It's been a very exciting Halloween weekend!

Cat's Friday: put on sparkly jack-o-lantern t-shirt; have a Spirit Rally at school; decorate a gingerbread haunted house; eat popcorn for a snack; have a cupcake for her second snack; bring home a Halloween goody bag; have a playdate with a new friend; eat another cupcake for her third snack; and don costume and attend the ward Trunk or Treat activity, where she gets to collect candy, frost and decorate a cookie, AND have a rainbow-flower painted on her cheek. (Now does it get any better than that?!?)


Then this afternoon we met up with some family and spent several hours at a little corn maze that was just perfect for our kids. The corn maze was fun (Jack loved just wandering around, and had no problem ignoring the pathways), but so was the farm, the drainage-pipe-slide, the 55-gallon-drum-cow-train, and the giant plastic pool full of dry kernels of corn. There were plenty of activities to keep the kids entertained; if it hadn't been 90+ degrees outside and we'd had more time before having to drive home for trick-or-treating, we could have easily spent another hour or two there.


Once we got home, we quickly ate a little dinner before heading out for trick-or-treating. Jack got the hang of this pretty quickly--maybe having practice at the trunk-or-treat last night helped. He held on tight to his pumpkin, and waited for someone to give him candy at the door. He even tried to ring the doorbell a few times. Catherine said, "this is the best part about Halloween!" The nice thing about our neighborhood is that the houses are really far apart, so it takes a while just to go down one road and come back up the other side. Even though we were gone for about an hour, the kids came home with candy, but not tons. It works out really well!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

The NEXT Adventurer

Cat is THRILLED that she'll have a baby sister. When we told her during dinner last night, she just giggled for about 1-2 minutes. Finally she managed to say, "What is gonna be her name?" Her suggestions: Elizabeth or Anya. Then she started gushing. "I knew it was gonna be a girl. I always wanted a sister. I like baby sisters. My sister is gonna have a Barbie party." But the best moment was when she leaned over and gave me a hug, and said with her face right by mine, "I'm so glad you're gonna have a baby girl."

I'm including this ultrasound picture from yesterday because it will forever make me laugh. When the tech was checking the baby's measurements and everything, she suddenly stopped and turned the monitor for us to see what was going on. The baby was yawning. She thought it was the most precious thing ever. Ben and I both thought it looked like a zombie screaming (maybe since Halloween is just around the corner?), and decided that this baby doesn't resemble either one of us. But the tech printed out a copy for us to keep anyway. Awww... can't wait to meet you little one! I'm sure you'll look less zombie-like when you're born. (Which, by the way, should be at the beginning of March.)

Side note: I hope you don't mind me stealing your photo idea, Lindsey! :-)

It's Official...

autumn has arrived! I know because we had our Ward Hoe-Down and Chili Cook-Off this weekend.

(In this part of the country, the color of the leaves really aren't a good indicator of the season, so we have to use other means.)

Human Fly Paper

What's that in Jack's hair? Surely it's not a dead fly. What decent mother would leave it in her child's hair long enough to take a picture of it?!?

Jack snagged this little critter when Cat opened her window (which she knows is not okay) and showed him how to crawl out (obviously, also not okay.) Spiders are abundant in our neck of the woods, and I'm guessing that he picked the fly up as he innocently ran into a hungry spider's dinner. Poor guy. At least I know that one day he'll get Cat back for all the things she's put him through!

Let's Make a Deal

One day last week Cat needed to pick up about 15 things in her room. It took her 2 1/2 hours, and wasn't until the threat of not getting to take a bath that she finally finished. The next day, I discovered a stockpile of random items in Cat's closet. I decided rather than repeat the previous day's agony of hours of reminding and trying to give incentives, I would chop the task into manageable sections. But Cat wasn't having it. Instead of just doing the portion I asked her to do, she continued to ask me to help her. Since "I didn't make the mess" apparently wasn't a good enough reason for her anymore, I came up with the excuse, "I can't help you because it's my job to fold this laundry." She solved that problem: she offered to trade jobs with me. I knew that picking up the items in her closet would take me less time than folding the laundry, so I took her up on the offer. And guess what, she did exactly what she was supposed to do. And it only took her about 15 minutes. AND she was incredibly proud of her accomplishment. She's folded laundry before, but never so much, and never as a way of getting out of cleaning her room. This time, it worked out well!

