Luke at 1 year 9 months

Luke vocabulary is growing! We can understand what he wants most of the time, although probably other people can't. Some new words and phrases-- upstairs, downstairs, oatmeal, book, snack, there it is, I don't know, cheese. He mimics our words more often and copies our inflections.

Luke likes having his picture taken, well when he's in the mood for it. I was taking pictures of the girls and their artwork, and he made sure he got his picture taken too.

Luke loves to look at books and be read to. He likes car, truck, and train books the most. When we go to the library he'll clean out the Thomas books and take them to a table and demand to be read to. There is also a learning to read truck series that is a favorite of his.

Luke can now climb off and on the bouncy horse himself. He surprised me one day by just doing it instead of standing by it and whining for me to lift him. What a big boy he's getting to be!

Luke knows how to push his sisters' buttons and does it whenever he's frustrated with them... or maybe when he's bored too! He's not great at sharing right now at all, which causes some problems since you can't really reason with him at this stage either, but we're working on it!

Luke loves the added height and reaching potential the little potty stools give him. He will drag them to the light switches to turn off the lights while I'm doing the girls' hair or getting them dressed. He also loves it when someone leaves the spray bottle within his reach and will make sure he, the mirror, and everyone else gets a good spritzing.

Luke is intrigued by the toilet and will flush often and is always curious about the girls when they use the bathroom. Luckily they've started closing the door (finally!) and he just gets frustrated about being left out and cries injustice in the hallway.

Luke still doesn't have much attention span for television, but occasionally he'll put his beanbag in front of the tv, hand me the remote, point to the tv, and yell "bob! bob!". He is a fan of Bob the Builder, but mostly just the opening song I guess. He never stays there for very long!

Luke likes the song "Popcorn Popping" and will sing along "bop, bop" and make some of the hand motions.

Luke still likes playing with the dollies and will pull out some of his diapers to put on them too.

He likes to go places, and gets so excited and echo when I call out "shoe time!". He hates being left out and not being able to go if someone is leaving.

Luke will put a tissue up to his nose and make a blowing noise with his mouth. I'm pretty sure he thinks he's doing what the rest of us do when we blow our noses!

Luke still likes to cuddle when he gets up in the morning or from a nap or after a bonk. He's a little sweetheart, and it's so fun to watch him learn and grow!

Family Pictures

We had our family pictures done at Fotofly again this year. Although I'm not as perfectly happy with the outcomes as I was last year, I think it was still a successful shoot, especially considering Luke refused to smile for 30 minutes of the 45 minute session and it was a busy kind of stressful day. The kids pictures are in their individual posts, here are my favorite family pictures.

I think this one is my favorite!

Violet at 3 years and 7 months

Violet has been in preschool for two months now, and she loves it! She recognizes most of her letters and is working on writing them and matching sounds to letters. She wants to be just like Cora (in some things, in others she'll wait to hear what Cora says so she can say the opposite) and work on reading. So we've started her slowly in the big yellow reading book too, and she's doing great. She loves to work on alphabet workbooks too-- her 'homework' while Cora does her own homework

Violet's favorite treat is oreos and anything mint. Mint icecream and mint chocolates are always a hit!

Miss Kara started a new 3 year old gymnastics class this year, and Violet is excited to have her own gymnastic tricks to perform. She is working on her handstands and cartwheels.

Violet now goes to the bathroom by herself at night (hurray!) but she still doesn't like wiping her stinkies on her potty trips. I think she is afraid to get her hands dirty. Every time before she goes to the bathroom, she'll find me and say "Mommy, I'm going to go potty. After I wipe my stinkies will you come wipe me too?". Every time! I can't wait until she is more confident about this!

Violet (and Cora too, but especially Violet) love the movie Enchanted. They especially love--as they call it-- the How Do You Know song. By now they know most of the words, but if they forget, they'll just sing 'how do you know that he loves you' over and over and over.

Violet is coloring more and more, but her loves are still games and puzzles. She likes to play Zingo and memory the most. 

