New beds and More Fun

 Adrian

He is a little picky with what he wants to eat and will avoid the foods he doesn't want and more of those end up on the floor than the foods he likes. He does love his fruits though and has tried most of the common ones now and picks fruit over other things in front of him. I think I need to be more creative though because I'm already giving him foods I know he has liked and making it a habit like I do with the girls. This week will be fun because Thanksgiving has a few unique foods he hasn't had yet that might interest him. He helped me get Chris's car to get an oil change so we are ready to visit family this weekend and he didn't like just sitting in his seat so he sat in the front with me. I also got a fun moment of him playing with Buttercup because she puts her toy down for him to throw and he holds onto it and loves that she looks at him while he has her toy.

Claire

She had a birthday party for a classmate at Wahzoo, which is a place with an arcade, rides, ropes course, bowling, laser tag, etc. There was so much to do and she was all over the place, which was a little crazy because of how many people were there. She had tons of fun, earned some prizes, and wants to go back because she wants Shay to try the bumper cars and the laser maze. It is right next to the Roaring Springs Water Park so next summer we might do a day to do it all if we have family in town. This week they also got new beds! We got the mattresses handed down and then ordered loft beds so they have little 'rooms' underneath by hanging sheets from the frame. I'm sure being organized will come with time but the desks constantly have paper, books, and toys all over them and aren't used as desks yet. But at least they will have them in the future and we can add lamps and chairs when they need them. I had a long day setting up the beds before they got home so it would be ready and did the first half during Adrian's morning nap and a little while he played in the hallway then finished at his second nap.

Shay

While Claire was at her party, Shay and Daddy went on a date! She planned three things on a list and was secretive about it because she didn't want Claire or me to know what they were doing. They went for ice cream, watched a movie, and had popcorn. I was told that she had fun controlling Daddy's time and picking the date activities because she picked Moana as the movie and he doesn't watch that often. It makes me think that in the next couple of weeks, we should go on a date to see Moana 2 in theaters with the girls! It might end up being a girl's night out because Chris wouldn't care for the movie or want to pay to see it, but the girls would think it was cool to go to the big screen. You can see her dressed up as a kitty because they still love playing with all their dress-up costumes, even in public!

First Weeks of November

Adrian

He has fun games that make him happy like 'throw things that someone gives me as far as I can', and one daddy played last night called 'try to bite the daddy's finger off before he can get away'. He had a pretty delighted giggle when Chris offered up his finger as a sacrifice instead of Adrian having to hold on to it, but Daddy was pretty quick and only got a bit a few times. Everyone who sees him when we are out and about falls in love and he smiles and flirts like crazy. He is getting some little bug that is causing buggers that I want to get out of his nose, but he hates me touching it now and gets super mad. All I want to do is help! I'm starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of being a mom of a newborn again because he had a normal schedule most days, but there are other times that I'm not so sure. Luckily since he is a happy boy 90% of the time I think things are pretty good.

Shay

As you heard in the video with Adrian, we were at the dentist this week and that was Shay in the background talking about her school. She likes answering questions about her life and is always extra excited to see her teacher at church. We even hired her teacher's daughter to babysit them when we went to the temple last week and she lost her mind when telling us who her babysitter was. Last Saturday we also went on a family date to BWW and then ice cream which was a fun time even though we need to find a closer favorite wing place because the drive is so long! The girls now ask if are we there yet when we are driving anywhere longer than 10 minutes. I've been trying to teach the girls grown-up things like how to wash their own hair in the bath, make their own lunches for school, poor their own milk and cereal for breakfast, and brush their own hair. When it all first started Shay took pride in doing things on her own, but Claire was resistant and I should have started a long time ago! Shay acts much more independently and is willing to do things on her own, just like me when I was younger. My parents said I used to say "I can do it all by myself" but I don't remember that, I wonder how much the girls will remember. I put sparkles on some food that Shay didn't like to make it 'fairy food' and it worked for the first bite, then she said she still didn't like it, but Claire ate it!

