Creeping Towards Halloween

 Claire

She had a great school week and is starting to remember and learn so much! We have been asking and having her recite my phone number, 911, her name, our names, her birthday, and our address. The only one she can't do now is our address and out of the 26 sight words she still struggles with about 8 and can usually get the majority if she sounds them out first. It is fun to see how much she is learning and especially how creative she is being because she likes drawing, coloring, and then cutting out pictures to put on their wall above where they sleep. You can see how Shay lays out her Frozen characters for bed time too. She now likes to make check lists, and draw love hearts for daddy to send under the door when he was sick. They had way too much fun visiting with their great aunt while Chris and I went out on Saturday and I got picture updates of all their activities. They colored, decorated cookies, played with the dogs, and watched movies together. 

Shay

With all the time we spend just the two of us, you would think she would be sick of me but she seemed to love me. She likes to come find me with what I'm doing and say she loves me when she actually wants to ask for food usually. I always have an answer that involves making sure she had finished her food fromthe meal we just ate before she can ask for more food so she is funny about going to 'I love you' instead of asking for food if she already knows the answer. She has been wearing her Catboy costume a lot recently and I don't doubt we will still have it as something she can dress up in since I've already repaired three holes. If you can't tell, her favorite things are Catboy and Elsa which means she loves the color blue. I couldn't tell you which came first but I suspect she liked Elsa which made her like blue and then pick Catboy because he was blue. Who knows!

Halloween

Chris finished his yearly milk carton skeleton and we carved pumpkins this week, meaning Chris did his and I did the girl's pumpkins. I never got around to doing mine later in the week since I was too worn out after doing both of their with what they wanted. Shay wanted a PJ mask Catboy, of course, and Claire wanted all the princesses so I had her pick just one and help me draw it on there to cut. Being the weekend before the actual holiday, we went and met up with some friends to do a corn maze and a haunted field right next to it. We were pretty disappointed with the maze part and I definitely wish we had looked for a different one since the season is now over and corn mazes are my favorite part. It was small and didn't have a map to go with it, just wandering around and we were able to get out of one of the many exits in like 5 minutes. We went to eat before the field of fear opened and had some tasty Hawaiian food.

Exploring The Area

 Claire

She was very excited to go to a new park this week when we joined some people from the neighborhood in a play group at a castle park. It wasn't the closest park, but the girls loved it because it was a huge castle and pirate ship with little colored eyes all over the place to find. I got to meet a few moms and talk while the kids explored and played, then had to deal with the rest of the week wanting to go back to that far away park. Every week we will go to a different park so we will see what is to come this next week. She had a good week at school and I got her interested in trying to read some books from the library by finding the level section and picking out level 1 books with what interests her. I'm trying to get her to practice reading the words in the sentences that are her sight words so she can see them used in books as well as on her sight word paper. We dressed in some cute sweater dresses for church because it is getting colder and they looked too cute to miss on a picture.

Shay

Most of the week she joined Claire in asking to go to the castle park again because she really liked how the theme of the castle was blue and there was a raft swing that was blue. I'm glad she understood the lesson we taught last time she peed on the ground at the park that she needs to tell me and find a potty. I would have been embarrassed if she peed on the ground, but she went with me to the potty instead and explained that we don't pee on the ground anymore. She is starting to not expect to go soewhere everytime we take Claire to school and most the time we come home, but on Friday she got to come see daddy at work! He gets to comp his own treatment and ne other person's treatment, so we got by blood drawn to see how my labs are doing since I haven't seen them in a while. All the people in the clinic thought Shay was so cute and she was being so polite when we went to the next store to buy some new cloths, even saying 'excuse me' in the isle. I then let her go into DI because it was really close to the cloths store and she found new Elsa and Anna dolls that match and were only $2 each. I like being able to spoil her with cheap toys that make her happy!

