Fall Pictures

I took some fall pictures of the girls today, and I wanted to share a few. All three of my girls have had serious tummy issues over the past few weeks. In fact Hannah's in her room probably puking as I write this (which I didn't know she was still sick until after I took these pictures). Poor thing. So, I'd also like to write a little bit about each girl and their current personalities, for my own record, and for a tribute to them and what they've had to go through for the past few weeks.

HANNAH LEA

Hannah is such a good little girl. She's smart, funny, artistically talented, and loves being a mommy to anyone who will listen. The only trouble we usually have with her is her constant whining. Scott even told her if she could go a whole day without whining, he'd take her to Pirate Island. She has yet to do it, but she's come close. She also loves playing with friends. The first thing she asks every time we come home from picking Dad up at school is if she can knock on her friend Ammon's door and play with him. She loves coloring and doing art crafts and often takes her time doing it because she's a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to that. She still loves asking question after question about anything and everything. Sometimes I think she loves hearing herself talk. She's really been into knock knock jokes lately. Her favorite one is "Knock Knock." "Who's there?" "Interrupting Cow." And then before you can say, "Interrupting cow who?" She yells, "MOOO!!" at the top of her lungs and laughs hysterically. She loves babies and loves to pinch their cheeks and necks. She's usually a great little helper around the house, except when it comes to cleaning her room.

BAILEY MARIE

Out of all three of my girls, Bailey is my biggest "Mama's Girl." She always wants me to hold her, and she often won't let anyone else do it unless I'm not in the room. It's flattering but can get a little difficult considering that fact that I've got three kids who are all in need of my attention. She follows me where ever I go throughout the house and pulls on my pants until I pick her up. She's also my best sleeper, and my little teddy bear. I could just kiss those delicious cheeks all day long. She loves to eat food off the ground, and she loves climbing out of her highchair and onto the table. It doesn't matter how tight I make her highchair straps, she still manages to get herself out of them. She has a favorite book that she brings to me everyday and wants me to read to her. She also loves walking around with her walker and bonking into things. She's a very picky eater, and she won't touch any vegetables that I put in front of her. Thank goodness she loves fruit. She loves doing things she's not supposed to do, like go under the office desk and pull on all the wires. She thinks it's pretty funny. Her little Bailey grin melts my heart, though, so I can't get too mad at her.

BRYNN ELIZABETH

Brynn loves life. In fact, she loves it so much that she doesn't want to miss a single thing. She often has trouble falling asleep, even when she's exhausted because she loves to be where the party is. She laughs at the silliest things. Tonight Bailey tooted really loud, and Brynn thought it was the funniest thing in the world. She loves trees and flowers and laughs any time she sees them. Today she was playing in the leaves and kept throwing them on herself and she thought it was so funny. Hearing her little laugh always brightens my day. She's usually pretty good about playing by herself. She likes to be in Hannah's room and play with her toys. Some of her favorite things to play with are rubber bands, Polly Pocket shoes, my wedding ring, and all other types of jewelry. Her favorite thing in the whole world, though, are balls. She LOVES them, and she can spot a ball from a mile away. She also loves to bite, as I've mentioned before, and pinch and pull hair. All three of my girls love music and they love to sing!


Here are few of my favorite pictures from today:

Dance Recital

Hannah's dance class is over. She liked it, but I think she'd rather do gymnastics. Her dance class was right next to a gymnastics class and I would often find her staring at the kids in gymnastics. She keeps asking me when she'll get to do gymnastics again, so it looks like that's what we'll be putting her in next time.

Today was her little recital. The girls are so cute, and they actually did really well for being so young, but I couldn't help laughing just a bit at their dance. :-)

Here she is with her teacher.

The Letter R

As I mentioned in my last post, we had preschool twice last week at my house. It was a bit crazy, but we made it through. I had been preparing for this for about a month. I went to at least 10 different stores trying to find what I needed for preschool and for some reason I couldn't find little toy alligators ANYWHERE!! I looked at Dollar Tree, Walmart, Target, K-Mart, two party stores, Honks dollar, and Family Dollar. I realize that's only 8 stores that I just named off when I just said I went to at least 10, but I also went to other stores to get fabric and felt. Anyway, it was very frustrating. So we went without the toy alligators.

Most of these ideas came from my sister, and you are welcome to use any of them to teach preschool or just to teach your little ones if you want.

The first day we learned about reptiles. We started off by talking about what makes a reptile a reptile. I told them that most reptiles hatch from eggs, so we played a little game and had Easter eggs with little toy reptiles in them. I played some music and whoever the music stopped on got to open an egg and reveal the reptile (This is where it would have been nice to have a toy alligator....grrrrrr). After we did that, I told them that we were going to focus on only three of these reptiles: turtles, snakes, and alligators. I read them books about all three. I let them paint turtles out of paper bowls. We played "count the number of bugs a turtle can eat" by telling the kids a number and having them count out that many toy bugs. We also learned a new song, "I'm being swallowed by a boa constrictor," and I had the kids get inside a big snake that I made. They loved that game! I also had them pretend like they were in a swamp and someone was "it" (who also carried a stuffed alligator that I bought at DI) and they had to tag each other. The kids had so much fun playing these games and doing their turtle craft.