Claire

I'm starting to get a little worried about her test scores and looking for more opportunities to help her sound out words. The homework she brings home makes it seem like she should be much farther in her ability to sound out words and spell by hearing words. I wish I knew how to help her more but life is too busy and she isn't all that interested in it of course. The best system I've set up so far is making sure they both read and do homework before they get to do things they want to every day. Sometimes it is playing over at the neighbors, sometimes it is on the computer, but I'm good at saying "No, you haven't..." when they ask for anything. I opened a hair salon yesterday and gave the girls a little trim, then braided their hair so they could have wavy hair at church. It was fun to play pretend because then I talked with Claire about her life and found out how she sees the world. We did a craft with the fallen leaves from our trees so Chris could take them to work and hang them on his art wall!

Holidays

Life seems a little boring after all the excitement of Halloween, I've put up some lights on the house and even put our old small Christmas tree on the porch as a decoration since we plan on buying a real tree this year. Now we are in a transition between fall and winter with the decorations and I think it looks alright. It was windy the day I put it up so it gave me a lot of problems, and it seems to tip over so I need to fix that. But the girls are excited and want to play with the Christmas decorations instead of letting me use them to decorate! I haven't got all of them out yet but since I keep seeing neighbors put up pretty decorations so I want to do it. We've been planning for the holidays and hopefully can get a good time with family. Chris's job makes it difficult since he is in charge of the clinic and can't take off time on holidays without setting a bad example. We had our first snowfall this morning, it lasted about an hour before it turned into rain, but the girls were excited and took Adrian and Buttercup outside for a few minutes to let them experience it for the first time!

Happy Halloween!

Candy

Between our ward's Trunk or Treat and going around the neighborhood on Halloween, the girls got plenty of candy! We decorated our trunk with a graveyard since we were all skeletons and saw some really fun outfits and trunks when walking around. It was nice to get together with the church family and show off our make up faces while it was still light outside. It was darker on Halloween and Chris didn't get home in time to put any make up on, and the girls wore their costumes from school. Buttercup came with us around the neighborhood and even got a treat from one of the neighbors which was a fun surprise. I saw a few other dogs going around the neighborhood and she was able to stay close to me because I had her on a very short leash just in case she got too excited. She still likes to jump up when she thinks someone wants to play and people running around is playtime.

Costumes

We had a family costume for our Monday night together even though Chris came straight from work and didn't change to match us since we was sitting at the car cuddling with Adrian as soon as he showed up. I let the girls have their own costumes for their school day and they just stayed in them instead of switching after. Shay was a witch and the only hard part was to figure out the hat, but we used a little decoration glued to a head band. Claire was Wonder Woman which I thought we had a costume, but it wasn't in their costume tote so I threw it together the night before with some fabric adhesive after cutting out the symbol and stars. I think everything turned out great and I'm sure the actual costume will show up eventually, and I didn't see another Wonder Woman during the whole school parade. I didn't get pictures because they only went around the track twice, last year they went around at least 4 times! I let Adrian wear a very warm monster costume that won't fit him by next year so might as well wear it at least once.

More Celebrating

Shay brought a lot of fun things home from her school's Halloween party, Claire had fun but was just excited about the movie they watched. Since they now love Hocus Pocus, they were very excited to see people at school dressed as the Sanderson Sisters! They had spirit days and for Wednesday I got a cute picture with the 70s Ghostbuster theme because I put ghosts in their hair that they were super excited about. For Halloween, we had little mummy pizzas because I thought it would be an easy meal Chris could eat quick, and it was fun. On Friday, our ward celebrated the Day of the Dead with a dinner and we brought pictures of our Grandparents who are up in heaven. Claire was most excited about her Grandma Twila because she recognized the name, but my name sake was exciting too. Lastly, we went to the library for the first time since school started because I was driving and picking them up from school this past week.