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.

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