Family

We went to Logan to celebrate Chris's brother's accomplishment of graduting with a PH.D and got to see a lot of the cousins we had said goodbye to recently. We traveled in the rain and by the time we went home it was snowing in the higher mountains and we had snow on the tops of our mountains on Sunday morning too. It changed to cold really quickly just over the last two days and now it feels like winter all of a sudden. Hopefully trick or treating won't be too cold and I can plan by having warm cloths under the girl's outfits and find our umbrellas in case of down pouring. Still need to offically decide on our costumes and if we are going to match the girls or not because I don't want to have to buy too much to match them.

Spooky October

 Claire

This week she only had three days of school because fall break started Thursday and we had to find some fun things to do. They joined me at the DMV to get my new driver's license and then went to the library for story time, where they made new friends. The library has a lot of story times throughout the week and I plan to investigate them to see if they are all the same or if each day is different. The fun activities at the library kept them occupied for a good hour until they got hungry and we went home finally! Friday was fun because daddy came home from being gone all week and they asked for the fun games he always plays with them. She liked helping me make Halloween cookies and was able to resist eating the raw cookie dough most of the time, then we waited until Shay woke up from her nap and the cookies were cool to decorate and they didn't resist the frosting very well. 

Shay

I'm still surprised she falls asleep for naps and would be more okay with it if she weren't staying up late on the nights that she does. It would be easier to have her not nap and go to bed on time especially when she keeps her sister awake too long with her. She will get moody if she has taken a nap and I think of her as so grown up, but she tantrums just like she used to, and we are just lucky it isn't very often anymore. We had a hard time saying goodbye to some toys at church today and expected her to want a nap after church, but there were fun things to play with her sister instead. The thing that is most annoying to me is how often she asks for the same thing even if I've told her no to what she is asking, or said she has to wait for it. This week she kept asking for a big Catboy toy because we still haven't found her smaller one, and she knows a big stuffed Catboy exists she wants one. I keep telling her we will get it for her as a gift for Christmas or her birthday, but she comes back 5 minutes later and asks for the same thing. I know when she is about to ask for it too because I can hear the tone of her voice...

Work

Chris had trained all this past week in Boise and seemed to be very excited to learn the ropes, and I could hear it the first time we talked over the phone about how this job is going to be good for him. I'm glad he found his dream job, and now we get to be adults and have a ton of his paycheck to toward insurance, taxes, and bills! I wish I had taken a picture of the girls attacking him after he had come home because they were very happy and he was all dressed up in his sleek black scrubs. We are both glad he started work this early and we didn't move here too much before he started work. Being financially responsible only goes so far and we couldn't have been here for longer than a month without working. I like being settled in though and getting to enjoy the weather changing into the colder fall is awesome. The thing I haven't enjoyed are the bugs trying to move in!

Fall Festivities

 Pumpkins

We could have waited to buy some pumpkins, but after decorating for Halloween already, this weekend needed something to add to the Fall season and we went to a close farm with many activities and pumpkins for sale. There were giant slides, a hamster wheel, yard games, and the girl's favorite, the corn box! It was a lot of fun for the little money we spent and the short time we stayed because of how hot the afternoon was. I wish we would have thought about the weather and chosen a different day or gone earlier, but we had other obligations Saturday morning. The girls still had a lot of fun and now we have a family of pumpkins on our porch waiting for Halloween to get closer so we can carve them. I recently bought a good carving kit because Chris wants good tools instead of our stake knives that don't help with precise cutting so the girls want to cut instead of paint this year. I'm sure it will be a whole event because of that, and I just hope to put a picture on their tiny pumpkins.

Claire

This was her first week at her new kindergarten and she seemed to like her new class and made a few friends. There were 3 short days because of parent-teacher conferences and we made some goals for her to work on for the next couple of months before the next one. There is one girl that chases her, to tickle her I think, when I drop her off and pick her up so hopefully it is all in good fun and they are the best of friends already since they had matching backpacks. She told me she missed eating at school and her old friends from her other school, but she still seems to be learning and being excited to go every day. It just feels weird to have so much time in the morning before she had to go and I'm trying to come up with school-like things to do and set up a little school table downstairs to do homework on.

