Happy Halloween...?

Okay, so I realize it is November 14 and in fact all our Christmas decorations are already up and I am just now blogging about Halloween.  Sorry.

We will start with the Christmas decorations.  I do love Christmas and usually put the decorations up early but this year we will blame it on Kenna.  Two Sundays ago she asked to put the tree up.  We did.  Last Sunday she asked to put the decorations up.  I didn't have a good reason not to so we did that too.  Nate dutifully carried all the boxes down to the living room where I unwisely let the girls go crazy and open every box and pull everything out.  Callie found the bag of jingle bells that go on the tree, dumped them out then carried them all over the house throwing them.  Kenna unwrapped everything and followed it up with an excited, "Look mom! I forgot about this!"  I sat there looking at the mess wondering what to do with it all and why I'd agreed to put stuff up.  We worked it all out though.  Everything had a place by Sunday night and all the boxes were hauled back upstairs by Wednesday and now we just get to enjoy our Christmas decorations.

 

 

 Oh, Kenna has started her own collection.  Last year after Christmas Grandma and Anna found a pink tree on super sale somewhere and brought it out for Kenna to have in her room.  She's been really excited to put it up and the other day when we were at the store she found a "girl nutcracker".  I tried to explain to her that just because it was pink it didn't make it a girl because it still had a beard.  She did not believe me and now she has a pink girl nutcracker to go with her pink tree.

 

I am still working.  Technically I have 4 jobs, so I like to rub that in Nate's face.  Though to be fair I haven't worked at 3 of those jobs since summer.  My consistent job it at an outpatient clinic for kiddos just a few miles from my house.  I really like it.  It is challenging and fulfilling.  I'm working three afternoons/evening a week so that means Nate and the kids are on their own those nights.  I feel a little guilty about missing family dinner and bedtime but at least Nate is home with them.  He has been working longer hours too and some days it seems like we don't see each other at all.  We try to make up for it by doing fun family stuff on the weekends.  When we ask Kenna what is something fun she'd like to do as a family her immediate response is always "go to gattitown!"  One of these days we are actually going to have to take her.  For tonight she chose McDonalds and she promptly invited Bo, Jenna and Emmy. 

Kenna is taking swim lessons this month.  She is super cute and fun to watch because she hates having water in her eyes but it too timid to ask the teacher for a towel to wipe them off.  She says she likes it though and asked if she could do it again next month.  Oh, I almost forgot.  For her first lesson she decided she needed to layer her bathing suit tops so she wore two.  She is always very fashion conscious.

Callie had her first ride on a carousel last week and decided after half of a loop around she hated it and cried the rest of the ride.  She has learned some new words.  "Uh oh" and "yeah" are very good and sound exactly like they should.  It's really cute when she nods her head and says "yeah".  She can tell you what Santa says "ho ho!" what a duck says, "kaaa, kaaa" and she can show you where her belly is.  The rest of her words all still sound like "kah kah or mah mah".  She loves Nate but still calls him mama.  When he gets home from work Callie runs for the door yelling, "mama mama!"  The other day at the gym Callie just walked right through the gate to go play without looking back.  She didn't walk to her room though.  Instead she looked up at the gal working there and said, "mama. mama" over and over again until the gal realized that Callie wanted to be picked up and carried back there.  It was pretty funny.

 

 

 

 

 callie's new favorite toy is the barrel of monkeys.  she has also started to color/dump out the bag of crayons.

 

Kenna took a trip to Chuck-E-Cheese for a birthday part and was completely obsessed with Chuck-E.  She kept waiting for him to come out and when he did she followed him around and danced with him.  She asked every possible question including where he lives, why he's real, why he dances with her and many more that I can't remember.   

 

 

 

 

We also had to have some foundation work done this last week.  The guy who came to look at our house said it had a crack running down the middle and the front half was falling.  The workers came and put 14 pillars around the front and sides of our house so the house doesn't break in two (Nate works with a guy who has a friend that happened to).  Unfortunately (or fortunately) it did no damage to our floors so I didn't get hardwoods out of it.  Fortunately, we got it fixed before there was too much damage and the pillars didn't have to be placed in the middle of our house which would require us to vacate and huge holes to be cut into our floors.  Kenna asked her million questions and now has a thorough understanding of foundations.

The weather just turned crispy this week.  It is nice.  We have been having lots of crockpot soups and at nights we bundle up and let Callie walk around the neighborhood while Kenna rides her balance bike.  It is fun and sometimes we even see dogs out for walks at which point Callie b-lines for the dog regardless of curbs, holes or obstacles yelling, "uhwhoo whoo" the whole way (that is her dog noise).

Now that I have gotten up to date we can back track to Halloween. 

Kenna went out with Nate to Utah just before Halloween.  He had a "man weekend" and Kenna got to spend the weekend with Grandma, Grandpa and Anna.  I haven't heard all the deatials of what happened, but here is what I know.  They went to McDonalds, Witches Night Out (where everyone dresses as witches and you get candy and see Halloween decorations), This is the Place, to the pond to feed the ducks, ate tons of candy and got a new tutu and a new Doc Mcstuffins book.  She had a great time and when I asked her on Sunday morning whether she wanted to come home or stay with Grandma she didn't even hesitate before saying, "stay with grandma."  I'm glad she had fun.

Kenna was Sophia the First (a new princess on the disney channel) and Callie was a bumble bee on halloween.  We went to Lixi's house for our annual Halloween bonfire where the kids ate too many marshmallows and had a great time running around the back yard.  When it was finally time to go trick-or-treating Callie was exhausted and just got pushed around in her stroller sucking on her binkie.  She had a good time though.  Kenna ran from house to house with her little friends and we had to keep telling them to wait up.  She got two buckets of candy and then helped pass it out for a little while when she got home.  She was exhausted and went right to sleep when she finally crawled into bed.  It was an excellent Halloween!

 we curled kenna's hair to be a princess.  she was thrilled

 

 

 

 

 

 literally running from house to house.

 

 Our pumpkin Carving night.  Kenna helped Nate push the knife in.  Callie helped eat the pumpkin.

 

 Picasso wanted to carve and color the pumpkin