get about a half hour in each room, and then you end up in the party room for pizza and drinks, cake, and opening presents. The employees were fantastic! They run around with the kids, make sure everyone is involved in stuff, etc. They even made sure they were entertaining the two "babies" that were there bringing over balls, adn giving them rides in the Little Tykes car. My kids LOVED this place. LOVED IT! And I have to admit, I had a ton of fun, too! (that's right! They let the adults play, too!)

Here's the card I made for the birthday girl, Carina


Here's Jared going down a small slide after climbing up the climbing "wall" on the backside


Jared again! Out of control down another, longer, slide


Jared in the big boxing ring with the BIG boxing gloves


Here's Connor with one of the big balls they brought out for him and the other 16 month old little boy that was there. The boys RAN AND RAN AND RAN chasing these balls around!!!


I took Connor down the GIANT slide several times on my lap, which he LOVED. He would laugh so hard and then SCREAM when we'd get off at the end because he was mad and wanted to do it again. I got a little winded hauling him up the "ladder" so many times, so had Dan take him up. And Dan sent him down by himself! (which Connor loved!)


Then he came down with Emily on his lap


Emily and Connor and I all came down together


Here's Connor taking matters into his own hands and attempting to get up the ladder on his own (I stayed right behind him the whole time just in case)


See? I told you the employees were good at entertaining everyone! Connor got TONS of rides around the room in this car!




Group picture! (If you look closely through the netting under the "LML" you can see Connor, he crawled off Em's lap and then into the inflatable so isn't exactly in teh group pic afterall...LOL)

Trunk or Treat

Jared's preschool had a Trunk or Treat event Thursday night. Each family decorates their trunk and passes out candy to the preschoolers (and their siblings!) as they go around the parking lot trick or treating. The kids LOVE it and it's a fun/safe way to trick or treat, and it gives the parents an extra chance to visit and get to know each other better. The weather was PERFECT for the event. Mostly blue sky, not overly windy, NO RAIN IN SIGHT!

Here's our trunk:




Here's the kids posing in front of the trunk (notice how thrilled Connor is that Emily is gripping his hand to keep him from running off!)


Also, notice that Connor isn't a lion in these pictures! I tried putting the lion costume on him and he SCREAMED AND SCREAMED and squirmed and kicked and once I finally muscled him into it (thinking he'd be fine once it was totally ON) he just layed on the ground screaming and wouldn't move, so I had to give up on the lion idea and pull out the Superman costume Jared wore last year and put him in several layers of clothes to keep him warm (which is why he looks extra thick in these pictures!)

I told Emily to let Connor go and then snapped the picture without waiting because the second he realized he was free he'd have taken off and I'd have lost my chance. SO, two attempts at a nice picture and I wasn't successful...LOL


Emily attached herself to Ainsley, a little girl we'd met earlier in the summer at another friend's house. Aren't they cute?


Immediately after the Trunk or Treat event, we went to a MOPS event my friend Carole invited us to. There was a huge bounce house and a huge blow up slide so the kids went CRAZY running back and forth between the two.




The slide pictures are kind of blurry because the kids came down SOOOO FAST!




They also had a photo opp area, so I tried again to get a nice picture of all three kids. Jared wouldn't stop rubbing his eye and REFUSED to smile (PUNK!)


They had other stations of activities as well, but it was getting pretty late and the baby was really reaching his limits, and then Jared was REALLY graceful and ended up somersaulting himself backwards off the little blow-up platform for the bounce house and landed HARD on his forehead (oh, you should have heard the SOUND, it was pretty awful hearing the THUD of his head against the ground!), so we decided to cut our losses and head home!

It was a really great afternoon/night for the kids. And Dan and I have enjoyed several pieces of candy as our payment for the day (but SHHHHHHH, don't tell the kids! LOL)

busy!

A quick apology to my faithful blog viewers, there will not be a blog entry today... I've spent the morning at a funeral, have chores to do this afternoon, Emily has ballet this evening and we have a Halloween event later tonight. Trunk or Treat pictures from Jared's preschool should be up tomorrow!

Future Rock n' Roller?

Forget the stand-up comedian bit, check him out! (LOL!)

(the downside to a smaller-memory-sized memory card is that this is as much of the song as I could videotape of him)

"Pumpkin Head"

Connor has a big huge head, and Dan started calling him "pumpkin head" as a nickname (affectionately) and I've found myself calling him that lately as well. I knitted him a pumpkin hat for Oct/Nov and now he really IS a pumpkin head. LOL

Taking Care of Business

Connor LOVES sitting at the little table and chairs we have in our house. We have a kid-sized wooden table and chairs set, and we have a little patio-style set. I'm not sure which he loves more. I will say it's probably the patio-style set because it's lightweight and he can move it around the house wherever he chooses. Lately, he likes to haul it all, piece by piece, to the other side of the diningroom, behind the dining table. It's pretty funny to walk into the room and see that he's done some rearranging!

Notice he's got the table and BOTH chairs here and I'll point out this is NOT where it started out this morning!! LOL


Apparently I should take the hint and do some rearranging of my own?

Zoo Boo!!

