Disguised

We recently read the entire Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events with Parker. 

He loved them, and honestly I loved them, too. Those books were super funny.

But anyway, since reading them Parker has become very interested in disguises. (and of course his sisters follow his lead)

Here are a few of his more creative outfits

Halloween

Here's a whole pile of pictures from Halloween-- I'll be up to date one of these days!

Jason and I left the kids (with a babysitter, of course)and went to a Halloween party

Jason: Cuddlebug
Jennifer: The Devil

Then we had our ward trunk-or-treat

Jennifer: Something in a beaded dress (flapper, maybe?)
Parker: James
Aria: Belle
Terra: Ballerina

What a cute boy

Doing the cakewalk

Bad picture but this was Terra between every car...trying to sneak her candy.

After on of the YW painted 'a pumpkin' on Aria's cheek

The kids also wore their costumes to library story time a few days later.

Parker as James again, and this time Aria is Snow White

Because Aria dressed up as Bell and Snow White she now yells "look, look MEEE!" whenever she sees pictures of those princesses anywhere.

Little girl + big tutu = super adorable!

On Halloween the kids also wore their costumes while we ran errands so they trick-or-treated at Bashas and home depot, too.

For Halloween night Parker was not at all interested in going trick or treating, but he was super excited to give out candy. 

And he was planning and trying to set up a full carnival for anyone who was going to come by. I had to convince him (and it made him so sad it broke my heart) that trick-or-treaters were not going to be interested in playing ring toss, and pumpkin bowling, and fishing for treats and a haunted house and a small maze.

So I talked him down to just doing a fishing game, where the kids got candy by 'fishing' for it.

Our fishing set up

Waiting for someone to trick or treat at our house.

Halloween is s super fun holiday, but it is definitely batter with kids around!

Pumpkin Patch at the Botanical Garden

Every Year we go to the pumpkin patch before Halloween. This year I had a membership to the Desert Botanical Gardens and they have a pumpkin patch that was free for us, so we went there instead.

On the hayride out to the pumpkin patch

They had a little maze made out of hay:

The kids on a tractor 

Parker and Aria digging for desert creatures in the sand.

Bean bag toss

Spinning the wheel

It was so great they had all those games and more (pumpkin bowling, ring toss, etc) all free and the kids got prizes from playing each time.

Then we picked out our pupkins

I love that Terra has to work so hard just to pick up such a tiny pumpkin

Each child got to pick one pumpkin for free and they had stuff to decorate them with, too.

My kids chose to use markers

 A picture of a jack-o-lantern and 'happy halloween'

Scary jack-o-lantern on the other side

Aria, showing off her finished product

After the pumpkin patch we walked a little in the gardens and were able to go to the monarch butterfly exhibit

Butterflies in the tree

My little family in the butterfly pavilion

In front of Camelback mountain

Watching Movies

So I had decided long ago that I didn't want my kids to watch movies/TV until they're two years old. And I did that with Parker and Aria. 

Terra has gotten lucky.

She is not much of a napper and so she is not asleep long enough in the day to allow the big kids to watch a movie. So after several weeks of Parker asking to watch a movie I gave in and let them watch it even if Terra is around. 

We still try to keep it to 90 minutes a week, so I try not to feel bad about letting go of my rule.

And it turns out she is super cute while she watches movies

I also love when she growls at the characters in the TV.

Pie for Dinner

Hypothetically speaking... if I were to make pumpkin pie and let my kids eat it for dinner I would be a 'fun' mom, right?

Well, what if that pumpkin pie were made with tofu, fresh pumpkin, agave instead of sugar and an organic whole wheat pie crust?

Am I still fun?

Who cares, it was yummy!

Athletes

So the kids were digging around one day and found some sweat bands:

While digging they also got out the tent and Aria used the tent poles as a horse:

Poor Terra Berra

So I had said before that at Terra's 15 month appointment she was labeled as 'underweight'. Because of that they wanted her to come back six weeks later to check on her weight. We ended up hanging out at the Doctors quite a bit in those six weeks.

At her 15 month appointment she had a yeast infection and we got a prescription for that.

Two weeks later her rash was different but not eliminated, and she had a bad cough so we brought her back to the doctor.  She had a Strep diaper rash infection that replaced the yeast infection, pneumonia, and she had a staph infection on her toe where she had the tiniest little cut you can imagine. So she was put on a broad spectrum antibiotic for all of those and we were told to be very careful with her... because she was so  sick she had actually lost weight from her already 'underweight' size.

We finish the antibiotic but the staph infection didn't clear up completely so we put her on another antibiotic because even though I don't love antibiotics, I fear staph infections more.

A couple days later she was breaking out in a semi-severe rash all over her body (except her face) thinking it was a reaction to the antibiotic we went back to the doctor, stopped the antibiotics, and treated her staph with tee tree oil. 

The rash didn't get better right away when we stopped the antibiotics and it didn't get better with basic treatment for Eczema (though the rash was much more sudden and widespread than eczema usually is) so the doctor asked us to use another medication on her and it finally got better.

Then we finally had her weight recheck 6 weeks after it started. She had gained exactly 6oz and hadn't gained any height so she was back out of the 'underweight' category and was just a lightweight.. 

She was also teething more at this time, so that was awesome

So she had 6 Dr appointments in 6 weeks and was administered 8 different medications of one kind or another.

But at last, she is healthy again.

Here was my sweet Terra cuddling with her blankets one day when she wasn't feeling well.

Also I had recently had a conversation with Parker about death and one night while she had pneumonia Parker looked worried and quietly said "Ummm, Mommy, I don't remember what kind of sick you said it was when babies can get really sick and die. How sick are babies before they die?" (as he watched Terra with concern) Oh sweet Parker, he was worried his baby sister was going to die.

But thank goodness his fears didn't come true she is doing great now!

Random Catch Up Pics

So I have been less than diligent about the blog lately, and it makes me a little sad, but I am going to get back into it because I love having this little journal of my family, especially since I can share it with grandparents, etc.

So here's a post full of random pictures from the last few months just to show you a little bit of how cute my kids have been

Parker, purposely giving himself a mustache with his smoothie

Terra, wearing Parker's shoes

Parker and Aria being monsters:

The kids love playing with umbrellas and since it rarely rains they end up using them as a 'tent' (though it did rain a couple of days and they spent lots of time outside with their umbrellas.)

Terra likes to cuddle her blankets and pillows and it is so cute. And when she would do it I would make a comment about how cute it was, so Parker started cuddling up to blankets and pillows to and pointing it out to me so I could say how cute he was.

And this time he asked me to take a picture:

Both the big kids managed to use their smoothie cups to give themselves unibrows:

They got lollipops somewhere (library, I think) and for some reason I thought it was super cute so I took pictures.

Mostly this one,
that little baby hand and holding the lollipop in between those baby cheeks was to die for

More shaving cream and food dye in the bath: