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.

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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 :)

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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.

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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.

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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!