Celebrating Molly, Molly Joy Joy!

This year Molly's birthday fell on a Sunday (bummer). We decided to celebrate on Wednesday, and she had a busy, great day! We went with Grammy to see the movie Tangled. I really, really liked it, and she enjoyed eating popcorn.

A few hours later we had a lot of family members over for dinner and cake & ice cream. Molly likes four things: Team Umizoomi, Dora, Elmo & Woody from Toy Story. Garry took her to Harmon's Grocery store and showed her an Elmo cake, a Toy Story cake and a Dora cake. She picked out the Elmo cake but it only came with Elmo & Grover in an airplace, so we spruced it up with some Dora & Diego toys we had downstairs.
She did a great job of blowing (spitting) out her candle!

Wednesday night I gave her a new blanket for her toddler bed. Time to say goodbye to the crib!

Here comes the toddler bed! She took a few days to warm up to it. The first two nights she slept in my room -- she just was not a fan of the toddler bed. Here is the blanket that I sewed for her.

Happy Birthday, Molly! Good golly, Miss Molly, I sure do love you!

Feeling Crafty

My sister-in-law had a baby a few weeks ago and so I made a baby blanket for her. It turned out a little. . .vibrant.

Ready To Go!

Every Sunday the girls take their scriptures to church. They cannot read them, but they're supposed to get in the habit now.

Molly hates being left out and I laughed when I realized that she went upstairs and got her toy laptop. She's ready to go, too!

This SHOULD Bother Me. . .

Thursdays are a little busy.

I send Emma to school and a few hours later wait for her to come home.

Right when she gets home, I gather everyone into the van and we're off to take Macey to Pre-K.

I take the other two girls home, give MoJo her nap and read with Emma and let her pick another activity when we're done.

We pick up Macey, come home, and shortly after take Emma to gymnastics.

We come home. . .and then go and get her.

We eat really fast and then we take Emma to Sunshine Generation.

It's a lot of back and forth in the van, and I should hate it. It should bother me. But, I noticed yesterday that I love picking up my little girls. I like having them all gathered in.

And here starts my nesting period. . .

Girls Are. . .Different

Have you seen the new Nissan commercial called "Kidzilla"? It shows a little boy 'playing' with his car in a bunch of boy ways. Stomping, slamming, flushing, sliming, burying. . .it gets messy.

Poor Macey. She is ALL GIRL. No, really, ALL GIRL. She watched that commercial yesterday and looked at me in horror. "What is he DOING?" she asked.

Boys. Such a foreign thing in our pink house.

Did I Do THAT?

Yesterday was a crazy day. I woke up and found out that a work product was due in a few hours for a client that I did a small research project for. I had to finish the research, get ahold of a printer and presentation folder, clean the house for the visiting teachers, and, oh ya, Macey had Show and Tell at school.

It was the letter "K". She had to bring something that started with the letter K. I was desperate and quickly found the movie King Kong for her to take. I told her that it was about a bad monkey. And hey, two K's. Extra credit, right?

It was not until after Garry dropped her off at preschool that I got really worried. Holy hannah, did I just send my daughter to Show and Tell with a Rated R movie? In Maryland, it would have been fine. Not so fine in Utah.

When she got home, I quickly checked her backpack and looked at the movie. Phew! Rated PG-13. Still not the best, but it could have been worse!

Where's The Remote? Where's The Remote?

My latest guilty pleasure is a show called "Haunted". Surprisingly, it is about haunted houses, and, truly surprising, it is on the Animal Planet channel. Not sure why, but it is.

I like it because it is creepy but not terrifying. I like creepy. I do not like scary. I do not like terrifying So, it works.

The other night the girls came into my room and asked if they could fall asleep watching tv with me. Since Emma is not in school, I said fine. But I warned them that I was watching a big-kid show and if it got too scary then they needed to tell me or go to their room.

Macey quickly fell asleep and I assumed that Emma was, as well, before I drifted off myself. This particular show was regarding a house built on top of sacred Indian ground. The house was known to be haunted and occupants only lasted about 18 months. The owners would hear scary noises and voices telling them to leave and their animals, well, the animals. . .

I quickly woke up when I heard Emma's scared little voice saying, "Mama, two animals have died. What is happening?"

Argh! Poor Emma! Where's the remote? Where's the remote?

Daily Snow

We seem to get snow daily lately, but none of it is really sticking. Molly is still fascinated by it, though!

GASP!

Yesterday I was cleaning the kitchen and Emma was in the family room, playing with some toys. I had the news on as that part of the day is the time I can turn off Dora and Diego and actually find out what is happening in the world.

After a few news stories, they did a special on childhood obesity. They talked about how some Mom's give their kids fast food at least once a week (guilty!) and then cut to one 'expert' who said that the government needed to get involved.

As an example, they talked about how San Francisco has banned Happy Meals or any other unhealthy "toy" meals for kids.

I did not realize that Emma was listening until I heard this abrupt GASP! from the family room.

I guess we won't be heading out to San Francisco anytime soon. . .

Oh yeah, there were pumpkins. . .

Is November too late for a posting on pumpkins? If so, I am sorry, but here we go anyway!

We found a little pumpkin farm about 1/2 mile from our house. It's small, but big enough for what we needed. The girls took their wheelbarrows and got their pumpkins! Then we took a hayride around the farm. (This picture shows us leaving the parking lot -- not very farmy here).

Then I took the girls through the corn maze. Corn maize?

And the girls had a great time playing on the equipment.

When Garry got home from Washington, D.C., we carved into our pumpkins. Garry looked at all three that we would have to dive into and determined that we had too many kids. Just wait until next year!

Garry carved up Macey and Emma's pumpkins. The girls were very specific about what they wanted their pumpkins to look like and chose all of the facial features. I did Molly's.

All done!

Passing It Along

She looks too beautiful to be a little terror, but alas. . .

This week I talked to a dear friend about her kids that were waking up way too early. She must have passed her curse on through the phone line because Molly has woken up twice this week before 5:30. Ugh.

The good news is that she happily watches tv, and so I am able to turn on whatever show she demands and lay back down.

Emma is off track from school for a month (we're on the year-round program) and we have Daylights Savings coming up. . .here's to a little more sleep in the weeks to come!

Another One Bites The (Fairy) Dust

Emma lost another tooth!

Thank goodness she has lost both while Garry has been in town because looking at wiggly, wobbly teeth makes me a little sick. Ugh.

She woke up to a silver dollar the next morning. At first she thought it was a quarter, and she was a good sport about the price going down, but Garry explained to her that it was actually a whole dollar!

Wear Them Out!!

Usually it seems like you spend a lot of time or money (or both) on a Halloween costume that the kids wear once and then you promptly put away. But not this year. We were so busy!
First, Macey was able to go to a birthday party and dress up. She had a great time and afterward we went to a party at The District (a large shopping area close to our home). The girls painted pumpkins and went trick-or-treating to the stores. Macey declared it to be the best day of her whole entire life!

Emma was also able to have a class party! That's her on the front row -- my little witch!

Molly was just the cutest Elmo! She was so good about leaving her hat on and at one stop even did a little Elmo dance.

One night my sister and I took the kids to search for The Great Pumpkin! The kids were able to get their faces painted, do a cake walk, do a ring-toss, and fished for prizes. The actual search did not go well for the little kids. The big kids were fast and furious in picking up candy. But, now that we know how the "search" works, we'll be ready for next year!

The girls were able to go trick-or-treating at Daybreak (the community around Emma and Macey's dance studio) and then trunk-or-treating at our church.

Holy cow! We were busy!