Pumpkin Time, and Halloween

We really wanted to go take the girls to a Pumpkin patch this year, but we were really busy and never seemed to get around to it, so the day before Halloween we decide to go to a place called the Depot Market, in a little town nearby. They had a little hay maze which the girls thought was the coolest thing ever and ended up going through it about 20 times. They had a whole bunch of pumpkins to choose from and they had a little shop where we could buy things like fresh apple cider, yummy. It wasn't a pumpkin patch, and next year I really want to make sure we take the girls to one, but it was still fun. I really love this picture. Kevy and his little girlies. He is the best daddy. They just adore him.


Nellie and her cheesy grin, she is going through a funny smile phase and every time we say to smile, she closes her eyes and smiles really big, I love it.

My sweet Lizzy, she is just the sweetest girl ever.

The girls were very happy with the pumpkins they picked out. Lizzy named hers Bobo and Nellie named hers Spookley.

Daddy helping the girls carve, I never knew he could be such a perfectionist about something, he had to get it perfect.

There is that smile again!

Lizzy enjoyed getting the guts out, she wanted to make sure her pumpkin had all the bugs (that is what she calls germs) out. She really thought the guts were making her pumpkin sick.


Lizzy's with her finished product.

Nellie and Spookley, she helped me by making a big hole in the side of the pumpkin, we decided it was an ear, so then Lizzy put some ears in hers as well.

For Halloween this year, I was going to make Nellie a black cat costume, but when we got to the fabric store I saw this fabric and asked Nellie which one she wanted and she of course chose the Baby Jaguar, because of her obsession with Diego. She was the cutest Jaguar ever! Every time we would make reference to it Nellie would say "reow reow" Just like baby Jaguar says. It was so funny.

I absolutely love this picture of Nellie. She loved that I put whiskers on her, and a nose, that night when I wiped them off she got so mad and asked me to put them back on.

Lizzy wanted to be a witch this year, but she would always reference that with "a good witch" Because good witches wear purple. I thought I picked out easy patterns this year to sew, but the fabric was a nightmare, Plus the fur on Lizzy's I couldn't get to sew on with the machine so I had to sew it on by hand, which is always fun. Oh well, someday I am going to make it easier on myself, I just hope one day the girls feel like it was special that I made their costumes.She was the cutest witch ever! She was so funny all day she asked me every five minutes if it was time to go trick-or-treating, and just about had a heart attack every time I told her it was not for a while. It is so fun to see your kids get so excited about things.

We went trick-or-treating downtown and Lizzy found one of her boyfriends Terin. They held hands the whole time, it was so dang cute!

Stuff

Nellie has gotten a little obsessed about a couple of things, her blanket and Diego, she seriously cannot get enough of Diego. She wants to watch Diego 50 times a day. She also has a little Diego doll that she just loves and if she isn't going to sleep like she should, all we have to do is threaten taking away Diego or her blanket and we don't hear another peep out of her. Lizzy is totally a girly girl into the princesses and dressing up and dancing and all that stuff, but Nellie not so much. They both get into huge fights about whose turn it is to watch their show, because Lizzy wants only princess and Nellie wants only "my Diego" She also is obsessed with the color green and wants anything green and lets me know all the time "it's my favorite." Nellie loves her "brankie" so much. She has to have it with her pretty much at all times. I was getting ready one day and I came out and found that she had wrapped herself up in it, so cute.

Whenever Kevin is home the girls pretty much want him, and I try not to feel too bad because they have me all day, but at night when we kneel down for prayer they both always have to sit on MY lap. Its one of those little things that really means a lot to me.

One day right after I had gotten Nellie ready and her hair all done looking really cute, I went in the bathroom to finish getting Lizzy's hair done and I made a huge mistake, I left the mousse in the room with Nellie and came out and found this. She decided that she needed a little more mousse on her hair. The picture doesn't do justice to how drenched with mousse her hair was.

The girls love to be naked, or as they say "nakie nakie" Nellie loves to run around the house totally naked and shake her little buns as she says it. I guess at this age that is still okay. One day when I was doing laundry they decided they wanted to try on Kevin's socks and of course they had to strip down to do this. They looked really cute though.