Here's the boa constrictor

The turtle bowls

The kids painting their turtles

The next day we learned about rainbows. I had the kids go outside with me, and we made a rainbow with a glass jar, water, and the sun. I also taped a bunch of rainbows around our complex and had the kids find them. They loved catching rainbows! Then we read some books about rainbows and I had the kids do 4 different rainbow crafts: a rainbow kite, a rainbow bracelet made out of Fruit Loops, a "Things I love..." page with pictures of things they loved glued onto a rainbow, and a page where they could trace the letter R. Then we did a rainbow experiment where we put food coloring into a bowl of milk and added a drop of dish soap. Finally, we went outside and played with our rainbow kites.

Here's our "Rainbow Room," where all the crafts were done.

The rainbow kite

Hannah and Maille at the craft table

The rainbow treats

And the rainbow fruit

I wish I had gotten pictures of everything, but it was just impossible. If I turned my back for one second on these kids I would end up losing their attention for awhile and someone would start wrestling someone else. I think the kids had fun, and I had a lot of fun planning for these two preschool days, but let's just say I'm glad that being a preschool teacher is not my day job.

Now I have to start thinking about the letter K for December. Hmmmmm......

Halloween

Wow! Do I really have absolutely nothing to do tonight besides watching The Office and fold laundry? It's a miracle! I feel like I've been so busy every night for the past two months. In the month of September my girls were really sick and teething, so just about every other night one of them was waking up after bed time. They are finally back to their normal schedules (although Bailey is still sick, but this time with tummy issues....I'm wondering if she's lactose intolerant but praying that it's just a bug). Anyway, then the month of October I was busy every night preparing for my turn to teach preschool and preparing for Disneyland and preparing for Halloween. Just about every single night I was out shopping, or cutting, or coloring, or sewing something. So here I am with not much to do and updating the blog about Halloween.

We had a great Halloween this year. Hannah wanted to be Belle, her current favorite princess. Bailey and Brynn were both Minnie Mouse. It's fun to dress them the same, but I think next year I'll let them be something different from each other. Scott and I were Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.

Here in Utah County, when Halloween falls on a Sunday, every one goes trick or treating on Saturday. I'm guessing because they want to keep the Sabbath Day Holy?? I don't really know if trick or treating counts as breaking the Sabbath, but either way I'm fine with doing it on Saturday. It was really cold, though, and we had to quickly go trick or treating when we got a short break in the horrible rain storm. We were only out for about 40 minutes before Hannah decided she was cold and wanted to go home to eat her candy.

Before Halloween, Hannah carved her own pumpkin. She got a little bit of help from Scott, but she carved most of it herself.

Brynn's and Bailey's pumpkins are below....

Since we didn't really celebrate Halloween on Sunday, I thought we should at least have a spooky dinner. We invited Scott's cousin and his wife over to eat with us.

We had brain melon, carrot eye balls, cheese stick fingers, and black witches punch with a deformed looking hand in it.

Best of all, though, we had copy cat J Dawgs hot dogs (a yummy little restaurant here that serves pretty much the best hot dogs I've ever had) with all of this stuff . I was going to do mummy dogs but our oven wasn't working.

And we had dirt cups for dessert....

I hope you all had a great Halloween!

I missed these girls while we were gone. They're so stinkin' cute.


Please excuse the muffled voice. I was sitting right next to a vent.

Disneyland!

Okay, I have a lot of videos and pictures, so bare with me here. We took Hannah to Disneyland for her birthday, and we had a blast! It was a looooong car ride, though. We first took Bailey and Brynn to my sister's house in Arizona. It was a beautiful car ride there. We went over a canyon and saw lots of beautiful fall trees. The only problem was that we were on a one lane road almost the entire time and it was really windy (Is that how you spell that? I guess it can be used as two different words). Hannah gets car sick so she threw up in the car. Poor baby. The girls were really fussy, too, so that didn't help. We finally made it to my sister's and then left the next day for Anaheim. That trip was a bit easier since Hannah just played or watched a DVD the whole time, but it was pouring rain for most of the trip. We got to our hotel and went out with some friends for dinner who live there. The next day it was off to Disneyland!! So here are the pics and videos.......

Here we are walking to the entrance on the first day!


Later that day we met up with our friend, Wendi, and her two kiddos. It was so fun to see them. Hannah misses her friend, Jill, so much.

It's definitely a small world

Hannah and Jill

Wendi and I watching the kids play in Toon Town

The Tea Cups

The next day, Hannah insisted on getting her face painted. She had people staring at her and commenting all day. I think she felt special!

Us on the ferris wheel

Meeting the characters:

This next video was Hannah's first time meeting a princess. She was star struck. I don't think she said more than 2 words and she forgot how old she is.

Dance Party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hannah got a balloon that she took a picture of. Unfortunately, it popped on our way back to my sister's house. Scared the crap out of Scott and me because it was midnight when it happened. We thought our tire blew, but luckily it was just the balloon.

Hannah's all time favorite ride.......THE MATTERHORN! We went on it 4 times.

The ride home was horrible as well. We could tell our brakes were going out by the awful grinding noise that occurred every time we hit the brakes. Luckily we made it to my sister's, but we had to stay there an extra day to get them fixed. Overall, though, I'd do it again in a heart beat. I can't wait to take Bailey and Brynn some day!