Is it really Christmas time?

Everyone is telling us that Christmas is soon...but I'm skeptical. We're having 80 degree weather here!!! Not that I'm complaining, I definitely enjoy going outside and not having to put a jacket on (especially since they're not fitting so well now), but I am excited to see some snow.Actually, Charlotte does a pretty good job of convincing us that it's Christmas. Last weekend we did a party at the library where Rachel saw Santa. She recognized him right away and practically dragged us to him. But we had to wait our turn and when she saw the two kids in front of us start to cry she got a little more nervous about him and wouldn't sit on his lap. We also went on a sleigh ride at the shopping center and Rachel loved it, especially "Bob, a horsey"!

Ms. Destructive

I don't know what it is, but Rachel has been more destructive in the past 3 days than she has in the past few months. To name a couple...she has once again written with pen on our walls that were recently painted (PEN DOES NOT COME OFF OF WALLS!), and last night she was so insistent to get a certain ornament off the tree that it all came tumbling down, breaking another couple ornaments on top of the two other ornaments she had broken previously. And the tree only went up Monday night! She can reach a lot higher than we expected. So beware Mom...and the Dickens Village won't stand a chance either, you better build a gate or something.

The other new thing of hers is "who's that?" to everyone! The people on the train, cashiers, people on TV, in magazines, etc. My reply of "I don't know" does not suffice. So needless to say, I make up a lot of names. When there are name tags and I tell Rachel their name she's their new best friend. And then it's "Tiffany's funny...Tiffany's this, Tiffany's that...bye bye Tiffany." Today we were getting our car fixed and she took the delight of calling the man behind the desk, Harry (that's our neighbor's name, and they sort of look alike I guess) Well, it was "where's Harry going...what's Harry doing" the whole time we were there.

Our fun week with family

They were all extremely helpful in helping us rake our gazillion leaves. Seriously, I don't know what we would have done without you! It's still looking pretty good too.She had no problem warming up to GrammieWatching the BYU game. What fun!!! Rachel thought we had all gone crazy.Half time fun. Take note of the emaculate looking leafless yard. A trip on Charlotte's one and only new light rail. It was free on Sunday (opening weekend) so we thought we'd go uptown to see the Christmas decorations. Rachel wasn't too thrilled. When we put her dress on she thought she was going to church/nursery and when we passed our church she said, "hey! turn around!"She's got red eye but I just wanted to show off the most adorable coat Grammie got her for Christmas that we got for a GREAT deal...50% off.We were out shopping one day and we hear Rachel say, "ADORABLE!" I didn't think she knew that word...well, turns out it was "a dora ball" It still cracks me up!We went down to Columbia to the temple the last night Anita was here and we went out to eat twice for dinner! This one's for you Dan. Thanks again Pop, Grammie and Steve, we had a GREAT time!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Grandma sent this little sticker activity for the upcoming holiday. I got such a kick out of Rachie's version of Thanksgiving...how the Indian girl got really friendly with the pilgrim, and the doggie behind him with plenty of food (you'll have to look closely), the turkey making it under the table and the little Indian girl is now being served, the mom pilgrim's pie in the face and the apples falling from the sky :)
Anyway, Tom and Steve (father and brother-in-law) come in tonight from Brussels to spend Thanksgiving with us. What a treat! We're SO excited. Then Anita (mother-in-law) comes in Friday, and that's when we'll have the feast! Let's be honest, I've never cooked a Thanksgiving meal, so I certainly can't do it alone.

It's a boy!!!

Looks like the voting was close. I was 95% convinced it would be a boy just cause my pregnancy has been so different this time around. It was still weird that I was right. We're really excited! No names picked yet. We took Rachel with us today and she was pretty cute. First of all, she's really amazing me with her memory lately. We pull up to the office buildings and she says, "big belly Rachel" I don't know why she threw herself in there. Anyway, then she was being really sweet saying "what happened a Mommy" when I was laying down. Then she would look at the screen and say "baby's stuck!" She made me laugh pretty good. It'll be fun to see her as a big sister.

Just wondering...