The gals in their Halloween shirts that Grandma gave them. They love them and want to wear them just about every day. Thanks Grandma!

Just Us

It used to be that I always felt so lonely when we would do things because I am so used to having so much family around, and I still really miss that, but it has been really fun lately to do stuff just us. The girls are getting older and really starting to understand and enjoy stuff and we have had a freaking blast doing stuff with just our little family.

For Labor day we took the girls to the zoo, it has been a while since we had been to the zoo and the girls had a blast.

Nellie is such an animal lover, Lizzy was as a baby but then she started to get scared of them, Nellie can't get enough of them and just wants to hug and kiss them all. We got the girls some animal juice bottles and they thought they were so cool. Oh the simple things that little kids think are so neat. We were able to feed the giraffes that day, it was really cool, Lizzy totally chickened out at the last minute and dropped the hay right as the giraffe was going to eat it, but Nellie didn't have a hard time and she loved it.


We got Lizzy some training wheels to put on a old bike that someone gave us. Lizzy thought she was pretty cool riding around She has no idea that the bike is really a piece of junk, to her it is great.
Nellie loves riding her tricycle that she got for her birthday. I love that cheesy grin.

One Saturday we were going to go to the State Fair but it was rainy so we couldn't go, the girls were pretty disappointed, so we decided to go to the local bowling alley that was just reopened. It was only us there but the girls had so much fun and it was so cute to watch them.
Nellie was so cute, she would push her ball down the little thing, and every single time she would say "Go Ball!"
Now every time we drive past the bowling alley Lizzy asks me if we can "go bolding today?"

The girlies love doing activities and love to be on the counter helping me. One day we decided to make salt dough ghosts and they loved it. Helping me mix stuff up is one of their favorite things to do.

Man, my belly looks big in this picture. It must be the angle :)

Our town has a little fall festival every year and Lizzy was dying to ride the preschool float with all of her "buddies" She loves the boys, she doesn't really have many friends that are girls, most of her friends are boys, but that is also because most of the kids her age here are boys. It is hilarious though because the boys are all in love with her. I guess that really isn't a surprise, she has always had such an outgoing and bubbly personality, everybody loves Lizzy. It was funny because one day one of the Moms of one of the boys that she had just met and played with for the first time told me that her son told her "I really like Lizzy, isn't she beautiful?"

I just know we are in for it when she is a teenager.

Nellie loved the parade and of course all of the candy that she got, she really got into the running after the candy, and didn't let anyone get in the way of her and her candy.

Lizzy's little dance company performed in the street later that afternoon, she did such a good job. They performed to "born to be wild" she sings the song all the time and does the little dance around the house.
There were also free rides for the kids and things for them to do. The girls love riding bikes. And Lizzy of couse had to ride the pink tractor.

We have had so much fun together as a little family, it is so neat to watch the girls grow and start to enjoy things and understand. We just can't wait for little Jane to come and join the family so that we can start some more fun memories with her.

Pictures

So I really have the worst luck. I needed to get new pictures of the girls since it has been well over a year and Nellie was just a little bald baby in the last ones I did. So I talked to some people around here about where I could go. There aren't any studios here in Concordia and the people that do them here are way over the price that I am willing to pay, so I had to go to Salina to Sears (one of the only places there.) It really stinks to live in the middle of nowhere for these sorts of things.

Well I decided to do it the weekend that we were staying down in Salina for the Parent Seminar, because I just didn't think the girls would take very good pictures after an hour drive, (they are really terrible in the car.) So I went to Sears because it was in my price range, but wouldn't you know that I got the new guy. Of course and Nellie wasn't very thrilled about getting her pictures taken, In fact she was pretty much freaking out. The guy didn't really know what he was doing and didn't really know how to work with small children. After over an hour of working with the girls we ended up with some pretty good pictures. But there were a lot more that could have been better if he even knew the first thing about framing a picture. There was one that would have been really good of Nellie , but he didn't frame up the picture and she was over on the edge of it. Plus I don't really think the closeups look as good when they are horizontal rather than vertical.

