Poses

One of Megan's favorite things to do is to listen to the High School Musical soundtrack. Every day as soon as she walks in the door after school, she goes straight to the cd player and blasts it. Not surprisingly, she knows every single word (as do the rest of us at this point - that happens when you listen to it 5-6 times a day every day for 3 months) and she now performs while singing along. Last week Kylie brought in our child-sized lawn chairs from the garage and the girls set them up into an impromptu concert hall in our kitchen. Megan performed to the entire soundtrack, using whatever was available as props (such as the excersaucer turned upside down) :)

I love this picture of Jack! He is such a ham! He saw me taking the picture of the girls and came running over so I could take one of him too. I told him to smile and the above picture is the result. It makes me laugh every time I see it :)

Jack is most definately the friendliest child I have ever had. At the pumpkin patch the other day, he walked over to a man that was sitting on a chair and climbed up into his lap. At our church's primary (the children's organization) activity last Friday night, he walked over to a member of our ward (who he had not met to my knowledge - if he did, he just saw him in the halls at church) and climbed right up into his lap to eat his lunch. Every time I turned around, he was being held by someone else. He makes everyone smile though and I'm glad he knows he is so loved that he never even questions that everyone else loves him too :)


Following are a few pictures from a photo shoot last week. I'm so glad we have digital cameras because otherwise I would be spending a fortune on film and getting it developed! The girls got a hold of the camera and when I found it later, there were 20-30 more pictures on it then there had been. I deleted all the pictures of thumbs and fingers and all the random shots of various pieces of furniture or various toys and then deleted all the ones that were so out of focus that it was difficult to tell who it was of, then cropped out all the underware (am I the only one whose children are impulsive nudists???). We ended up with some funny shots of all three girls :) I only included a few since I didn't want to upload all of them.







This past week has been busy and this week promises to be busy as well. Today my friend Beca is bringing over taco salad for lunch, so I need to figure out something yummy to make. Tonight we are doing Family Home Evening because we didn't get a chance to last night (we usually do it on Sundays) because their was a YW fireside. Tomorrow Rob has boxing and then I have my book club. Wednesday I am helping the Beehive class (12-13 year old girls) with their Halloween, scriptural-based Fear Factor activity. Thursday and Friday Rob is working a golf tournament at the country club after he gets off work, so he'll be gone until 11 or 12 each night. He works on Saturday, too, and Megan's school carnival is Saturday, so we'll have to try and make it to that as well. I keep waiting for things to slow down, but they keep getting busier :) I guess that's what happens with 4 kids!

Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins

With October upon us, we have thoroughly immersed ourselves into pumpkin season :) We took the flowers that the girls painted months ago out of the front windows and the girls painted pumpkin, bat and ghost shapes to put up instead. They love to paint and they love having their artwork up on display in the window. It makes it really easy for people to identify our house, too! Megan was concerned about putting bats up because the bat in "The Great Mouse Detective" is a bad guy, but I assured her that her bat could be nice instead. She made sure of that by painting the word "NICE" across the bat's wings :) Beth mixed all her colors together and covered her cutouts. Kylie, for the first time, actually put a face on hers. She's getting so big!

One of Jack's favorite things is to get into the fridge. Every time I open the door, he makes a beeline for it so he can try and grab a slice of cheese or a tomato. Jack loves tomatoes (and apples, peaches, pears, plums, etc), but he only likes them if they are whole.
Last Saturday we went to the pumpkin patch at the farm we get our milk and eggs from. This is the first year they've had one and the girls had a lot of fun. We bought them ice cream cones of feed so they could feed the goats and the pony. They went into the petting zoo, although since there was a dog in it, they didn't stay long. Beth's stay was even shorter as one of the goats head-butted her and knocked her down :( They loved the chickens though and the rabbit and the pony and the rest of the goats :) There was a cut out that you could take pictures of and the kids loved climbing up on the bale of hay behind it and having me take their pictures in various combinations. I've included two of my favorites. They probably had me take about 20. We picked out our big pumpkin and some more small ones and headed home.
Sunday after church the kids changed into play clothes and I cut the big pumpkin open and put it on the floor so the kids could scoop out the seeds. Meg did most of the scooping. Kylie was kind of grossed out by it and Beth only touched it once or twice. She doesn't like getting messy. Since it didn't make noise, Jack wasn't horribly interested in it.
I love this picture of Jack :) He noticed me taking pictures of the girls and had to come ham it up :)
Beth wanted me to take her picture as well since she wasn't really doing much to clean out the pumpkin.
When all the seeds were out, we got out the paints to decorate our little pumpkins. Since the kids are too young to carve pumpkins, Rob carves one and we have the kids paint small ones. We had the elders over for dinner (while the kids were scooping out pumpkin seeds, Rob and the elders did the dishes) and Elder Ranger painted pumpkins too.
Jack painted for the first time. He was quite interested in the paint on his fingers and making marks with it on the pumpkin and the newspaper. I was very thankful that it was washable as he got it all over - his hair, his face, his arms, his tummy . . . He makes bigger messes than I remember any of the girls making!

