Happy Halloween

Makelle was still a little stuffy, but for the most part the kids were feeling better, so we got dressed up for the ward Halloween party and yesterday we took them to the Halloween party at Caleb's office. It was fun to show Corbin where Caleb worked, now that he is older and starting to understand things better. Plus, it was the first time a lot of Caleb's coworkers got to see Makelle so that was fun.


Then this afternoon we took the kids around to our families' to show off their cute little outfits and then we went to the neighborhood trunk-or-treat and Corbin got super ornery (apparently no nap, no lunch and lots of treats are not the best idea... go figure). But all in all we were able to salvage most of the weekend, after being cooped up inside feeling sick, and have a good time.



Corbin said he really liked dressing up and getting treats.


Makelle seemed to really like watching people dress up and... getting treats?

Venting... Extremely Long Post

I love Halloween. I am not sure why or where this love came from, but I thoroughly enjoy the holiday. Every year since we were dating Caleb and I have dressed up together (with the one exception of 2006 when I was 8 1/2 months pregnant and went to bed at 9:00).

2004: He was one of the guys from Starsky and Hutch, I was an Asian Girl
2005: He was a magician, I was a bunny
2007: He was a farmer, I was a pig and Corbin was a cow
2008: He was Eeyore, I was Winnie the Pooh and Corbin was Tigger

This year we let Corbin help decide the costume theme for our family. I came up with some ideas and he got to pick one. He chose Peter Pan characters. Caleb immediately called dibs on NOT being Peter Pan. He is a pretty good sport about dressing up with me, but apparently he draws the line at wearing tights.

I did a little looking around on eBay for some cheap, cute costumes, but I am far too picky to have found anything I liked, so I decided to develop a new talent and sew some costumes. Thus, about 6-7 weeks ago I started making weekly trips to our fabric store with my 40% off coupon and slowly purchasing supplies.

Makelle's Tinkerbell dress had a pattern, I changed a few things, but mostly stuck to the pattern. I had to look up 3 separate eHow videos during step one of the pattern alone. (Who knew 'basting' wasn't just for turkeys?) It took FOREVER to make, but I finished it.

Then I moved onto Corbin's Peter Pan costume. Maybe 50% of it is from a pattern, the rest I improvised. I finished it about a month ago and I honestly think he has probably worn it, for varying lengths of time, just about every single day since.

Caleb is going as Captain Hook. By the time we priced all the individual accessories he was going to need, we decided to buy a costume off eBay after all. Corbin also probably wears it, for varying lengths of time, just about every single day since.



Finally I needed a character. Wendy seemed like an easy choice. I had no pattern though... picky girl couldn't find one she liked on the $1 rack. So I figured I was basically an expert seamstress by now, (what with two whole costumes under my belt) and could make something up. I underestimated how much fabric it would take to make myself a dress compared to my 8 month old daughter's and had to make a return trip to the fabric store... they were out of the original fabric and wouldn't get any in before Halloween. The sleeves are now slightly different than the bodice. I did a throw-together job and it is completely unflattering, but has the same basic color scheme and style as Wendy.

We are good to go. For all the effort these costumes took and as much as Corbin seems to like dressing up (he literally has asked me at least once a day, "Is it Halloween, yet?" for at least the past month). I decide to make it a full week long celebration and plan 9 different outings for this week, in which Corbin can dress up and participate in various Halloween festivities. Probably a bit much, but a lot of it was little things like Halloween Storytime at the library that we usually go to every week anyway. Plus let's face it, Halloween is all about the candy for most kids, and Corbin can't even eat most of it. So I wanted it to be more about playing pretend and get togethers with family and friends.

I am excited, Corbin is excited, Makelle is clueless and Caleb is hunkering down, ready to endure it. Then Monday comes, I take Corbin in to the doctors' for his annual check up and he catches a minor bug. He doesn't really get too sick, but his asthma has already been flaring up a lot lately and now he is needing more help breathing than I can offer him with all my herbs, tricks, rubs, medicines, treatments at home. After a day in the clinic, they send him home with his own portable nebulizer and he has spent all week struggling to breathe.


