Halloween and Paying the Price

Halloween was fun and crazy. I feel like I never want to see another piece of candy in my life. Sarah was Belle and Rachel was Cinderella. Big surprise! Same thing 3 years running!

I failed to mention the fun ward Halloween festival we had. We were so happy our friend the Lees would join us. Rachel was Hannah Montana, Sarah was Snow White.


Our friends Hannah and Eliza were Cinderella and Tinkerbell.

The lure of the updo was just too great for Rachel to stick with Hannah Montana.



I am so thrilled about our reorganizing the primary situation. All the chairs face me now, so I can actually to see the kids' faces! I'm back from Siberia!

Sunday we invited a couple from our ward to dinner. I have been missing Mom a lot lately, and Sister Kappel who did sharing time reminded me so much of her, so I really wanted to invite her and her husband to dinner. When they came he was a little nervous as to why we would invite them to dinner. He was sure it was to enlist them in a multi-level marketing scheme. Too funny!



Sarah has been doing great on her bike. I am so pleased with her progress and bravery. She often crashes and surprises me by saying calmly that she's okay and gets right back on to keep going. I've never seen her like that before. I am also pleased to report that she is better from the fire ant bite. I had forgotten to say how the 30 minutes of crying ended only after the two girls decided to say a prayer together in the bathroom. I overheard them in the bathroom while I was looking up the fire ant info on the internet. Here is Mom, who supposedly knows everything or how to make everything better taking the scientific route, while Rachel the little sister has the simple and sweet faith to remember to pray...and a little child shall lead them.


Laundry day...I thought Lorene and Jenna would get a kick out of seeing this ensemble. Rachel came to me begging to wear this outfit. I think she knew I would have to accept as it was really all she had left. Oh well. It does sort of match color wise. The point was, she was very proud of herself and felt beautiful.


I decided to tackle that project of painting the "new" bookshelves. The Lees brought them out to us at Rachel's party, Thank You! Here is the before:

The "after" version you can see if you scroll back up to the picture of the kids organizing their candy. Not bad, heh? Well, I thought this would be a relatively easy one day project. I sanded and scraped and painted layer after layer and earned myself terrible back pain. I have been very slowly, carefully, tenderly trying to get through the days. Not being able to bend over and pick things up for a few days has made my house so crazy. Even using my "Tarzan feet," as Tyler calls them because I can pick up anything with my feet, I could not keep up. Worst of all I could not pick up Adam out of his bed, hence the next photo of all the kids in the pack n' play working together to get Adam in and out for me. It was so painful to try to hold him to nurse as he kicks and moves as he always does. Rather than getting better each day it got worse. Luckily Friday Tyler didn't have meetings so he could work from home, so that really helped. These $5 shelves have cost me a lot more in the end. I'll try to remember that next time.



Who noticed Rachel's extra long tongue? Its a plastic finger I think, but she is convinced its a tongue because it fits so nicely on the tip of hers. Thank you Grandma Shirley for the fun Halloween package. We love the bats and coloring books and of course candy. It was fun to get it a few days before Halloween to get their excitement going.


The girls watched Oklahoma! with me for the first time. Tyler refuses to watch certain musicles because it makes no sense to him why they keep busting out in spontaneous, harmonized, choreographed song and dance routines. So we watched it during girl time while Ty was golfing this morning. They didn't like the dream sequence, it was too scary. Modern dance is scary, what can I say? At least they weren't rolling off the stage...thats for you Eric.

They did like the part where all the girls dance in their slips before the party. They didn't get why the main girl Laurie is so strange to Curly. They kept asking, why is she acting like she doesn't like him if she does? I'm hoping this means they will be straight forward girls who don't play caddy jealousy games. They liked knowing Ado Annie was Aunt Luise's favorite character. They both wanted to be the little tag along girl with short blonde hair. I always wanted to be her too. I have many good memories of watching this show when I was very young, around 4, but after seeing it again, I kind of have to agree with Tyler, too much random singing. Thank goodness for the next chapter button!




Adam eats a little bit like cookie monster. Most of the food crumbles onto his lap and face before it even gets near his mouth. I keep taking pictures of him eating, its just so cute to me, and its most of what I do right now. I forgot about this stage of a baby. I am still nursing every 2 hours and trying to fill his tummy with big boy food every hour inbetween. It keeps bringing back all these memories of when Sarah almost 3 and Rachel 8 months. I felt like I was spoon-feeding the world. Sarah was going through a phase where if we didn't feed it to her, she wouldn't eat a single bite. Rachel was doing the rice cereal and baby food phase and obviously needed to be fed, but so did I. I longed for the day I could just sit down and feed myself! Boy I'm glad Sarah and Rachel both feed themselves now and even help me feed Adam. Tyler is a huge help with feeding too. He is proud of his little buddy beefing up a little bit.

I've never had a baby that really puts everything in their mouth. This is fun, well, until pennies and princess shoes start coming through in the diapers.

"I'm gonna suck on your nose!"

Have a great day!