Big Sister Helper

With Trent working at night and having night-time hospital shifts, he's gone about 5 nights a week, which leaves me to put 3 girlies to bed by myself. Some nights there's crying and yelling. Sometimes from them. Sometimes from me. But, tonight, after I was done reading to Megan and tucking her in, I came out into the front room to find this. What a good big sister helper, reading to her baby sister and helping drink her nighttime bottle.

What gladness filled my heart. For yes, tonight there are no tears. There is no yelling. We are all happy. And that makes for a pretty good night.

Speaking In Tongues

Mikayla lisps much more without her front teeth and sometimes her words even sound funny to her. This morning getting ready to brush her teeth she said, "I'm trying to twitht thith!....Whoa....Did I just speak Japanese?!" We were laughing so hard!

Toothless

Seriously?! Another tooth?! That's 2 in one week folks. That means my poor gap-toothed, vampire-fanged, 6 yr old will be lisping for quite some time now! The funniest part about it is that she is SOO excited to be able to actually sing, "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth." How cute is that? Does not even care that by only having her incisors sticking out on the top row she looks like some character out of a vampire flick.
Her vampire impersonation!

This of course called for another visit from a certain fairy-dust sprinkling, tooth collecting, winged woman. In the morning we asked Mikayla if she had indeed come. Megan piped up and said, "Yes, the Tooth Fairy came. Last night she came in our room and woke me up and asked if it was me or Mikay-da that lost a tooth. I told her 'Mikay-da' and went back to sleep. So, I'm tired today because she woke me up."

Really. One of the first children to meet the Tooth Fairy and you give a one-word answer before crashing into your pillow again? Thanks a lot Megan.

So I asked Mikayla what she's going to do with all the money she's been getting from the Tooth Fairy. I mean, that's a dollar a week, the Tooth Fairy's liable to go broke at this rate. She thought for a second and then said, "I'm going to save all my dollars. Then, when I'm an adult, I can use them all to buy furniture." I was expecting her to spend it on a slurpee. Boy, I was way off.

The Freakin' Diamond Castle

We were out on a date last week, a bucket of balls at the driving range and then dinner. On our way to pick up the kids, Trent sings:

"Can't go back, so we gotta go on, we'll stick together, stayin' strong, 'cuz we're gonna' find it!..."

"Um, Honey?..." I said.

"Aw, that's from freakin' Barbie's Diamond Castle isn't it?! Dang it!" moaned Trent.

Yes, yet again one more thing that you wouldn't get to enjoy if you had boys honey.

Mischief Maker

We had to have a talk with the girls about NOT leaving any Halloween candy lying around after this.
I couldn't take it away from her. Because after all, when she's not making mischief and getting into EVERYthing... she looks like this. Could YOU take a sucker away from a face like that? Didn't think so.

Baby-Faced

My dad came to my water aerobics class a few weeks ago. I've been teaching for over 2 years now, so it was fun to have him come and see what I do. He jumped in and acted like he'd been doing it for years. About halfway through the class, one of the other guys swam over to him and said, "So, are you her boyfriend?" while pointing to me up on the deck.

My dad laughed and said, "Uh, no. No, I'm her dad!" The guy looked shocked and said, "Well what did you do? Have her when you were 12?! There's no way you could be her dad!" He again laughed and said he was and that he had 3 other children and 5 grandchildren. They both got a good laugh out of it.

For a few years now, people have thought that he and I are together when we go out somewhere. He's quite baby-faced, only 51, and has not a single gray hair on his head. He loves it. I get a little weirded out by it. I don't necessarily want to look like a young gold-digger going for a much older man. I keep reminding him this won't last forever. One day, he'll have to age.

After the middle-aged woman in the front row of my class heard that the newcomer was my dad, she said, "Oh darn. He's good looking, I was hoping he was new!" Okay. Ew.

I Have No Words...

Our Costumes!

One of my favorite things about the Halloween costumes this year was that the girls came up with their costume ideas completely on their own! And I loved their choices--extra bonus! Mikayla saw "How To Train Your Dragon" and wanted to be a viking girl. Her whole outfit was hand-me-down items from a few people and then I bought a blond wig from Wal-Mart and braided it and got a viking hat from the dollar section at Target. You don't get much cheaper than that for a costume! I think she looked great too! The wig just makes the outfit!

Our little viking and tooth fairy. Megan wanted everyone to know she was not just a fairy, but a TOOTH fairy. We affixed a tooth on the end of her wand to help people figure it out too. It's kind of funny, one girl was super warm and the other was super cold!

A murse(our male nurse daddy), and a cute little witch. Though, she kept tossing the hat off so she was more a ballerina than anything!

Our whole family before the church Trunk-or-Treat.

Excited girls getting candy.

Buzz Lightyear and a viking.

Me, Kendra, Sydney, Charlie, Kate, and Dagny. These little guys didn't really know what was going on or why we were all walking around in the dark collecting candy from the trunks of cars! It was a fun night!

Happy Halloweeny!

We got together with some friends on Halloween and had an awfully gross dinner. We had a puking pumpkin, green breadstick witches' fingers,

beating hearts, monster eyeballs,

spider web dip,

and bloody baked rats! It was disgusting. But quite fun! The kids were squeamish about how things looked or the names they were given and pretty much just held out until dessert!

