Carving Pumpkins

Monday: We carved pumpkins among other things. Here is Dustin beginning the process. The girls were very careful to keep a safe distance from the dangerous knife in Daddy's hand:

Here they are looking at the grossness inside.

They didn't want to have anything to do with putting their hands in the pumpkin until I bribed them with a quarter.

Adelynne went first:

She did it! She earned a quarter!

Amy's turn. I think it is so sweet that Adelynne was holding Amy's hand:

I love Dustin's amused face in the background:

Amy did it! She earned a quarter!

And then Amy helped herself to a spoonful of peanut butter.

A girl after my own heart:

I was going for an Anne Geddes picture here, but Aurora did not find this amusing.

She calmed down pretty quickly though. But then she started slumping down into the pumpkin and I started to panic about being able to get her out. We did get her out, without any problems.

And here I am doing the tracing:

Our wonderful neighbors, the Walker family stopped by. Brycen is the cutest boy, I just adore him. (I hope Aurora will someday adore him too). That's right, we arranged their future together.

Brycen wanted a turn to hold Aurora.

Aurora did not like being held by Brycen.

Then we went to DQ with the Walker's. It was late, and Amy was very tired. You can see it in her eyes. She had to go to the bathroom while we were there, and I didn't wipe her little bum. A few minutes after I took this picture, Amy started crying, very loudly, "You didn't wipe my bum! You didn't wipe my bum!" Luckily she was hard to understand because she was so upset. DQ was filled with lots of people too. I had Dustin take her outside before Amy became more decipherable.

We got home from DQ and Dustin finished carving the pumpkins. Adelynne was excited to help carve her little pumpkin. Here are the finished products:

They turned out great! Can you see Adelynne?

smiles

Sunday, October 24th:
Aurora has been smiling for a few weeks now, and I finally captured it on the camera. She has such a sweet smile, which she seems to give easily, to me anyway. She makes others work for it a little more. I guess she loves her mama!

Countdown to Halloween

October 22, 2010:
I love to get the girls something to wear to help celebrate Halloween. They were really excited about these sequence pumpkin shirts. Adelynne had asked me the night before to put her hair in curlers--something she hasn't asked me to do in a long time. I also trimmed her hair the night before as well, her hair is getting so long and thick, it is a lot of fun to do. She looked so cute with her hair curly. Amy asked me to put curlers in her hair too, but then she didn't keep them in very long. She has pretty little curls naturally anyway. When I asked the girls to smile for a picture, this is what I get. Adelynne does these sweet little poses for the camera, she does them all on her own. Unfortunately, they were in the middle of watching a show when I was trying to take their picture, so not one of these 10 did they both look at the camera. Oh well!

I pulled out this skirt for Amy because she wouldn't even consider wearing the shirt with pants. She will only wear pants if they go with the shirt, otherwise she has to have a skirt. I'm tempted to turn all her pants into skirts, but I want Aurora to have pants to wear when she gets older!

Perfect curls

Sidewalk fixers

We have had some sidewalk construction going on just outside our apartment recently. Sitting on the table gave the girls a perfect view of all the activities going on. This past Monday, Dustin stayed late at school, so the girls helped me make some ramen stirfry for dinner, and then I let them eat it while watching the sidewalk fixers.


Adelynne told me that she wants to be a sidewalk fixer when she grows up. I asked her why she wanted to be that and she told me "because it looks like fun." Have fun with it kid.

What do you think?

So I messed with the settings while editing this picture. I have no idea what I am doing, I just move dials around until I like what I see. What do you think?

Is it good, is it bad? Be honest.

October 12, 2010

Dustin had fall break on October 11th and 12th, so we went to Chicago and went here:
We drove up Monday night and stayed in a hotel. Dustin got up early and went to the temple, and then he came back we all drove over to the temple. I went in and did some work while Dustin stayed with the girls and walked around the temple. As I walked in the temple, it was hard to believe I hadn't been for about a year. I immediately felt peace from the Holy Spirit and I knew I was in the House of God. I am so grateful for that peace I felt and I am anxious to feel it again. I hope Dustin and I can go back next month, instead of next year. When I finished the temple work I went outside to find my family. And this was where I found them:

Beautiful girl:

Sleeping away, what an angel.

