Just a Typical Sunday...

The flowers above are from my mom's 60th Birthday party that we threw for her and I just thought they were so pretty that I would post them.

Today has been just another Sunday ...On Sundays Geoff leaves at 5:45 am for church meetings and the kids usually wake up around then also. This morning they woke up with wet beds so of course that means early baths and lots of laundry. We then got dressed and ate breakfast. Carson took a little nap and then when he woke his great big 4 year old brother went into his room and stood on a stool and tried to get Carson out of his crib to bring him to me. I am sure you can imagine how that went. One minute I heard Carson chatting on the monitor and the next minute I heard painful screaming. So sad...he bonked his head on the crib on the way out and then was put "gently" down face first on the floor. So glad we have carpet in his room! Kolby actually felt really really bad so I had to apologize to him for getting so upset. I think that he learned his lesson that only mommy gets the baby out of the crib! yikes!

At Church today, the person who was giving the talk in Primary didn't show up so I asked Kolby if he wanted to give a talk. He loves getting up in front of everyone and saying prayers and has been dying to give a talk. Well today was his lucky day, except....he really really had to go to the bathroom. We got about 20 seconds into 1 1/2 minute talk and i realized he was dancing around. Then he suddenly stopped repeating what I told him and turned to me and announced that he had to go pee pee really bad. I told him to just hold it for one minute so we could finish the talk, but he replied that he couldn't hold it (even though he was holding himself very tightly!). So we abruptly ended his talk and we ran to the bathroom. I was laughing the whole way to the bathroom and he kept looking at me like i was crazy. He was like, "Mom, what is so funny? I just have to go to the bathroom." So much for his talk debut!

We came home to have our electricity go out due to the 5 mph winds and rainstorm we are experiencing (our valley doesn't handle any type of weather well unless it is hot and dry). The kids were very fascinated and had to go through everything in our house to ask me if it would still work even with the electricity out. My favorite question was posed by Kolby and he was seriously concerned. He said, "Mom, Does the plunger still work even when the lights go out?" It really is something he should be concerned about since he needs to use it almost on a daily basis. But that's a whole other story...

Eliza made me laugh when I gave her a bite of my peanut butter and banana sandwich and she said how yummy it was and then was sticking her face out at me. I thought she wanted another bite since it was so yummy, but when I offered she quickly corrected me by saying, "Look. You got the princess dirty. I am a princess and you got my face dirty." I looked at Geoff as to say, "did i just hear her right?" Yes, yes I did. I got the princess dirty. I really really love my little princess, even when she is dirty.

Last but not least of our happenings today, Carson finally rolled over from his tummy to his back. I've never even tried to encourage it until I realized this week how old he is getting and thought that by now the other kids were doing much more. Poor third child. So he and I spent some quality time on the floor today. Definitely can't roll the other way, yet, which makes it really nice for me at least for a couple of more weeks.

We're Back!

Kolby and Carson after Kolby "shared" him during his preschool Sharing Time. It was so cute that he wanted to show his little brother off to all of his little friends.

Kolby and Eliza loving their ice cream cones. Kolby got the cones off the top shelf in the pantry and the ice cream out of the freezer and scooped it up. Following in his father's footsteps...

The Binky Kids

Eliza looking so cute in her curlers. I thought this might be the solution to getting rid of her rat's nest that develops during naps and at night, but alas...she refused to sleep on those things.

I am going to do just a quick post to eliminate the guilt I've been feeling for not keeping up. Someday, maybe, I will catch up with pics from the holidays, but for now, I just want to show some cute photos of the kids from this month. Carson is getting so big and is so cute and so much fun. Besides his reflux issues, he is such a good little boy. Kolby and Eliza have way more energy than I know what to do with. Maybe we should cut back on the ice cream!

Kolby's Preschool Thanksgiving Program

Kolby was such a cute little Indian for his school program. The kids made a delicious "feast" for all the parents of corn muffins, stew, fruit salad and pumpkin bars. Kolby was proud of his hard work in the kitchen. He also did such a great job singing all of the Thanksgiving songs. It's so fun to see him progress and actually want to participate cuz last year's program I think he may have sung one word, but this year, he was belting them out!

Trying to get a good photo...

We discovered that trying to get a great photo of 3 kids is nearly impossible. This was about as good as we could get in our one attempt. We'll try again soon.

Carson's First Smile

What a wonderful day it was the day that Carson started smiling. I am happy to report that he is right on schedule and gave his first intentional smile on his 6 week birthday. It was a happy day for me to know that my little baby who seems very sad most of the time (he has reflux and breathing problems so he is miserable a lot) is actually a sweet smiley baby. I have so much fun playing with him now that he is so responsive to me. The smiling and cooing and gooing are so cute.

Trip Up the Coast

At the beginning of November, we hopped in the car and took a trip up the California Coast. We had such a great adventure. There was no planning or real schedule involved. We just went with 3 kids and a minivan full of junk. After 5 days of lots of driving, sleeping in different places every night and seeing lots of beautiful things and reconnecting with relatives, we joyfully returned to home sweet home. During our 5 day journey we went to Hearst castle, we saw all the elephant seals that migrated to the coast (the kids loved seeing them so up close), we drove through beautiful Big Sur, went on coastal nature hikes in Point Lobos Park, went to Carmel and Monterey, went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, drove along beautiful 17 mile drive in Pebble Beach, went on a train ride through the redwood forests (the kids loved riding on a real steam engine train), went to Santa Cruz and then passed through San Francisco to give my aunt and uncle in Upper Lake a surprise visit. We had a great visit with them and then headed back down toward Santa Rosa to visit with another aunt and uncle. Kolby loved their house with their huge toy room and real John Deere tractor that he got to drive around the property. It was so much fun for all of us. While in the quaint town of Windsor we stopped in "the" sweet shoppe of all sweet shoppes. It reminded me of something out of Willy Wonka...they had every kind of sweet that you could ever imagine. Not only were the kids in heaven, but I was too. Luckily we exercised some control and only shared a gelato. It was a great trip!

Halloween #3, Finally!

So, we had a great time at Disneyland and headed home to go to our neighbor's Halloween party on Friday night and then to a friend Halloween party on Saturday night. The kids had way too much fun and way too much sugar and if I never see another sugar cookie again I think I might be just fine. We spent Tuesday night carving pumpkins and Wednesday night at another friend's Halloween tradition...they invite people over for an open house style get together. They have scones, taco soup, hot dogs and scrumptious desserts. After we had dinner and chatted with friends, we were off to trick-or-treat. The kids were so excited. Carson and I stayed home and Geoff took Kolby and Eliza around. I thought they would be gone for a while, but Eliza only lasted about 10 minutes and then was ready to come home and dig into her candy. She had fun helping me answer the door and pass out candy, but still doesn't quite get why Kolby ended up with so much more candy than her that night. Kolby was a trooper and came home with a bucket full of candy. Luckily, he isn't much of a chocolate fan so he threw a lot of that away voluntarily. They both woke up the next morning asking if they got to go trick or treating again and if it was halloween. sorry kids...not for another year! It was quite the non-stop Halloween fun for us this year.