(Note: please disregard Jack's FSU cheerleading outfit. Sometimes it's just a little too tempting to let him in on the dress-up action too! In my defense, I tried to just take a picture of Cat, but once he saw me get the camera out, he deliberately moved into the photo zone.)

The next day, I told her to clean up the next portion of the junk storage receptacle, err, closet. Just as I expected, she asked if she could fold laundry instead. That day, though, I had already finished with the laundry. She's got to fulfill her own responsibilities sometimes, right?

Jack is a Bonafide Brother

While apologizing to my friend that she had to sit next to Jack during a drive to Orlando, while her daughter sat in the 3rd row of seats with Catherine, I explained,

"If Jack sits next to Cat in the car, he always ends up hitting her, taking her toys, and pulling her hair."

My friend replied, "So he's a brother."

"Umm.... yeah. I guess he is!"

Noodle Monsters

Cat didn't have school on Friday, so we took the opportunity to make a playdate with one of her friends she went to preschool with the last 2 years, but who lives on the other side of town and goes to a different school now. We had lots of fun with Blakeley and her mom and brother at our house! Any guesses what everyone ate for lunch? And, yes, we let them pour their own Parmesan cheese.

Mud Baths

Annoyingly hot October day
+
Flowers need to be watered
-
Mess in the house
=
Play in the sprinkler

The sprinkler didn't hold their attention for very long yesterday, but the mud did! Cat loved digging in and creating things with the mud. The most memorable: when she covered a pinecone with mud and said, "Mommy, I made a poopy!"


Jack joined right in with the mud, and Cat helped him get all mudded up by putting mud in his hair. Of course, yesterday they had their baths before dinner!

Mema & Papa's House

We spent last weekend at my in-laws' house and had a wonderful time watching General Conference together and spending time with family. Here are a few pictures from our fun weekend.

Two Right Feet

When Cat found me in my bedroom after I told her to put her shoes on for school, she said "Ta Da!" I decided just to go with it and let her wear her mis-matched shoes to school, but it wasn't until we got to her class and her teacher pointed out her mistake that I saw that she had chosen 2 right-foot shoes. Oh well, you're only 4 once!


After school, Cat's homework was to find different hats in the house and try them on in front of the mirror. Whenever she finished with one, she would put it on Jack. I stopped her after 3, but he didn't seem to mind at all.

Dough Day

We should have called Monday "Dough Day." (Not to be confused with hunting's Doe Day.) I hadn't made bread in a while because I've been out of good yeast and my wonderful friend Kathryn just sent me a big box of yeast from UT, so I didn't have an excuse not to make bread. (Perhaps I could have just bought some online...)

Anyway, during the bread-making extravaganza, Cat was standing on a stool helping me stir the dough, then knead it, and Jack really wanted in on the action, mostly because he likes to sample. I was trying to be quick, though, and I wanted it to turn out yummy, so I didn't pick him up or put him on the counter. Instead, he got up on the stool every chance he got, reached his little hand into the dough/flour, and grabbed whatever he could. Usually he just got a handful of flour, but once in a while he got a pinch of dough, too. Of course I didn't wear an apron. And I was wearing my favorite yoga pants, which happen to be black. This is what my pants looked like after the bread-making. If you look closely, you will see actual handprints.

I decided I would then let the kids play with dough that was meant to be played with, and we got out some play dough that Cat and I made several weeks ago. This wasn't so smart, though, since eating dough was so fresh on Jack's mind, that all he really wanted to do with the play dough was eat that too. At least it was the homemade kind, so I know it wasn't toxic.