This I love, love, love:
We love to see the temple! We are so grateful for our family that will be together forever because of the covenants we have made in the temple, and for our Savior that makes all things possible.

After the temple we drove into the city and went here:
The Rainforest Cafe!

We ate this yummy "Volcano" cake:


And took pictures by the waterfall: (Amy was too busy to get in the picture)

Need I explain more?

The aquarium gateway was awesome! Lots of beautiful fish:

These last two pictures are of a fish that literally swam past the baby and then backed up and stared at Aurora for a couple of minutes before it got scared and swam away. It was really fascinating how entranced it was with Aurora.


So I totally recommend taking your kids to the rainforest cafe if you go to downtown Chicago. There is also a gift shop with plenty of overpriced toys and things, but still fun anyway. However, I recommend that you go only for dessert. The entrées run around $20 each, so the bill adds up quickly! The volcano cake was delicious. It was slices of fabulous brownie-cake stacked over ice cream and had the most delicious cream (I've ever had), on top drizzled with chocolate and caramel. And then they put a sparkler in it. There was plenty for our family, probably could have shared it happily with another adult. It was worth the $14 that it cost. Despite the high cost, the atmosphere was a lot of fun.

When we began our drive to Chicago we took highway 43 to the 65. The 65 is the main highway you take to get to Chicago from here. The drive on the 43 is about 5 miles before you get to the 65. We didn't even make it to the 65 before Adelynne started asking "Are we there yet?" Dustin and I chuckled and told her we had a long way to go. Its about a 3 hour drive. She asked us if it was longer than Indianapolis? (The drive to Indi is 1 hour). We told her yes. She asked is it longer than to Grandma's house. We told her no (Grandma lives a 3 day drive from us). We told her we would get there when it was dark. Then she was quiet for a few minutes. And then she asked, "How far are we?" "Is it very long yet?" "When will we get there?" "Are we there yet?" "Are we far away from home?" "Are we close to Chicago?" etc. Pretty much any way she could ask, "Are we there yet?" she asked. When we convinced her to quit asking us if we had arrived, she began asking us other questions like, "What is that?" Why does this do that?" "What makes this?" and on and on. It sure is fun to see her mind learning and growing BUT I can only take so many questions in so many minutes. When did my 5 year-old go from cute to annoying?! Seriously. I guess we have reached a new point in the life of a 5-year-old. But I love it. Seriously.

5 weeks!

Aurora is 5 weeks old! I really don't like that it has flown by. Aurora, or Rory, as we sometimes call her, is a pretty good baby. She fusses, but not too much. And she's either nursing or sleeping most of the time. She usually goes to sleep at about 1am and then wakes up again to eat at 4:30am, and then again around 7:30am. She tolerates the swing for a short amount of time, and her sisters for an even shorter amount of time. On Wednesday she looked at me and smiled for the first time. She has an adorable smile that seems hard to get when you want her to smile. She does lots of sleepy smiles and random smiles. Rory is not too fond of the pacifier, but she will take it sometimes.
Rory had a check up yesterday and she weighed 11lbs 2oz. (97%) and she was 22inches (75%). I knew she was at least over 10lbs, but I didn't think she would be more than 11lbs! She's a big girl and sure loves to eat!
Adelynne loves to be a big helper and will often call out, "She smiled!" Amy cannot get enough of Aurora. If I walk into the room with her, Amy says, "Oh! Look at that cute little baby. Let me see her cute little face!" Amy says this multiple times throughout the day when she comes into the room and sees Aurora. And then Amy is always giving her hugs and touching her. We are working on Amy not touching Aurora when she is asleep. We all love having Aurora in our family!