We met up with two other families yesterday and went to Zoo Boo at our local zoo. It's a Halloween event where the kids dress up in their costumes and get to do little activities along their way around the zoo and get some candy. There was pumpkin bowling, matching the patterns on hidden bats to a worksheet, decorating a paper pumpkin, beanbag toss, searching for eyeballs in straw, and painting spider webs. The kids had a blast!!

Jared REFUSED to let me take his picture before we left the house, so I only have Emily (Little Bo Peep) and Connor (lion)





All the kids lined up in front of one of the statues. Sort of lined up, anyway. LOL!! What can you expect from 6 kids?!?! My kids are in the middle, my friend Beth's son, David, is on the far right, and Beth's friend, Stephanie's kids are on the far left (Kaia (sp?) and Reegan).


Connor was running around like crazy in the Sea horse exhibit checking out all the litte viewing tanks. He was so excited and so curious, he hardly knew what to do with himself!


Pumpkin bowling!




Emily at the bean bag toss (Jared was in the bathroom with Dan so I didn't get pictures of Jared doing this)

Mission Accomplished!

Emily and I set out a few days ago to get her able to tie her own shoes and LOOK what she did BY HERSELF Friday!!!!!


I was off in the other room and she was by the door alone and TA-DA! We're so proud of her. It's something we should have tried to do a long time ago, but it's not something I think about until we're getting our shoes on to leave the house, at which point we don't have time to sit and practice...

Straight from the Auntie's Mouth

My Auntie watched the boys for me yesterday while I attended my grandpa's funeral. This is the email she sent me about her day:

I learned some stuff today!

About little boys! I used to have one, but 29 years have passed, and I am
officially NEW.

I baby-sat my great nephews Jared (3) and Connor (1 and then some) today.

I figured Connor might holler when his mama left but he didn't even really mind.
Sorry Mama! He just figured "this old auntie" was here to stay so make the best of it, and he did.

What did I learn you ask?

I learned that when you ask a three year old boy if, perhaps, he might need to
go potty, he might say, "Auntie, nothing needs to come out of my penis right now."

Okay!

I learned that if you give The Baby a dum dum and he sucks on it and never takes it
out after you give it to him, and the "stick" gets soggy, and THEN you insist he take it out to show you "how it's going" the dum dum breaks off in baby's mouth
and you are left with a stick and have to sweep your finger through his mouth
to retrieve the dum dum and then you are sweating, and if you have never had a
hot flash you are sure you did. No more dum dum's on this Auntie's time. Sheesh.

The baby luckily didn't know what happened and I was so fast at "sweeping"
the dum dum out, he didn't realize the dum dum time was over. I was pretty surprised I pulled that off! His nose wrinkled but that was it. I got him a gram cracker!

Auntie hates dum dums now.

I learned that Jared's blue blanket with the silk edges has SUPER POWERS.
He insisted that I was to be "the baby" and I was to call him "daddy". I did.
I cried for a bottle and "drank" it and hollered for more. He was rather lazy as
he didn't walk back to the kitchen set up for more milk (which I DID when he
was the baby!). He told me his blue blanket had special powers and he could
REFILL the bottle for me with milk from there. Sure enough, a faucet appeared
and the bottle was refilled. Lazy man.

I am still not sure who made the better baby.

We watched the new version of Ariel (that little mermaid chick : ) as THE mama.
Her daughter was named Melody and sort of disrespectful. I don't know what to think other than I learned that her daddy was pretty much NOT INVOLVED. Sheesh.

I learned that Connor really likes to sit in the baby doll "umbrella stroller"
and he really likes to try to buckle himself in. I also am pretty sure that he usually hears from the people he lives with that "he's too big to fit" in it. But I learned today, he really isn't! And he can buckle himself in!

I also learned what great fun it is to be THE GREAT AUNT!

Interesting Day Yesterday

I called to check up on Em's glasses and found out they were in. The gal that answered the phone told me that so many had come in, she wouldn't have gotten through all the phone calls and we probably wouldn't have gotten the call until TODAY that they were in, so I was glad I called! Em's been desperate to have her glasses and she would have been really disappointed to have to have waited until Monday to show them to her teacher and her friends at school. SO, right after she got off the bus, I dropped the boys off with my FIL (it was WINDY and I didn't want to hassle with dragging them around with us) and took Em to get her glasses. The guy spend about 5 minutes fiddling with the nose and ear parts to make sure they were a good fit and we were on our way.

she looks like a totally different kid!


VERY excited about her glasses


Ever the diva:


They're a soft metallic pink, which shows up much darker in the pictures than they are in real life. You can sort of see the pink in this close-up pic:


And the parts that go over her ears are a see-through glittery pink (SOOO Emily)


After we picked the boys up, we met Dan at McDonald's becuase it was Em's school night there (meaning a portion of the proceeds earned at McDonald's between 5:30pm and 7:30pm would be donated to Emily's Elementary School). We got to meet Ronald McDonald, and he did a quick juggling show for my kids (we were sitting in the far back corner). Look at Connor checking him out! My friend Carole took the picture and that's her daughter Rachel in the picture with us (Carole and I just found out last night that the girls refer to each other as sisters at school and several of the staff thought they were fraternal twins!)