We go in for our ultrasound tomorrow and I was interested to see what everybody's guess is on the gender.

I'm so glad when Daddy stays home

We had a great weekend!!! Friday we had a chili/pie cookoff at the church with some square dancing (which Rachel really got into!) It was a lot of fun even though my pie didn't win. The judging was definitely unfair :) Then Saturday the Spanish branch put on a Fiesta for the whole stake and they had food from all the different Latin America countries...so delicious!!! Then, Monday Jake had off for Veteran's day. He doesn't have too many paid time off days or vacation days so we really enjoyed it for all it's worth. We just spent the whole day playing!

My Minnie Mickey Mouse

What a blast!!! I don't think Halloween could get more fun. It was a great day. We started off at a Halloween festival at the library with all kinds of games and treats. We watched Halloween cartoons during the day and even made a jack-o-latern pepporoni pizza for dinner. Our ward had a trunk-o- treat and my favorite part was how she took the costume march quite literally. Oh, and after every treat she would say "open it!" and she wouldn't budge to go to the next car until we did. Who knows how much chocolate and sweets got in that girl last night! There was nothing she didn't like either. The weather was beautiful and we spent an extra hour doing some houses on our street. She's stocked with candy for the next year. (Our neighborhood does not get very many trick or treaters...we were the only ones at some houses...and so they give you handfuls, and we didn't object :) She got really good at saying trick-or-treat and thank you. She really was having the time of her life, out of the blue in between houses she would just laugh hysterically. Really cute. And she loved her "Minnie Mickey Mouse" costume as she liked to call it. Although she gave quite a dramatic protest yesterday morning when I forced it on for the library (which could only be solved with a sugar cookie). But, last night she gave another good protest when we took it off to put her in her pjs. She even liked the gloves. She loved saying, "clap clap" or "come here." After we put her down, Jake and I didn't watch any scary movies or anything, we went straight to bed.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

O-Jack

Last night we had a great family home evening carving pumpkins. I just love Halloween. Rachie just loved the treat. But in the end she definitely got into it :)

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Our pumpkin family, I personally really like Jake's "scared" pumpkin.

Tank You Craaampa!

My dad was here for about 5 days to play with Rachel and to help do things around the house for us...he fixed our lawn mower, our vacuum, our sink, our doorknob, and our deck stairs (hopefully I remembered all of them) Seriously, I don't know what we would do without him. And on top of all that he built a swing set for Rachel! Which she absolutely LOVES!! It was fun to see the light go on in her eyes when she figured out what it was. We were going to get a little tikes swing for her but all the toy stores were out of them and they say it's out of season. Which doesn't make sense to me because we still have temperatures in the 80s and they're still selling swimming pools. But she did really well in the "big kid swing."


Photo Shoot
My dad likes to bring his nice camera and take about a million pictures. I love it except that there's so many good ones to choose from. They may not be the prettiest of Rachel, the scratch on her nose is from a little encounter with our neighbors cat. She was just trying to be his friend and got up right in his face, saying, "mow...mow" then it was "ow...ow." She also has a bit of a cold too, but they are still really great shots. I hope you enjoy them.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

And, I guess I can't "hide" it much longer. For those of you who don't know yet, and as you can probably tell from the last picture...I'm pregnant. I'm due April 30. That puts me just past the first trimester...yeah!!!

The Terrific Two year old!!!

Rachel turned two just yesterday and it was quite a successful, fun day. We had a playdate with all her little friends for lunch and cupcakes. In preparation for it Rachel got pretty anxious and had the whole table set by 7:30 am. She then managed to sneak a cupcake (or "pancake" is what she likes to call them) and a cookie. She LOVED having her friends over to play. Daddy was able to get off work pretty early and for dinner we had "cold spaghetti, hot potatoe" and "fruit salad." For those of you who are familiar with the Wiggles. She's still obsessed and those are a couple of her favorite songs. She loves spaghetti and fruit but she wasn't too keen on the potatoe. Then we opened her presents which was a lot of fun. She loved them all and we had a great time playing. We finished the night with the traditional blow out the candles.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I know I'll be saying it for the rest of my life but I can't believe I have a two year old. It just seems crazy. I love this girl more than words can express and I LOVED spoiling her yesterday. To update those who I don't talk to as often here's a little bit about my little Rache.

