Photo Update

I wanted to share a few photos from yesterday and today before I head to bed tonight. (We have early 8:30am church tomorrow - yikes!)

Friday, I took Courtney & Hayley to a park by Lake Woodlands that has a big playground and also lots and lots of ducks!

The girls were quite taken with the ducks and tried to get as close as they could.

These ducks were extremely tame and wouldn't run away as so many people feed them bread crumbs (despite the "Please don't feed the ducks" signs). While we were there, a mom and her little boy brought some bread for the ducks. The ducks immediately all swarmed around them for a bite.

A couple of pics of the girls on the playground:

I loved this next one of Hayley!

I took this picture of Courtney after we got back in the van and she was doing "Eeney-Meeney-Miney-Moe" with her "treasures" to see which one she would let Hayley hold. Her treasures included a duck feather she had just picked up at the park, a multi-color ball point pen she had just purchased with her money at her preschool's book fair, and a little "Ice Age" keychain she had gotten from the library (they have a little basket in the children's section with stickers and such).

And here's I picture I told McKay I was taking to show what silly things my kids do when they should be going to bed:

(Those are little plastic bathroom cups, in case you were wondering.)

This activity was such a hit last night, that I came home from a stake YW meeting this morning to find this in the kitchen:

(McKay did most of this and then left and the girls were seeing how they could add to it.)

Finally, McKay had another baseball game today.

Here's a nice picture of Hannah at the game:

In the last couple of innings, McKay played in the pitcher's spot (next to the pitching machine).

He had a couple of good defensive plays. In the last inning, he fielded a ground ball and made a good throw right to 1st base to get the runner out. (Usually the throws to 1st are way off.) The very next play a similar ball was hit which he fielded, but hurried too much in his throw and overthrew the ball. Still, everyone was very excited (especially McKay). He got a couple of hits today too and said it was the "best game ever."

Latch Hook Kids

My kids have suddenly become big fans of latch hook crafts. I used to do latch hook rugs when I was younger (probably 11-12) and so the other day when I was sewing patches on McKay's Cub Scout shirt and Hannah said she wanted to sew, I mentioned latch hook to her as something she might enjoy. She got very excited and so the next time we were at Wal-Mart, she picked out a small kit (unicorn picture) and bought it with her own money.

She couldn't wait to get started and has picked it up quite quickly! The last couple of days, she runs to get it out the minute she gets home from school to work on it for a little bit.

McKay got Hannah to show him how to use the tool and told me he wanted to do one too. So today I picked up the only other kit they had -- a butterfly. When he got home from school, I showed it to him and said we didn't have to keep it (he was going to have to use his own money for it). At first, he said to take it back and he would maybe do one over the summer, but the next thing I knew he had it out and the yarn sorted and got to work:

He said a couple of times how it was so fun and then wondered if it was weird that he liked doing a "girl thing." He said he thought the kids at school would make fun of him if they knew about it. He has always had an interest in sewing and wants to learn more about it. I asked him if that would bother him if other kids made fun of him and he said he didn't think so (but I'm not so sure). I told him maybe we could look for a more "boy" pattern sometime if he finished this one and wanted to do more.

Happy Friday tomorrow!

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! WE LOVE YOU!

Oil Ranch

There are probably a dozen other things I should be working on at this late hour, but I had to share a few pictures from Hayley's preschool field trip to the Oil Ranch today. The Oil Ranch is a "working ranch" that is about 45 minutes from here (out past Magnolia). They get a lot of school groups and company parties. They have pony rides, baby animals, wagon rides to feed the cows, a little train and lots of other stuff. We have been as a family a couple of times before.

My camera battery wasn't cooperating very well, so I didn't take a ton of pictures. (My friend took some with her camera that she will hopefully send me soon.) But here are some pics of the day!

On the hayride wagon to go feed the cows...

Feeding the cows...

Swinging on the horse tire swing...

Mom and Hayley on the train...

Picking out her pumpkin in the pumpkin patch...

The group of preschool kids (one girl couldn't come and there are a couple of siblings there)...

It was a fun day -- and especially nice to share it just with Hayley!

Columbus Day

The kids had the day off today for Columbus Day. Since when is Columbus Day a no-school holiday? I don't think they even had it off last year. We didn't do anything super exciting. We still had regular Monday laundry, cleaning and piano lessons. It seems like I spent a good part of the day bugging the kids to get them to help clean up. McKay was not surprisingly the most resistant to picking up toys. ("But it's my day off!" "But it's too hard!" "But I don't like it!", etc.) Struggled a little with him today in that regard.

We did find a few minutes to stop at a little park before we headed to Wal-Mart for a few groceries (and a small pumpkin Courtney has to take to preschool tomorrow).

Here's McKay and Hannah trying out this teeter-totter contraption:

Hayley pausing for a brief picture...

Courtney climbing (and losing her shorts!)...

