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.

Photo Shoot

Little kids always look so darn cute all dressed up for church so I decided to take a picture of Makelle in her nice clothes yesterday.



That turned into me wanting to take a picture of Corbin giving his little sister a kiss. Good idea... extremely poor execution.









Success!

Trip to Southern Utah

This past week Caleb used up the rest of his vacation days and we took a trip down to Southern Utah. We stayed with his family over the weekend and then drove up to my Grandparent's house in Hatch for a couple days as well. Here is a photo collage of our adventures. Enjoy!



Playing with Molly.


Corbin became Adam's shadow while we were there. Lucky Adam! :)





Corbin LOVED riding the 4-wheelers. And he looked pretty cute in his cool helmet.


For some odd reason Caleb got alittle nervous when I told Corbin to take his sister down the slide at the park.



Feeding the horses.



Precious.



Whenever Corbin visits my Grandpa Nash, he always likes to take his hat and wear it around. Cute kid.

Boys will be boys

Lately Corbin has been playing with his little friend Jayden a lot. We like it when Corbin plays with Jayden, because for some reason they get along really well. Which means that unlike some "play dates" (a.k.a. trading babysitting:) we arrange, it is quite peaceful and I can actually get more done, by having an extra child over, than I would have, had Corbin not had a buddy to entertain him.

The other day they were outside playing with matchbox cars while I was talking to his mom. We soon became aware that they were being a little too good and something must be up. So we peek around the corner and low and behold, they have abandoned their toy cars and found something much funner to do.



Normally I would have gotten upset with Corbin, especially considering we had somewhere to be shortly. However, perhaps it was the presence of my neighbor, or perhaps I am relaxing and learning to relinquish control as a mother, but whatever the reason I decided it was cute and took pictures instead. What a fun time!

He's a Genius!

Here is our little boy, not even 3 years old yet.


Seriously, I am amazed at how smart he is.

(Especially at knowing which direction the letters face :)

Solids

Now that Makelle has hit the 6 month mark we decided to brave starting her on solids. This is when the nightmare of emergency room trips began with Corbin, leading to his diagnosis with severe food allergies and food sensitivities, so we are understandably a little nervous to put anything in her mouth.


So far our one feeding went great! She loved her rice cereal and I would say at least 10% of it actually made it down her throat :) She still doesn't really understand the concept of opening your mouth so that the spoon can fit inside, and she pushes most of it out with her tongue when she tries to swallow, but she is learning. It is so fun to watch her grow up and tackle new things!

It's a Girl!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not much of a girly-girl. Needless to say, I haven't actually bought Makelle any girl toys yet. So far she spent the last 6 months playing with blue rattles and tiny sports balls.

Recently Caleb's Aunt Mel sent the kids a little package with some small toys, including Makelle's first doll. So it is now official, she is a true girl with a little dolly.



I have to say, for a doll, it is pretty darn cute. I like that it is as little as she is. Corbin likes that you can push her tummy and make it laugh.

So far she seems to have really picked up on the caring aspect and seems to be properly enjoying it :)

InfoRipple

I just recently read an awesome blog, and then found out it's my cousin's!

It's here: www.inforipple.com

Legacy Half Marathon

For some stupid reason or another Caleb and I decided to sign up to run the Legacy Half Marathon less than 6 months after I gave birth. I seriously don't really know what I was thinking, for some reason I didn't think I had gotten that out of shape over the past year and I could just pick up fairly close to where I was over a year ago when I ran my last 13.1 miles. Not the case it turns out.

First off I have to say it was a much harder course. We didn't start (in August, mind you) until after 8 o'clock. We ran on Legacy Highway on the solid black asphalt--it was insanely hot. With nothing but dead weeds and roadkill as far as the eye could see. And a slightly industrial waste scent as far as the nose could smell.

Considering we skipped over half of our training schedule because things got so busy over the summer, Caleb did pretty well. It took him about 2 hours. I on the other hand ran a full 34 minutes slower than my time last summer. Not good. But even more than the time I felt like I was going to die on this run. I think I really did get heat stroke of some kind because I felt like I was going to pass out and I had this killer headache. But despite all the complaining and difficulties of the actual run, it was good. It is always good to get out and do something active that challenges you. So I am happy about that.