Shay

She is still sad about when Claire leaves for school and even sadder when I say she can't come with me if she doesn't finish her lunch. We eat right before we leave and as long as dad is here (and because I wanted to be able to talk to the teacher the first day) she had to stay behind because she didn't eat. The times she came with me I just go straight to something else so she gets distracted like shopping for things we needed from DI or to a park. She had a little bit of a stomach bug during mid-week and I think Claire had a little too because they've been taking naps and didn't have an appetite two days in a row. I think I got the bug last night because I had a mild fever and was sore all over but it's mostly passed and we are doing better. Shay is being weird with her sleep schedule and stays up after bedtime playing quietly in her room so she doesn't wake up Claire and then wakes up at 6:30am so I need to break her off the long naps!

Other Life

He got the results of his huge certifying test this week and passed! Now he is being sent to a clinic in Boise to train for the next week so he can start his job here the next week when hopefully his license has come through finally. He has been doing double workouts almost every day because after we have been unpacked there hasn't been anything to do. Where he used to fill up his days with studying and doing practice questions, now all there is to do is twiddle his thumbs and wait for results so he could start working. But he has encouraged me to go out for my exercise too and I enjoyed some hiking in the area and if we can find some easy hikes, we can take the girls. Life will get normal in a few weeks and we will get to be boring again where he barely gets mentioned because there isn't much new, except that I convinced him to join me and my brothers playing a DnD game! They asked if I wanted to (and I'm not used to being included ever since we were kids) and I roped Chris in too so we had our first mini-session yesterday and I whipped up a cute picture for my character that I was proud of because it only took a few hours. 

October in Utah

Utah

We are here! Our move this week went without a hitch even though I was stressed and extremely tired almost every night. We used Chris's dad's trailer to move our stuff, and his brother's time and muscles to help us pack, drive, unpack, and return the trailer back to Idaho. As I worked on putting boxes in the rooms I wanted and unpacking essentials, the girls were excited to set up their own room and moving their toys into their new spaces. Once they were done with their tiny job, they needed a distraction so I set up our TV so they could be out of my way...they like to help a little too much. I'm glad it didn't take long to get off the floor and unpack most of the house so we could feel like we are really home. I spent today decorating the walls and the girls were very excited to help out with the Halloween once conference was over. 

Claire

She is now registered for school and will start tomorrow in an afternoon kindergarten at the elementary school a few blocks away. I wish it was close enough to walk, but she is used to driving to and home from school that she won't know a difference. We have been practicing putting toys away in their room and having them not play with them when they are supposed to be sleeping. Now they need to keep them put away when they aren't playing with them instead of letting them fill up floor space... Unfortunately, they got on a weird schedule and stayed up too late a few days over the weekend because of moving but soon, sleeping, bathing, and waking up will be back to normal. She can sleep in, which she does more than Shay, since she has afternoon kindergarten but Chris had the idea to do some morning school time with both of them. I want to look for little chairs to put in our spare room and set up a mini school area they can come to every morning!

Shay

She was very excited to get to our new home and has been worn out from all the excitement and weird schedules. She has been taking naps almost every day even though she was out of the habit for a while we were in Idaho. There were a few times this week that all she wanted was to help, but it is so hard to let her help because she can't do a lot, I usually try to give her something to run to a different room so I have a minute to do a harder task. I'm glad she wants to help and I'm trying to be more open to letting both of them do things with me, like they helped stir and put things in the pot while cooking. I've watched my mother in law be very good at involving her grandkids in tasks and want to be better at it! I had them hold decorations while getting myself into position and they would hand them to me, they put the spiders on our web outside, and I'm looking for those little helper opportunities all over.