Joshua Update

Joshua hasn't had much blog coverage for a while, so I thought I would post a little about him. He is doing well. He enjoys his preschool and just played the preacher in their Thanksgiving Play. In his free time he loves to play video games and is hoping Santa brings him a leap pad for Christmas. He is a good big brother to Avery and maybe less of a good little brother to Ethan. He has been causing Mom and Dad a little bit of grief lately. He got lost this past weekend at temple lights and we couldn't find him for about 10 minutes and then the other day he decided to stick pony beads high up in his nose, luckily we were able to get them out at home without going to the doctor. We love our sweet boy though and wish he wasn't growing up so fast.

Avery 9 Months

My names: Mommy's girl, Abes, Maggie Moo, Avery
My skills: I crawl, I pull up on things to stand, I use my fingers to pick up food, I say "dada"
My vices: I put absolutely everything in my mouth, mom often searches my cheeks to find fur balls, plastic bits, paper, magnetic balls; I absolutely throw a fit when you try and change my diaper mom and dad usually have to double team me; I absolutely love ice cream but turn into a crazy monster the second you stop feeding it to me

Our sweet girl is already getting so old. This is one of my favorite ages because they are learning so many new tricks each day. Avery is fun to have around. She hasn't gone for her check up yet but I think she weighs just over 20lbs, which is bigger than her brothers were at 1 year old. She's growing out of her 9month old clothes, and needs to move in to 12month :(

An Incredible Halloween!

We got to dress up twice in our Halloween costumes, which makes it more worth going through the effort of making them. Friday night we went to our ward halloween party and had lots of fun. Monday night for halloween we decided to drive out and go trick or treating with my brother Aaron. All in all we ended up with tired kids and tons of candy!

At the end of the night this is what a kid with face paint looks like. My sweet Joshua had fun being "Dash" running around. At one point during trick or treating he got tired and had to be carried but we revived him with some water and he started dashing around again : )

Avery 8 months

Our sweet Avery girl is already 8 months old! I love all of the new things she is learning but sometimes I just want her to stop so I can enjoy my baby for a little while longer. She weighs in at about 18lbs now. As you can see in the picture she gets up on her hands and knees but doesn't quite have forward action yet.

She sleeps a little better these days. She still gets up in the middle of the night twice, but she'll take 2-3 naps during the day now. I play a lullaby CD for her and she'll usually sleep for about 1 hour.

Her next challenge is eating food. She's still not big on solids and just really doesn't like to eat off a spoon. She still nurses great but now doesn't like to drink a bottle for Mom. She only has one bottom tooth, but this month I need to start making her eat some real food!

Josh's Farm Trip

It was Josh's fall field trip to the Tolmachoff farm this past week. We had been before when Ethan was at this preschool. I was hoping it would be cool outside and feel "fallish" but not yet it was a pretty warm day.

Here he is with his class, you can see how petite he is compared to other kids his age.

Picking some vegetables for us to take home.

Riding the train, I almost wanted to put Avery in with him to but decided it would probably not be a good idea : )

The big brother doing a good job keeping Avery upright.

Josh was excited that he found a somewhat bigger pumpkin in the little pumpkin patch.

The three of us having a good time.

Hiking in Sedona

A few weeks ago, Michael and I went on a hiking date. We went up and stayed the night at Grandma Connie's and she watched the kids in the morning while we drove the rest of the way to Sedona and went hiking. We went on hike to "Devil's Bridge." It was about 4 miles roundtrip and pretty steep in places. Once you get there it is a rock that naturally goes really skinny in the middle making a bridge up in the Sedona red rocks.

That's us out in the middle, we had another couple take our picture once we got out on the bridge.

Halloween Birthday Party

Yea! Our Halloween party we had been working on for weeks finally came. Here are some pics to share if you didn't get to be there.

The boys went around taking pictures for me that's why they are all from a weird angle.

These were my touch and feel boxes, it was hard to get the kids to stick there hands in the boxes they wanted to see what was in them first.

We had some freaky pictures hanging on the walls to set the mood.

In our bathroom we had some Halloween lighting and some mice infestation.

Josh eating with some friends. The bottles of orange crush and IBC root beer were a hit.

Our menu consisted of sliced arm pieces, "spine"-wiches, pureed maggots, moldy chips, booger dip with veggies and pumpkin guts with apples and pretzels to dip.

Ethan was able to have some good dancing at his party. These pictures are bright because of the flash but the room was actually dark with strobe lights and fog from dry ice. Ethan was a happy boy in his zombie costume.

Every kid loves to have a pinata full of candy at their party. Here is Ethan getting first swing at the bat.

And then the madness after the pinata breaks, we had about 15 kids at the party so luckily there was enough candy to go around.

The party was fun chaos but only lasted about 1.5 hours. After all the guests were gone we had a nice spread of food and trash everywhere : )

Ethan is a lucky boy and got a lot of nice birthday presents from friends. His presents included: legos, dagadars, nerf toys, gift cards and more from family too.

My video of his birthday cake doesn't want to load but Ethan chose to have oreo ice cream cake and it was pretty delicious.

All in all Ethan had a blast and that's what matters. One more birthday down and another year to go.