McKay trying one of these spinning stool things. I don't know what they're officially called. They had 3 of them -- little stools that were angled so that when you sat on them and got a little momentum, you'd start spinning around -- and it is really hard to stop! I kept thinking that could be kind of dangerous for a kid if there wasn't anyone nearby to help him get off. Even McKay needed help stopping.

And finally, Hannah talking to Courtney through one of the "telephones" ...

...and listening for the response

(again, not sure what these are called -- they have two at different places in the park and you can talk to someone at the other end)

Tomorrow Hayley's preschool group is taking a little field trip out to a place called the Oil Ranch with pony rides, hay rides, cow milking, etc. It should be fun!

Snip, Snip

I know some will think I'm nuts, but I cut Hayley's hair today -- probably 2-3 inches off. It was getting quite long and a huge battle every morning to comb it and pull it out of her face. It seems that my girls do better with shorter hair because it doesn't tangle so easily. (Plus, I am fairly inept when it comes to fixing hair, so I never knew what to do with longer hair anyway in terms of styling.)

First of all, this morning she agreed to try pigtails:

They looked pretty cute, but had pretty much fallen out by lunchtime. After lunch we got ready for the haircut.

She was mostly cooperative, but 3-year-olds can only sit so still and keep their head so straight. And I am definitely not the most talented when it comes to cutting hair (hair and I just don't seem to "mesh" at so many levels...).

Here is the finished result:

It is definitely not perfect. If you look closely at the back, you will see many different lengths of hair! I need a better hair-cutting lesson for little girl's hair. But it will grow.

This was one of the piles on the floor. A little sad to see the beautiful blonde locks fall to the ground, but I think we will all be happier with the shorter version!

Are You Ready for Some Football?

McKay's new favorite sport these days seems to be football. He still seems to enjoy baseball and is playing on his YMCA team, but they are doing football skills in PE at school right now and he has been playing touch football every day at recess with a group of kids.

He's been begging to buy his own football, so after his baseball game yesterday, Brian took him to the store to buy a junior-sized one. He and Hannah went out into the driveway to play catch. Neither of them can throw a very good spiral (although McKay does better than Hannah), but they seemed to be having fun.

(Hannah is wearing a pattern headband she made in school on Friday. I'm not sure what made her decide to put it on when she went outside...)

Park Play

Yesterday morning I took Courtney and Hayley to a nearby park for a little bit. We haven't been out to a park in quite a while since it's been so hot! The Relief Society is starting a weekly park playgroup for anyone who wants to come meet at a park (the park changes each week). It's good for me to have a reason to actually schedule a park visit on the calendar. Otherwise, it seems like we never actually make it out the door.

The downside of going to the park in the morning is that Hannah is terribly upset when she comes home from school and finds out where we went. So I told her that we'd try to go to a park on Monday since the kids are out of school for Columbus Day.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the park!

Playing in the train:


Hayley in one of the big swings (handicap-accessible swings):



Courtney had fun trying this rotating wheel:


And this was Hayley's favorite way to "slide" down these rollers (kind of a unique slide). The only problem was she'd pinch her fingers a little at the bottom when she'd try to get off. But that wasn't enough to deter her from doing it again!


And a cute picture of the sisters in the parking lot before we headed home:


Today these two girls were playing "style" with their stuffed animals and asking me to take pictures to print. I took this one at the end of both of them and thought it was cute as well!


And finally, a couple more to share. (I'm realizing I need to take a few more pictures of Hannah & McKay!)

Courtney in her preschool T-shirt (they wear once a month on "pizza day"):


Hayley in a familiar scene -- the kitchen table covered with crayons, papers and lots of coloring! The girls go through phases of drawing their own pictures or having me print out pages from the Internet for them to color in.


Oh-- I almost forgot the other "news" to share. I have made an appointment to take McKay to the eye doctor in a couple of weeks. On our drive home from Dallas last weekend, we discovered that McKay doesn't see very well in the distance (we were having him read signs coming up and he couldn't read them until we had almost passed them). When we asked him more, we discovered he has a hard time seeing the board in math class where he sits in the back (his teacher has since moved him). He also just did the vision screening at school and said it was "very hard." So off we will go to the eye doctor on the 16th to see if he needs to wear glasses. (It wouldn't surprise me since both Brian and I have bad vision -- or at least Brian used to!)

McKay also got his part assignment for the 3rd Grade play, which will be on Nov. 15th. The play is along the lines of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and he got the part of "Narrator 1." He has several lines to learn and he is the very first one to speak in the whole play! He is excited, but a little nervous I think.

My Budding Artist

Courtney has become quite the little artist lately! I’ve noticed that her coloring, drawing and cutting skills have really improved. She loves to color and spends a lot of time at the kitchen table. She is careful to color in the lines, choose different (and usually appropriate) colors for each section on a coloring book page, and also likes to color and add details to her own drawings. She will draw, color and cut out whole “families” of animals (dogs, ponies, etc.) that she and Hayley will play with around the house.