The next day, Makelle also gets sick. Like her brother, she isn't showing too many symptoms, the doctor even checks and says it isn't the flu or anything serious, but due to her enlarged turbinates, she can't breathe either. Or suck continuously for long enough to get milk when nursing. Luckily we have a lot of bottles in the freezer and she is doing well with solids now, but oh man is it SOOO frustrating that every little thing... so mild most parents would probably see a runny nose for one day and attribute it to the cold weather that hit this week, and carry on with life as normal. But not my kids.

Anyhow, we tried to make the best of things and still have some fun. So, we watched Halloween movies, read Halloween books, made masks, played little games, ate themed foods, etc. Caleb gave him a father's blessing in which he was offered comfort and assistance sleeping and he only woke up twice last night and hasn't needed his nebulizer once today. Yea! We are going to keep watching him and hopefully he doesn't relapse and he can at least participate in some of the fun things we had planned for the last half of the week.

Sleep, Glorious Sleep.

Rain + Tooth = Sleep!
Both of our dear little children have been waking up multiple times a night lately.

Corbin has even come in our room and ended up sleeping in our bed with us a few times, which is a BIG NO in our family. (The sad thing is that I don't even remember putting him there [he really can't climb onto our bed on his own], so when we woke up I started lecturing Caleb about why he would let Corbin sleep there when he pointed out that I was the one that put him there in the first place. Oops... I guess that shows how tired and out of it I was.)

So anyway, it rained pretty hard yesterday and finally cleared out whatever was in the air that was causing Corbin's asthma to flair up so bad lately. And he slept well for the first time in weeks.

And after a few days of fussiness and poor sleeping, Makelle finally cut her first tooth yesterday as well. She literally woke up every 20 minutes yesterday and then last night I felt her little tooth pop up and she completely crashed.

In fact it is after 8 o'clock in the morning and they are both still asleep. I think their poor tired little bodies were exhausted, I know I was.

Corbin's Special Day

Today was our ward's Primary Program, and Corbin was invited up to participate in one of the songs. He was SOOO excited to be involved, and actually got upset when they made his class go sit back down after one song. He kept saying, "But when is it my turn to talk in the microphone?"


When I was growing up my family had a 'special plate.' Whenever a child did something that was deemed special, we got to eat on the special plate. Sadly enough, it was pretty much the highlight of our achievements and something we LOVED to get to participate in. So I am now continuing that tradition with my children and Corbin had his first opportunity to eat off of the 'special plate' today.


We were so proud of him, he looked pretty cute up on the stage by himself singing his little song. I think he actually did get a little nervous because he didn't belt it out super loud like he does at home, but he was loud enough that we were able to pick his little voice out from the crowd, especially the "whaaat?!"

Pumpkin Party

Last night a couple in our ward invited us over for a pumpkin carving party. It began with a half hour debate over which pumpkin to buy... and ended with a pretty cool jack-o-lantern.


You'll notice how involved we kept Makelle... sitting on the floor by herself in the background. Poor second child.



Bean's job was to pull out the "guts." As with last year, he wasn't very good at it, because he was far too worried about how messy he was getting.


The great pumpkin selection debacle resulted in us getting a late start and Makelle got tired, so we had to take it home and finish up the last little bit of carving.



(It's Captain Hook... in the off chance you didn't guess that on your own :)

Self Feeding

Makelle is doing quite well adjusting to and loving her new array of foods. So far she is eating fruits, vegetables and grains. I haven't yet braved the dairy section of the pantry or bothered dealing with meats. She has recently graduated to small, mushy finger foods and is learning how to pick things up with her little fingers and poke them into her mouth. It is pretty cute -- and pretty messy. She pretty much gets a bath every time you let her eat.


Here she is trying out some of our one and only garden watermelon (there were actually a few growing, but they didn't have quite enough time to ripen completely before the cold came :(

Birthday Party

Last week was my niece's birthday. I made her a cake. I was pretty proud of it afterwards, so now you all get to see me showing it off:



She also had a pinata at her party... Corbin was a BIG fan.