Oh well I am pretty happy with the pictures that we did get although I wish we could have gotten one of the girls together where Nellie was smiling, but that is my luck. I think next year I will get our pictures done when we go out to Utah. I got ours done there last year and I was really happy with the photographer and loved the pictures.

This and That

I am tired of trying to play catchup and not getting there, so I am just going to include a lot of posts into one, so then I can relax.. mostly, I still have one or two left, but at least I am getting there.
This past summer was a lot of fun with the girls. I think because they are older and we got to do a lot of fun stuff together.
My little monkeys. They feel like if I am in the kitchen cooking they need to be on the counter with me. I love that they want to be with me and I am glad they are wanting to help me cook, but every single time? Seriously, it can really drive me crazy when I am trying to hurry and get dinner made. Lizzy was helping me cut up watermelon. She loves to eat everything! I don't know another kid that loves fruit and veggies (ALL of them) as much as Lizzy does. Although the other day she asked what we were having for dinner and we were having leftover soup from a few nights before, and I told her and said "is that okay" and she said "Actually Mom, I don't like that soup." She still ate it though.
Nellie wearing her shades, she loves wearing her sun glasses and wears them quite a bit.

We went to the pool quite a bit this summer. It is so nice that it is only a block away. But I was really tired a lot this summer and there were some days that I just didn't have the energy to get us all packed up to go swimming, so I turned on the sprinklers and Lizzy just loved it. She became quite a little water bug this year. She thought it was so fun to lay on top of the sprinklers.
Nellie wasn't quite as enthusiastic about the sprinklers. She loved the pool, but after the first day in the sprinklers she decided that the best place was on the porch with me.

We brought these hula skirts back from Hawaii for the girls. They didn't really care for them that much at first, but one day a couple of months later they decided they just had to wear them and it was the cutest thing.

Kevy brought home this dresser that we are going to refinish for the girls, but it was sitting in the living room for a few days and the girls thought it made a great toy to climb on.

This was my Lizzy on the first day of school. She was SO excited to go. She goes three days a week for three hours, and it has seriously changed her attitude. I think before she was just needing some social interaction. She has two very special friends from last year, Taye and Tarin, both boys. For such a girlie girl she loves to play with the boys. Nellie was fine the first few times Lizzy left, but now she cries every time Lizzy leaves for preschool. She was crying the other day "Come back my Zizzy. I want my Zizzy!" It was so sad, but so precious that she missed her sister.

Once a week the girlies and I go to the library. It is so nice to live in a place that has a library. The girls really look forward to it and have learned to LOVE books. They want to read them all the time.

We have been saving up for quite a few months so we could buy the girls a new bed. We decided to get a trundle instead of a bunk bed because it is less dangerous and it takes up a lot less space during the day. The day we got it Nellie was ecstatic. We went and bought her new bedding that she got to pick out, which was neat because usually she gets hand-me-downs and Lizzy gets the new stuff. Nellie just loves her new bed. Me on the other hand, I really miss the crib, and wish I could bring it back, I got so much more sleep before. I know it will be better in the long run to do it now before the baby comes, but it has been a rough couple of weeks.

At first I was laying down with her until she was falling asleep, but some nights she would jack around for two hours before she would finally fall asleep and then I was so tired I would pretty much go straight to sleep and Kevin and I got no time together. So finally we decided that we would just shut the door and let her cry until she goes to sleep, and that works, if Lizzy cooperates and goes to sleep, but if Lizzy doesn't then Nellie won't go to sleep, and they both just jack around forever. Then Nellie gets up in the middle of the night and won't go back to bed unless one of us lays with her. It has been pretty rough these last few weeks. She is finally getting adjusted and until last night she was doing better, but last night she wouldn't stop screaming, it is so hard to listen to your child sob your name for an hour and not go and comfort them, but I didn't. I went in there to check on her once she had fallen asleep, but she didn't crawl into her bed, she was in bed with Lizzy. It was so sweet.

This is me a couple of weeks ago at 21 weeks. It was really weird for me to take this picture. I am not the biggest fan of pictures of me pregnant, but I wish I had some belly shots from when I was pregnant with the girls, so I decided to take some this pregnancy.