Halloween

Halloween happened. Not much to say about it except that I felt like I had to dress my kids up multiple times for so many different Halloween events. What's up with that? What happened to just dressing up on Halloween night. Anyway, the kids had a blast and Ruby was so hilarious to watch. She couldn't believe that we would let her walk around with a bucket of candy. She got a dum-dum sucker from next door and had opened it and finished it by the time we made it back to our driveway. That was pretty much how it went for the rest of the night. At our ward party I found her more than once at the sucker tree game where all she had to do was pull a sucker off of the tree and it was hers. I dare say that she has a favorite holiday now.

Ruby was a last minute flower. She was going to be a ballerina, but the weather was cooler than anticipated. Thankfully she is still young enough to not care.


Lyda decided a while ago that she wanted to be Snow White because of her short hair. I thought that was great because we already had the dress.


Kode always has to pick something a little bit different each year. Something that not everybody will recognize. This year it was Astro Boy (not my favorite movie). He originally wanted to be Rusty the boy robot, but I sort of discouraged that because other than us, nobody would know who he was. Regardless what he chooses, I always find myself trying to throw together a costume. Fortunately Astro Boy didn't take much work.




Trick or Treating at Grandma & Grandpa Crandell's house.


One thing that I learned from this Halloween, is that in the future if I need to choose between spraying a whole head with black hair spray or buying a wig, I will go with the wig. That stuff is so messy.

Kode is 5 . . . I mean 4!

Well three days after Ruby's birthday celebration, it was Kode's turn. Oh how excited he was to have his birthday. I wonder if he still thinks he might catch up to Lyda. All day people asked him how old he was and he would start to tell them and then realize he couldn't remember, so he'd turn to me and quietly ask how old he was, and then he would turn back to the person asking and excitedly tell them he was 4. As the day went on he was getting the hang of handling the question himself, and then for some reason kept confusing 4 with 5. So for a majority of the day he told people he was 5. I'm happy to report that a month later he knows, without asking, that he is 4 years old. So we planned a little birthday party this year for Kode. We went to Jump and Shout which is made up of inflatables and tubes to climb through. It was a blast. The party may have been an hour too long, but the kids really did have a great time. And for the most part it was an ideal setting. Kode was in absolute heaven and that was the best part of the day. My friend Jessica was so great to take so many pictures of the event for me. Happy birthday Kode-Man. We love you so much and all of the extra testosterone that you bring into our home. You are boy through and through!

Ruby's Birthday!

Ruby turned 2 this last month. I can't believe she's 2 already! We kept her celebration pretty low key since she really doesn't play with friends at this point anyway. I happened to be babysitting the Jones kids on her birthday so we had cupcakes and opened presents with them. It was perfect for a 2 year old. This year she actually understood that the day was all about her. She loved opening presents and when they were gone she would randomly check gift bags to make sure she hadn't missed one. She asked for more presents for days after her birthday. And when Kode's turn came three days later, we had to convince her that they were for him and not her. My favorite part of her birthday was listening to her sing happy birthday to herself all day. She would say, "Happy to shoo me." Which translates into "happy to you, me" which still doesn't quite makes sense, but she always forgets to sing birthday for some reason. Anyway, it was pretty darn cute.

She was so excited to have balloons tied to her chair. Especially a princess one. I think Steve's antennae are awesome in this picture.


Loving her cake and ice cream. More the ice cream than the cake.


Fun to have some friends over.


We bought her this little dance outfit to match Lyda's. She looks pretty sweet in it. We also bought her this little baby doll potty hoping to get her excited about using the real potty. Apparently she prefers the baby potty.


Man we love this girl. She is so sweet, naughty and fun all bundled up in one package. She has opinions these days and is cracking us up all the time. We love you so much Ruby doo!

Disneyland!

Steve and I have wanted to take the kids to Disneyland for quite some time and we finally did it. We secretly planned the trip and packed the kids up to go without them knowing. We told the kids on the drive to California where we were going. It took a good five minutes before Lyda actually believed us. We left Ruby in good hands with cousin Stephanie and Grandma and Grandpa Edmunds. We were pretty confident that she would hate Disneyland and promise to take her when she's older. This is a picture that her cousin took of her while we were gone.


I think she had fun.

We have a tradition of riding the Peter Pan ride first. This is Steve's favorite ride.


The map was such an exciting thing for the kids. They constantly asked to see the map so we could figure out where to go. I loved that they were sharing. This may have been the only time they shared it, but it happened.


The kids loved most of the rides. Thunder Mountain seemed to be the biggest hit, along with the Matterhorn and Buzz Lightyear. They were both tall enough to ride just about everything so we took them on just about everything. The kids decided that Tower of Terror and Space Mountain (which was decked out for Halloween and way too scary for little kids) were the worst rides. Those two brought Kode to tears. I really think they would have loved Space Mountain without the fiery ghost things trying to grab them. (I know, worst parents ever) And they begged to go on the Tower of Terror. It was a first for Steve and I also. We realized as we were getting on the ride that we hadn't seen any young kids in the line other than ours. We looked at each other and wondered what we were taking our kids on. Here's a picture of Kode hanging on Steve's pant leg just prior to getting on Space Mountain.


We tried our first pineapple floats this time. I don't even want to think about how much we spent on pineapple floats alone. We have been drinking pineapple juice ever since. Steve took the opportunity to photograph our heavenly moment.


We played hard and had two fun filled days of "The Happiest Place on Earth". We crashed pretty hard at the end of each day. Kode even fell asleep in the stroller on the way out of the park. We truly had a blast and can't wait until our next trip back. And maybe next time we'll take Ruby with us.

First Days of School

We are a little late on this, but our kids had a first day of school too. Lyda is officially a first grader and she is actually liking it. Yay! Last year she begged to stay home from school every day. She never asks to stay home this year. One of the neatest things about living so close to the school is that we can see Lyda swinging at recess from our driveway. Sometimes she sees us and we wave at each other. I love being able to sneak a peek at my daughter during the day. I still have mixed feelings about her being gone all day long.


Kode started preschool finally. So many tears were shed as we would drop Lyda off at preschool and he had to go home with me. I guess I just expected that he would jump out of the car and be so excited to go to class. Not so. He threw the biggest fit I've ever seen and I left him crying in his teacher's arms. Well I am glad to report that after a few rough mornings, getting to know a few new friends, he is finally happy to go to preschool. And now it is Ruby who cries because she wants to go to preschool too.

We Start 'Em Young

Just getting a head start on the computer game addiction. So far so good.

Feeling the Love

This is how my life feels most days. If Lyda could have squeezed in there she would have.

Following the crowd

Somebody got a haircut at our house!


Because she wanted her hair just like hers.


Whatever her reasons, we think she looks pretty darn cute.

Featherhead and Airholes

This is my funny little featherhead who recently referred to his little sister's mouth as her airhole. Pretty sure Avatar inspired that one. Love it!