Daddy's Girl

Oh man are we in trouble, at a mere 7 months old Makelle already has her Daddy wrapped around her little finger. Pretty much whenever she cries or tries to get a hold of something, Caleb promptly hands it to her. Cell phones, car keys, remotes, cameras, snacks, fine jewelry... whatever she wants, she gets. Poor Caleb can't bear to hear her fuss, so instead he just gives in. They are so cute together.

I got a Email!

A couple of weeks ago one of Corbin's little friends sent him a chain letter in the mail to join the sticker club. It was a pretty cute idea, you send a package of stickers to the person whose address is on the letter you get, and then you copy and forward the letter to six of your friends and shortly thereafter, you get stickers back in the mail.

Well it sounded cute, until I realized that the only friends Corbin plays with had already gotten the letter from the same girl that gave him his, since they all play together. So first off we had to struggle to come up with six additional people to send it to.

Well we eventually got all his little letters sent out and he has started receiving stickers in the mail from his "friends" this week... unless you ask him of course, in which case he has been receiving 'emails' from his friends. There is no convincing him that they are letters. That's right, our poor son has NO concept of real mail. As sad as it is the only thing that he can cognitively relate to is email. He is definitely growing up in a different world than we did.


So in the end this little activity ended up being more valuable than I would have guessed as it is helping us to teach him that you can send real, tangible letters through the mail in addition to the virtual messages that Daddy emails him periodically. Of course in not correcting him, there is that cute moment of watching him run to the door when he hears Caleb getting home and asking, "Did I get another email today, Daddy?"

Fire Truck

Lately Corbin has been attending story time at the library every Wednesday morning. They do a really good job with it, every week there is some theme or another and the librarian always brings lots of little props and incorporates songs and what not.

So this week was all about firemen. They read a couple of books and then a few guys from the local fire department stopped by and showed the kids all their fire safety gear and let them check out the big truck. Corbin seemed to have a lot of fun and was excited to tell me everything he had learned about 'stop, drop and roll' and crawling along the ground to the nearest exit in case of an emergency, etc. He is quite the little fire escape expert now.


You will notice Corbin sitting still to the side, focused on his "teachers." He is always quite oddly attentive during these sorts of presentations and what not. I really like that he has such a good attention span and loves to learn so much. Something tells me that attribute will come in quite handy throughout his life.

Yay Caleb!

Today was Tanner, LC's annual State of the Firm address. During their meeting the partners announced that Caleb was being promoted to a senior accountant. Not only that, but he was the only one that got a promotion at this year's meeting! That is quite uncommon, since he started as a staff accountant at the same time as a half dozen or so other guys, and for the most part they typically move along the company ladder together. Anyway, we are quite proud of Caleb and his success at work, he really does deserve it, as he works hard to support our family so I can stay at home with the kiddos. Good job, Caleb!

Conference Weekend

This weekend we had the opportunity to sit home and watch General Conference together as a family. Not only is it a wonderful opportunity to hear from our Prophet and receive direction in our lives, but it is also nice to have a few days set aside to not worry about running errands or working on weekend projects, but rather just sit around and enjoy the spirit in our home.

To make it a little more "homey" we ate a ridiculously large pancake breakfast (with hot chocolate, of course), drank homemade apple juice and fixed a yummy dessert -- I guess conference is good for our spirits, but maybe not so much for our bodies :)




In an effort to help ease Corbin's boredom from 8+ hours of quietly listening to talks we broke out the old Conference BINGO. He doesn't fully understand everything being taught by the speakers, but we found that by turning it into a game he could listen for keywords he was familiar with from Church (for a little while anyway :) and at least get something out of it.

Sleeping

One of my least favorite times of day: Bedtime.

Oh the protests and attempts to stall... it drives me crazy and wears me down.

One of my favorite times of day: Checking in on the kids before bed.

Little devils turn into little angels the second they fall asleep; so peaceful and precious... it melts my heart to see them for the sweet miracles they are.