She made Hayley a Littlest Pet Shop book the other day. She set up all the Littlest Pet Shop toys on the table as her "models" (see photo at the top). Then she drew several pages of the animals and their little houses. I couldn't scan her pictures, so I tried taking a couple of regular pictures of them:

Walk to School

Today was the annual "Walk to School" day that they have every October. By "walk" of course, they mean walk, ride, roll, etc. McKay has been riding his bike already to school, but Hannah has been waiting for today so she could too.

We didn't really get a plan figured out last night, so it was a pretty rushed morning. Brian wasn't able to ride in with Hannah on her bike, and I didn't think I could manage riding my bike because I would have had to pull both Courtney and Hayley in the trailer. McKay didn't want to have to ride with her the whole way ("she's too slow!"). Plus, I didn't know how well Hannah would do riding her new bigger bike with her backpack on and with all the extra people that would be on the bike paths this morning.

What we ended up deciding was that I would drive the girls in the van to a neighborhood closer to the school. (McKay rode his bike by himself as usual.) We parked and got out Hannah’s scooter, Courtney’s bike and the wagon for Hayley. I was worried we would be late because there was a TON of traffic just getting over to that neighborhood. Plus there were lots and lots and lots of people on the pathway!

Hannah took off on her scooter and I couldn’t keep up because of Courtney, the wagon and all the other people. I totally lost sight of Hannah and hadn’t told her where to wait for me. I hoped she remembered that the idea was I would take her scooter and helmet back home with me and she would ride the bus home. We looked around for her at the school and finally she saw us. She had gone and parked her scooter in the bike rack, so she had to go get it back and bring it to me. We barely made it on time!

I was sad when I realized I forgot my camera in the rush this morning so I didn’t get any pictures like I had wanted. Oh well!

Take a Breath

Whew! I've got a few quiet minutes before I have to go pick up Hayley so I thought I'd try to post an update. What a crazy day yesterday! I felt like I didn't even have time to stop and catch my breath and still left a long list of things undone. Mondays are always busy, but yesterday was especially busy because I had to add a big grocery shopping trip to the mix (with two "helpers"), then a second trip to another grocery store to stock up on some sale items and then there's all the "catch up" from being gone.

So, first, a quick recap of our weekend up in Arlington. We left here Friday morning and got to Julie's about lunchtime. Brian's sister Teresa came over from Sherman with Brian's mom and other sister Jana later that afternoon. Some scenes from Julie's house:

McKay and Uncle John are both always up for a game of Risk (McKay lost):

The kids can't wait to have a turn on the X-Box (our kids feel so deprived because we don't have any video games at home). Here they are playing with cousin Austin:

Courtney holding her newest cousin, baby Olivia (Jana's baby):

Hayley had fun playing with this globe that would play little clips of music. She would start the music, then do her ballet dance around the room. (For some reason, she thinks she needs to close her eyes while she is ballet dancing -- maybe she feels more graceful that way!)

On Saturday, I was able to go with the girls out to Canton for the big craft fair they have every month. I think officially it is called "Trade Days" and it is like a huge swap meet/craft fair mixed together. You can find a bit of everything there, I think. And it was VERY crowded and a little on the hot side, but fun.

We had three cute babies come for the ride (Jana's baby Olivia is in the stroller and Teresa's baby Emilee and Ashley's baby Jack are in the wagon):

I didn't buy an awful lot, but enjoyed looking around. Brian was good to take care of the other kids while I was gone all day.

Yesterday afternoon, Courtney and Hayley were out in the backyard playing when Courtney came in all excited to tell me she had taught Hayley how to pump on the swings. Hayley was doing it a little (she wasn't swinging very high) and Courtney was so proud of herself. (I told Courtney maybe Hayley could teach her how to go potty!)

Then last night for FHE treat, Brian requested these mint cookies we discovered the recipe for a while ago. Somehow I managed to get them made amongst all the craziness. They are so yummy!

Here's the recipe:

ANDES MINT COOKIES

3/4 C. butter or margarine
1 ½ C. brown sugar
2 Tbs. water
2 C. semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 eggs
2 ½ C. flour
1 ¼ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
Andes mints – they are the little rectangle mints in the green foil wrappers – I found them in the candy aisle and needed two packages

Melt butter, brown sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat, then add chocolate chips. Stir until completely melted. Cool for 10 minutes. Pour into a mixing bowl. Beat in eggs. Add flour, baking soda and salt. Mix together and chill for about 45 minutes. Roll into balls (about 1-1 ½ inches), flatten slightly and place on cookie sheet (I used my stones). Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

When cookies come out of the oven, place an Andes mint on top of each cookie and allow to melt for a few minutes. Swirl the melted chocolate like icing (I used the back of a spoon). Remove from cookie sheet and allow to cool.

This morning I've spent a little time getting some training in my new calling. I was called to be the YW Secretary for a new YW Presidency. The president is a friend of mine whose daughter is in Hayley's preschool group. I think I'm destined to be a secretary! But that's okay -- it is a calling I enjoy and I'm looking forward to being in the YW again!