• She loves life and action...she gets up way too early and will only take a short nap most the time (and if I'm lucky)
• She loves food, right now I think her favorites are spaghetti and chicken
• Her favorite shows are Curious George, Dora, Mickey Mouse and of course, the Wiggles
• She loves to go bye bye and crys everytime we turn on our street to come home, sometimes she's content to even just stay in her car seat
• She has a certain smile (lifting her eyebrows up and down) that will get her what she wants and she knows it too. If that doesn't work she'll just ask for what she wants then says "okay!"
• Her new favorite thing to do is jump, she's even figured out how to climb up on our bed
  
• Her favorite book is Hop on Pop and she's got it memorized
• She knows all her colors and her favorite is blue...then pink

Mother of one, to mother of five

We're babysitting a family of four girls for about 10 days. Yes, it's definitely had its challenges and surprises. We've had everything from nightmares, accidents, to calling poison control. Everyone is safe, healthy and happy though so I think we're doing a pretty good job. On Monday Jake had off of work and he helped me tremendously. We had their homework and chores done and dinner ready by 4:30. We're almost too good! :) I'm getting a little more used to a loud house and it has had a few luxuries as well. We got Conference on Dish network (although I think we only got to hear 3 or 4 talks) and we get the newspaper. Rachel has had quite an adjustment to the sharing thing. She fits right in with all their energy however. She's picked up more vocabulary as well, including "MINE" which I hate, and is also funny because none of it is hers. Her and the other Rachel have a love hate relationship and it can get difficult in disciplining because they're not sure who we're talking about, they both call each other Rachel Herway. Rachel is also liking all the new toys, the swingset in the backyard and the food that I don't typically buy, like "green cheerios" (applejacks). It's been a lot of fun.

Just a couple videos

Jake taught Rachel this. He likes to body slam her on the bed. Don't worry, nobody gets hurt...he just pretends. But I like how she calls it "daddy slam!"


Crazy kids!!

Thank you Gamma

It's so fun to get packages!! Rachel couldn't put her Mickey Mouse stuff down. She really liked the lollipop but wanted to bite it, I thought she was going to break her teeth!!
Little miss sticky face!

Fallen behind

For the past couple weeks we've been through the rounds of the stomach bug in our family. It started with Rachel and then to Jake and of course myself. It's been a long road of painful, tearful, and wakeful nights...and days. All you mothers know, right. Jake and Rachel are feeling 100% and Rachel's got most her appetite back. (Thank goodness) I'm definitely on the upswing of recovery but I feel so out of it, meaning I have laundry and cleaning that desperately needs to been done. A long list of emails to get to, etc. etc. and I really feel bad for missing Scarlet on her birthday. These are a couple pictures of things that Rachel did that made me smile through all this. Just gotta love that girl. Tonight she made us laugh really good when we blessed the food for dinner. She waited patiently through the prayer and when we finished she excitedly said, "AMEN...eh...JUICE!!" Jake says, "like mother, like daughter." I like my juice and I always take a sip after the blessing. Anyway, all this really made me grateful to have an overall healthy body and a healthy family. We've been so blessed!

Aunt Colie comes to visit

Aunt Colie came to play with us this last week and we had such a great time. We went uptown one day to eat lunch with Jake and afterwards found a great fountain spot to play. Rachel would go back and forth trying to touch the water but every time she got close it would go down, and up on the other side, then she'd run to the other side. She couldn't quite catch it and she had a few bystanders chuckling pretty good. For the most part we just played and Rachel really grew attatched to Colie. Every morning when Nicole would still be asleep Rachel would hear a door open or the bathroom sink running and she would perk up and say, "Colie!" then run to the door and knock. She misses you already Nicole. As soon as we got back from church she looked real confused and said, "Colie??" and asked for you at least a dozen times before she went to bed.