Cat's Sweet Quote

"When I grow up, I want to be a Mommy."

THE Playdate

Cat didn't have school last Wednesday and she's been in need of some special attention recently. I debated taking her to children's museum or something else fun and exciting, but didn't really want to drive far enough to make that happen. I decided I could put in a little time and make a fun and special experience for her right here at home, and it worked great. Plus, it was all over in time for 2 kids to take naps!

So I decided on a "Fairy" theme that would be fun and lend itself to games, and also let the girls spend some time outside. (Unfortunately, it had been raining for a couple of days before this, so it was still really wet and we were only outside for a little while.)

There were so many girls I would have loved to include, but I knew that if I was to keep the stress factor under control, I had to keep it small. So we ended up with just two girls from Cat's class at school and one girl from her class at Church. It was perfect. Notice Cat's coloring pages on the wall. She insisted on putting these up because they were fairy-ish.


The first thing was collecting food and gifts to put in the fairy house that Cat, Suz, and I made before the playdate. We knew that if we put nice things in the fairy house, some fairies would visit. So the girls got busy gathering flowers, acorns, berries, and leaves, and then we went inside to play some games, hoping that the fairies would be enticed by our offerings.


First we made our fairy princess crowns using this idea from Family Fun. Suz and I spray painted a piece of white posterboard, cut it into a crown shape, put some velcro on the ends to hold it together on different sized heads, and cut some slits into it. Then I cut small sections of silk flowers and leaves and let the girls insert what they wanted into the slits, and we taped them down on the inside. Simple and pretty - they loved it!


We played a matching game with sets of fairy wings. (Thanks for putting that together, Suz!) and then the girls found pieces of a fairy puzzle outside, and brought it in to assemble.



Before we ate lunch, we checked our fairy house and the fairies had visited! We know because they ate all the food, took the rest of the gifts, and left pixie dust all around the premises. Indisputable evidence; and the girls were completely awestruck. They all wanted to take some of the pixie dust home with them as a souvenir, and they all pointed it out to their parents as they left after lunch.


The girls brought their own lunches to eat, and we had pink party punch and a berry pizza for dessert. Suz also made each of them a big tissue-paper flower, which they were excited about too.

What a fun playdate, and much cheaper than anything we would have done out of town!

Jackinese

Jack has been working on his verbal skills for a few months, but has really picked up on a lot recently, both talking and listening. Here are a few of the things we hear most often:

ba - ball
pay - play
ma - more
peeze - please
ow-veh - flower
COOKEEEEE - cookie/snack/treat/anything edible really
DAAAAAAADEEEEEEEE - Daddy

Too Many for a Sidebar

"Let's call Suz's boyfriend a girl name. Like Melissa."

"I'm good at singing. And dancing. And wearing dresses."

"My name is Anya. I live in China. I speak Spanish."

Me: "Okay, Cat, I'll take a nap with you on my bed. I'll sleep on my side and you can sleep on Daddy's side."
Cat: "And Daddy can sleep in the laundry basket."

Family Milestone

Our car turned 100,000 miles on Sunday!

It was 99,999 as we arrived home after Church, so we circled the block until it made it to 100,000 so that we could all witness this momentous occasion together.

(Note: please excuse the dust in my car. I don't know what kind of Dust Monster snuck in there to make a mess right before I took this picture, but if I catch him I'll let you know. Of course it was incredibly clean before I got the camera out.)

Apparently, Jack didn't think it was as exciting as the rest of us did.

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! :-)