Everyday Stuff, Fall Edition

You're never too young to start reading the Wall Street Journal... upside down. 

We went to this playground on a whim one morning when I realized we had a little time before we needed to eat lunch.  Eliza climbed all the way up to the top of the slide, but wouldn't go down.  I sent Jack up there to go down with her and he did it - it was so sweet!

Aren't they cute together?

Eliza has become particularly uncooperative when I take pictures of her at home or out on an adventure.
But when I decided to pull out my phone and take a quick picture of all of the kids sitting on the steps in the Church gym during playgroup, she gave me a million dollar smile.

Our neighborhood grocery store has mini carts.  This was Jack's first time being allowed to use one, and he absolutely loved it.  He even helped me choose produce and bag it, and he wanted everything to go in his cart.  Pretty cute.

Jack isn't formally "potty training," but he does use the potty occasionally.  One morning a few weeks ago he informed me that he wanted to wear big boy underwear.  Great!  The only problem was that he had an upset stomach, and though I was willing to risk some bodily fluids making messes, I was not willing to risk having to clean up diarrhea.  That's where I draw the line.  So I pulled out these great plastic-covered potty training underpants that my friend gave me, and had him wear those.  He didn't like them, so the pottying didn't last very long that day.  But Eliza really wanted to wear some.  She kept hers on for quite a while... and I liked that it gave me something to laugh about on Jack's sick day.  :-)

Look!  It's me!  Thanks for documenting my existence, Jack!

One Saturday morning the kids wanted to color something big, so I taped together 2 poster -sized pieces of paper and made outlines of the images the kids wanted.  Cat wanted a castle, and Jack wanted a dragon and a train.  My drawing is horrible, but I loved that Cat was still super impressed!  They had fun coloring for a little while, until certain people kept coloring on other people's coloring spaces.  Oh well.  They're siblings.  That's what they do, right?

I took my kids and one of Cat's friends to the library for story time one day when Cat was out of school.  At first, Cat and her friend weren't interested in checking out any books to bring home, but within just a few minutes we ended up with a huge haul of books.  I had them each choose a few to leave at the library, then we checked out the rest.  18 in all.  And guess who got to carry them up the stairs and to the car, while holding a toddler?  :-)  But I didn't complain, because, hello, it's books.  I love that Cat likes reading enough now that she reads new books on her own, brings them in the car, and even reads to her brother and sister.  I think the day she discovers the joys of a good chapter book will be the true turning point, though.

Apparently, Eliza was looking to repeat this incident from a year ago.  She didn't need any help coloring on her head this time, though.  She did it all on her own. 

Oh, and she got both legs, too.  Eliza and a marker is a dangerous combination...

Love my Jack-Jack!

You might want to back up, there, Eliza.  This could get dangerous...

One night when Ben was out of town, the kids and I invited another family (who's Dad is also in the MBA program and was on the same trip as Ben) to join us for FHE.  Right when we finished our lesson, we started seeing lightning out of the living room window.  Or, we thought it was lightning.  It was actually our 7-year-old neighbor taking pictures of us from the front yard.  So funny!  So we all went outside and the kids posed on the front step for a couple of pictures.  The outside boy on the left and the outside girl on the right are brother and sister and they live next-door to us.  The other two children you don't know belong to the other MBA family in the ward.  They live across the street from us, and we've spent a lot of time with them.  It's so nice to have them so nearby!  We have a great neighborhood and a great ward.  (Really, that's pretty redundant, since our ward is literally comprised of 2 blocks, but still...)

Everyone but Cat was sick at some point last week, which was a shame, since we had pretty good weather.  I knew it  wouldn't last, so by Friday when we'd had enough of being cooped up in the house and I knew we needed some outside play time.  We were all feeling better so we decided to hang out at the park after school.  Cat's two friends joined us and we loved running around and playing in the leaves.  I kept trying to get a good picture of them throwing the leaves in the air, but couldn't time it right using my phone.  Oh well!

Superman Swinging