When all the pumpkins were painted, Daddy set to work carving the big one. He explained to us as he carved that the nose was crooked because "Little Jimmy" (apparently the pumpkin's name) had been a boxer and had his nose broken a few times. That was also the reason that one eye was smaller than the other . . . A good reason I suppose for a lack of symmetry :)

Yesterday Megan had the day off school since it was Columbus Day. Rob usually tries to take that day off, but due to our trips to OR and MA, he wasn't able to this year. Megan wanted to go to the "big" pumpkin patch, so the kids and I made another trip there. Fortunately, one of my YW, Brittney, offered to go with us to help keep an eye on the kids. Watching 4 smallish children by myself is difficult at best :)

Kylie told Megan about the pigs and the tortoise and the pony and that was top on their list of things to see. We spent quite a while watching the various animals, although I think the favorites were the horses and the pony. Jack kept trying to climb through the fence to get a closer look.
I got a picture of all four kids on two of the leather animals. Beth really did like it - it just doesn't look like it in the picture :)
After looking at the animals, we headed over to the bounce houses. Brittney took Beth and Jack to jump in the bounce house for children under 4 and Kylie and Megs stood in line for their chance to go through the big bounce house maze thing. Below is a shot of them as they slid down the final slide. They went through a couple of times and then we went on a hay ride. At that point, it was looking like it was going to start to rain, plus it was lunch time, so we headed home, picking up lunch at Sonic to make the day more of a treat :) It was so much easier to have Brittney there to help! I need a full time teenager :)
A final shot - after dinner tonight (roast chicken with potatoes and carrots), Jack came back to the table. He had told us he was done and had gotten down, but apparently decided to come back for seconds. Rob was clearing the table and had put all the extra food from the kids' plates onto one plate so he could rinse the others. Jack climbed up onto the table and helped himself!

Catching up . . . Welcome Home Travis!!!!!

All six of us (and my sister and her boyfriend) flew out to MA on Sept 24th to surprise my brother, Travis, who flew home on Sept 25th. We last saw Travis two years ago as he has been serving a full-time mission for the LDS church for the last 24 months. For those of you who are not familiar with Mormon missions, males can serve at age 19 and females at 21. You volunteer for it and the church assigns you where they need you. You pay for it yourself (Travis worked through high school to pay for his) and you spend two years (18 months for girls) working every single day to teach people about the beliefs of the LDS church. You don't date or go to school or read or listen to most music or even talk to your family other than on Mother's Day and Christmas.

Travis served in the Pocatello, Idaho Mission. We couldn't miss out on seeing him as he finished this amazing part of his life and we managed to somehow keep that we were flying out there a secret from him, so he was somewhat shocked when he walked out with Mom and Dad (who flew out to bring him home) and saw all of us!

Travis did an amazing job and I am so proud of him and all he was able to accomplish! I was able to spend some time talking with him while we were up in MA and he grew and learned so much. Well done Travis :)

Travis as he walked out and saw us all

A little surprised

Not sure you can see much of Travis in this picture :) His sisters missed him . . .

All of us except Brian (Molly's fiancee) who took the pictures

Pumpkin patch

Today our church met at the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch. Megan got to go on a field trip to watch Sleeping Beauty, so I thought it would be fun to take the other kids out. We didn't bother with the carpooling since we already have a pretty full car and we know how to get there since we've gone for the last three years.

The girls started off by going through the little kids maze. Jack stayed with me since it would have been difficult for me to go in and get him if he got lost. After that, we heading off to Kylie's favorite part of the whole Pumpkin Patch - the bounce houses. Kylie went in the big one with the slides and ladders, then all three kids went in the smaller square one. Even Jack loved it, although most of his time was spent trying to stay upright.

After the bounce houses, I pushed the kids on the merry-go-round (Kylie held Jack on) and then they explored the teepee. Jack loved it and didn't want to leave, but the hayride was getting ready to leave, so I scooped him up and we climbed into the hayride wagon.
Kylie sat next to me and Jack and Beth sat on the bale of hay right in front of me. It was very bouncy and Kylie asked if we were driving over pumpkins.
After the hayride, the kids climbed on the wooden tractor, train and farm truck. Their favorite was the tractor, although Jack likes anything with a steering wheel.

When the kids were done climbing, we walked over to see the animals. There were two pigs, a large tortoise, a donkey, and two horses. Near the pig pen and the horse corral, there were three large leather animals. The kids wanted to ride on them, so I lifted Jack up on top of the elephant, Beth on the lion and Kylie on the hippo. It would have made a cute picture, but I didn't want to move too far away from Jack, so I had to hold up the camera and try to get a good shot.
As we walked away from the animals, Jack spotted a little red tractor and immediately squirmed to get down. He made a beeline for it and spent a happy 15 mins pretending to drive it.
We had to get a picture with the Dora and Diego cut outs!
Before leaving, the kids each got a cup of shaved ice. Kylie got strawberry because it was pink, Beth got blue raspberry and Jack got pina colada because it's white. Below is the picture I got when I called Jack's name so he would turn and look at me. He thought he was getting another bite!
We finished up by buying 4 small pumpkins for the kids to paint (they aren't old enough to carve pumpkins).

I hope Megan had a great time on her field trip! We are off to walk to pick her up at school :)