Violet is learning and doing more each day. She has a great ability to verbalize and picks up on things quickly. She also still has her things that she wants to be a baby girl about and not do herself even if she can. She is fun and loving and it's so interesting to watch her personality develop! 

Cora at 5 years and 4 months

I've been trying to do updates on the kids quarterly. I think they will be fun to have for later, but they are easy to procrastinate too!

Cora loves school! I went to her first parent teacher conference last night, and she is doing so well. She is making friends in class and learning a lot. 

Cora and I also work on her reading at home -- we are over halfway done with this amazing book. She is reading short stories like this one. "A dog was in the fog. A cat was in the fog. A goat was in the fog. The dog and the cat and the goat came to a log. The cat and the dog sat on the log. The dog and the cat said, "We are on the log." The goat said, "I am not on the log. I am in the log. Hee hee." We also check out BOB books from the library for her to read too. She is doing really well and it's so much fun to see her learn. 

Cora loves to draw and craft. Our coloring bench display wall is always full of her drawings. She is getting better and better at depicting images the way she would like them to look. 

Cora's picture of herself in her Halloween costume 

 Cora's mermaid 

Cora is doing gymnastics again this year and is working hard. She is working on handstand to backbend to stand-up and a handstand to backbend to kickover right now. She has the greatest teacher-- Miss Kara knows how to motivate these little kids and is friendly and persistent with their learning too. 

Cora has lost her two front bottom teeth now. She is sure she has at least 4 more loose ones! I think it will be a little while though before she loses more. 

Cora is interested in ghosts now and has a pet one that she can summon with a crook of her finger. She was a little scared about Halloween this year-- she gets caught up in her classmates' talk of vampires and zombies and it's more real to her than before, even with reminders from me that it's all pretend. 

Cora asks me almost every day how the baby is doing. She is so excited for our new little one to come! 

Cora is at such a fun age now. She has such a pleasant temperament and is so fun to be around. She rarely throws fits and tantrums, she is a great helper, she eats and goes to bed without fussing. She can play fun games with us and is excited to be involved and learn more about all the world around her. 

Happy Halloween!

Our Halloween started on Saturday with the ward trunk-or-treat. It was a huge success! We actually had about twice as many people as could fit in the cultural hall for a chili dinner afterward. It was crowded and delicious!

 The kids had a blast with the trunk-or-treat. Luke wasn't thrilled about his costume, but once he figured out the trick-or-treating, he was focused on candy-- a man on a mission! He was determined to not miss any candy opportunities and wasn't hesitant at all. He loved it when he could pick out his own candy and tuck it into his bag. So cute! He got lots of attention for his cute costume, especially his well-padded giraffe tummy and bum. Cora was excited to be a fairy and Violet has long been looking forward to wearing a ladybug costume.

 Sunday afternoon we carved pumpkins. Cora chose an Ariel template and Violet chose a Snow White template... Kevin did a scary face to round things out. Cora was a great helper with scooping out the seeds and sorting them to roast, and Violet did quite a bit of scooping too... with a shorter attention span. 

 Monday was a busy day! Cora got to wear her Halloween costume to school. They all paraded from the elementary school down to the junior high and then had a class party afterward. At their class party they split pumpkins open to count seeds and feel the goop, weighed and measured different sized pumpkins, frosted pumpkin cookies, bowled with pumpkins, and made pumpkin spiders. I've been so impressed with the fun things they do that still incorporate learning opportunities.

Violet, Luke, and I got to go to Violet's Halloween preschool party. Violet loved singing songs, reading Halloween stories, eating a Halloween snack, trick-or-treating to a few neighbors, and making witches brew (root beer... although she did ask me why Miss Amanda didn't add spider webs and moldy bread to the brew like the song says :) !)

Then it was time for the big night! Kissie came over to spend Halloween with us (Pata was on a plane home). Dinner was french dip sandwiches and pumpkin soup, but mostly we were in a hurry to get out and maximize out trick-or-treating time! 