We played the donut on a string game, it never gets old! The little kids went first and it was so funny to watch them spinning around trying to chomp the donut out of the air.

Megan very obediently kept her arms behind her back the ENTIRE time--I was impressed.
Then, the big kids took a crack at it!

I think there isn't much that is more entertaining in life than watching your kid get smacked in the face by a powdered sugar pastry.

Success!

Cute little friends.

Then, the adults took a turn! Who do you think won?
The picture says it all. And we have already agreed to not discuss any cheating that may or may not have occurred.

Yeah, you betcha we raced too! If only I had the capacity to shove an entire donut in my mouth at once like my husband... one can only dream... maybe someday...

Then the guys took each other on!

After all the donut spewing, chewing, and sticking to the roofs of our mouths, I think it'll be a long time till I eat another donut again.

Unless it's a maple bar, but I digress...

She's Got A Hole In Her Mouth!

and she looks pretty funny! Mikayla has been working on this tooth for awhile now and it's been hanging on by a thread for a few days. It was even discolored, but would not give up its place of residence for the past 6 years. But, as I was picking up the toys and mismatched socks in the living room tonight, I heard, "Mom!! Mom! My tooth came out! I'm not joking! It really did! Come here! Quick Mom!!!" It was 9pm and Mikayla knew she'd be in pretty big trouble for being awake so late without a good reason, but I guess a half hour of tooth-twisting rewarded her a few extra minutes til sleepy-time. I took her into the bathroom to clean the blood out of her mouth and she immediately called Dad to tell him the news as he was out playing basketball. Couldn't get a hold of Dad, but c'mon, this is a momentous occasion! She had to call SOMEone! She called Magaw and Papa and excitedly relayed the previous few minutes to them and kept saying, "I am so excited! I get to tell my teacher at school tomorrow and my name will go up on the tooth poster! I am the first one in November! This is just so exciting, I can't believe it!"





If I lost a tooth now, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be prancing around with jubilation wanting to call anyone who would get excited for me. I would cry. Lots of tears. But, things are different when you're 6.

Megan, of course, found the sounds of excitement a good reason to climb out of bed--since she likes to look for ANY reason to get out of bed. She came and out and said, "Mikayla, what the heck is all the noise for?" Mikayla showed her the tooth and then the gaping hole in her mouth and Megan took one look at that monstrous hole and declared, "Oh, Mikayla. This is BAD." Since she was a tooth fairy for Halloween, I asked if she would be the tooth fairy tonight. She looked at me and said very matter-of-factly, "Mom, I don't know how to fly. Remember?"

Ah, silly me. Last night, that tooth is hanging crooked. Wiggling it around some. And tonight, a nice big hole!

My Picks 'O The Patch

I love going to the pumpkin patch! I love the different sizes, colors, textures, and everything there is to do and look at.

Her shirt says, "So cute it's scary!"

Yeah, my kids just aren't scared of much I guess. Megan wanted to buy a fake skull this year and said, "Everytime people come to the door we can jump out and scare all the little kids with this!" "Uh, one problem, Megan. You ARE a little kid," I said. "Yeah, but that stuff doesn't scare ME," she assured me.

hahaha.

Don't Smoke

Walking Megan into preschool the other morning, I noticed it was so cold I could see my breath. I was asking Megan a question and she wasn't responding.

"Megan, answer me please," I said.

"I can't," she said. "If I open my mouth, all the smoke will get in."

Pumpkin Party!

We had pumpkin shaped pizza for dinner, carved pumpkins, and then pumpkin pie for dessert!

Mikayla REALLY wanted to cut and gut a pumpkin this year. She was told that she could paint one or gut it on her own. She 'promised' to do all the scooping, so we let her have at it. Dad helped scrape the insides and then it was all Mikayla throwing it in the trash.

She was pretty grossed out by it, but did it nonetheless!

Megan painted hers green "like a Frankenstein."

She then painted a pretty cute face on her Franken-pumpkin. I vote for painting them every year! I'm not too big on the gut-scooping, stringy mess of yuck that comes out of those pumpkins either.

Our pretty little Tooth Fairy. Megan was so excited to wear her sparkly blue dress and a little tiara and glass slippers. She had a fun little party at preschool with cookie decorating, Trick-or-Treating, and face painting.

The kids sang some songs for the parents too. Don't they look excited to sing?!

Then I went to Mikayla's school where my friend Kelsey and I were putting on the 1st grade party. There was a coloring station where they colored a Halloween easy-reader book to take home.

They did scratch art at another station where you scratch into the black paper to reveal the color underneath and we had them all make haunted houses.

They enjoyed Halloween bingo with candy corn.

And the favorite game of all was the donut on a string. Each kid had to eat their donut off a hanging string using only their mouth. So funny to watch 6 yr olds get pelted in the face with powdered sugar as their donut whizzes by their mouth! The best part was when the kids all went back to their seats and their teacher, Mrs. Valdez, played the donut game in fron of the class! Such a great sport! We sure love our first grade teacher and Mikayla is having such an awesome year!