Helpers...

These two are so adorable together. Lately Banden wants to help with EVERYTHING. There are times when this drives me crazy, I hate to admit, because it slows everything down. But I know that this stage won't last forever and I do want to encourage and teach him. So little by little I've been letting him to more and more on his own. His favorite right now is rinsing the dishes for the dishwasher, and although he uses WAY too much soap and water and the floor is a puddle, he does do such a super job...and is so very capable! When I bust out the stool for him his little monkey sister comes crawling out of no where and scoots right up that step stool to stand next to him. She likes to supervise and is a bit bossy to boot! Banden is so patient with her and sweet. The perfect big brother, my oh my he is growing up fast!! For years before he turned five he would always tell me, I'll do that when I'm five, and now he's five and he is determined to do it all...and more.

Thoughts of a beautiful night.

Walking with my children
as dusk settles in.
Bare branches stretch skeletal fingers
against the dark grey sky.
Crisp air, cold noses.
Birds flying in formation
towards warmth.
Tiny voices echo loudly
in the quiet of the settling night.
Yellow light spills from windows.
An almost full moon
plays peek-a-boo.
The sent of snow teases us
for what we hope might come.
Breath coming out in white puffs.
Talking about finding the beauty
in all things.
Smelling the smoke of fires
burned for warmth.
The season has changed.

*sigh*

I think about blog posts when driving.

When washing the dishes.

Vacuuming.

Taking a shower.

Trying in vain to go to sleep.

I think about blog posts while folding laundry.

mixing muffins.

Sweeping.

Scrubbing toilets.

Making dinner.

I come up with some really great ideas.

But then I sit down to write them out and most often I stall. I come up blank. Or I start to write and get interrupted by a child or a friend on the phone or my husband. And since they all come first I stop. I focus on them. And my idea evaporates into thin air. So I give up. Sometimes I just post some pictures to feel better, but mostly I just give up and walk away. Vacuum...and think about a really great blog post. *sigh*

Is she sassy?

Yes, I do believe she is...

She's 13 months old and still not walking...but she LOVES to dance and she climbs on everything! A couple days ago she figured out how to climb our dinning room chairs, and from there climb onto the table and I have since lost count on how many times she has done this. We have two table sets, one in the dinning room and one in the play room and she just keeps going from one to the other. I get her down from one she's climbing the other. And she's fast! She's also trying to climb the ladder to the boys bunk bed so I'm going to have to start removing it every day.

She's already trying to tell her brothers what to do and run the show. When I have to scold one of the boys for something you can often hear her in the background echoing me. She has the tone down and everything, sounds just like me even though you can't really understand a word she's saying.

But underneath all that sass is a sweetheart. She is so cuddly and gives the most adorable kisses. She is hilarious. So full of personality.

She is starting to play with her brothers, it's so cute to see her growling while playing with a dinosaur or making car noises as she pushes one along the floor after her brother.

She loves playing outside and is constantly trying to sneak out the back door no matter the weather.

She is saying new words almost everyday it seems.

She still has only four teeth on top and two on the bottom, although I'm pretty sure she's working on some more on the bottom right now. She loves to eat! {Even though she only has six teeth...} Veggie soup it is her favorite right now, she can eat bowl after bowl of veggie soup. I guess you don't really need many teeth for that, ha ha!

She adores her daddy, lights up when she sees him and crawls lightening fast into his arms when he walks in the door. {He is quite smitten with her.} Even though she adores her daddy she is still an absolute mommy's girl. :)

Lately she's been a bit obsessed with shoes. Very UNlike her mommy. She gets all her shoes out and plays with them, looks at them and tries to put them on her feet. She is starting to play with her baby dolls too, gives them little kiss and such. Not nearly as much as blocks, dino's and cars though! So far it looks as if she will be more of a tomboy then a girly-girl, which makes my heart happy. She's got drama though, lots and lots of drama. I guess she can't be perfect all the time. {But she's pretty close if you ask me...}

Hey!

I wrote all about the harvest party here...check it out. :)

Happy Harvest!

We had so much fun carving pumpkins this year. We got two giant pumpkins from a friend of ours {plus the ones we picked at the field} and they were so cool! I thought they would be hard to carve, but they were surprisingly easy. Not so easy to carry in and set on the table though! We cleaned them out and saved the seeds. I was so excited to roast up those seeds but unfortunately they did not taste good. Apparently the seeds from the big pumpkins do not make good roasting seeds. Good to know. Next year I won't waste all that time seperating them out, ugggg! We did have tons of fun cleaning out the pumpkin guts though.

Even baby sister got in on the action!

Ta-da! A happy pumpkin and an angry pumpkin, by order of the children. The silly pumpkin had to wait until daddy got home, it was to heavy for mommy...

Hubby and the boys did a great job on the silly pumpkin...

...and it joined the others out front. I love glowing happy, silly and even angry jack-o-lanterns!

This year at our Harvest party we had a clown, a bad spidey, a strawberry fairy and a joker. I was pretty proud of myself for keeping the total budget under 10 dollars...Of course it helped that Lala's adorable outfit was a birthday present. I guess putting things of until the last moment can some times pay off... :)

Can you guys guess who the sassy one in the family is?

We had an awesome Harvest party on Halloween with a couple close friends and no one seemed to mind that there wasn't a single piece of candy involved. I'd call it a success. We will definitely be doing that again next year...