 Luke came in after two streets, he was still having fun but was slowing down. Violet said she'd just come in for a drink, but decided to stay home and hand out candy with Kissie. Cora stayed out the longest--about an hour and a half. Soon after coming in we had a few inevitable candy meltdowns... the kids were so tired! Violet even fell asleep in her bed waiting for a bedtime story while Kevin was helping Cora brush her teeth (truly a first--falling asleep fast, not the teeth-brushing!).

 This picture turned out fuzzy, but it was too cute not to include. What a great Halloween weekend! This holiday gets more fun every year with kids!

Hogle Zoo

We took advantage of a good weather day on Friday to go to the zoo. It will likely be our last visit this year. The kids were especially excited that Kissie got to come with us! I forgot my camera, but luckily Kissie remembered hers. Too bad I forgot to snag her camera to grab a few pictures with her in them! Most of the animals were pretty lively with the cooler weather. I'm excited to see the new arctic exhibit when it opens-- they are sure doing a lot of construction in that corner of the zoo.  

 Luke enjoyed the carousel, but in a very concentrated way. No smiling, but lots of solemn examination of all the movement around him. 

Ut-oh

With Violet off-track for preschool and Kevin out of town last week, we had a couple of quiet mornings last week. A little too quiet I guess! I was cleaning out a closet and enjoying Violet and Luke playing together without any problems for a pretty long period of time. Ut-oh! Luke came up to check on me and I patted his head and noticed that part of it had that funny buzz-cut feeling. And then I noticed his hair looked a little funny. 

He had these weird stair-steps in his hair... so I was off to investigate and found this. 

 Ut-oh! I was sure with those long locks on the floor that Violet had attacked her own hair and Luke's, but I guess Luke's hair was a bit longer than I had thought. So many things to be grateful for-- with family pictures this week-- Violet didn't cut her own hair and Luke's haircut was mostly in the back! I put Violet in time-out so I could smile and take pictures. 

Luke must have been traumatized by his sister cut because he got kicked out of one salon the next day when I tried to get his hair evened out. He put up a fuss at Cookie Cutters the next day, but luckily they were more willing to work with him and he settled down after a few minutes. His hair is shorter than I'd like, but at least Violet's trim isn't noticeable much anymore and it should all grow out in a few more weeks. Now I just need to find some kind of hair wax to style his hair-- keep it spiky. The other hair products we've tried won't keep that hair up!  

 This isn't a great picture, but at least you can see Luke showing off his cheesey grin and sadly, how the hair products failed us in the church rush this morning!

GIVEAWAY--Shutterfly Christmas Card Promotion!

Shutterfly is once again offering free Christmas cards to bloggers who post about their Shutterfly experiences. I loved my Shutterfly Christmas cards last year! I think the website is easy to work with, orders are delivered promptly, and there are o-so-many designs to choose from this year, even more than last year I think. 

Here are some of my favorites-- one of these will likely become our family Christmas card pretty soon! This year I'm probably going to do a 5x7 flat stationary card and send it as a postcard.

 

  

 I like that they have so many 4+ picture layouts. Lots of choices! You can see their whole selection here: photo Christmas cards

I've also had great success with other photo cards from Shutterfly. I've been on their email list for over 5 years now, and at least 3 times a year I get a promo code for 5-10 free cards. These photo cards are perfect for me to use for the monthly letters I write to my grandparents and Kevin's grandparents. You can see the selection of cards, including birth announcements (fun!) and other holiday cards here: greeting cards

Last, a little plug for Shutterfly's photo books. Their website is easy to use and they've made great efforts the last few years to have more options with layouts. It's a great tool, especially if you aren't wanting to create whole pages from scratch (and if you do want to do that, it's still easy to use Shutterfly). 

GIVEAWAY!

Shutterfly has given me 3 promo codes for 25 FREE CARDS to give to YOU! I know my readership numbers aren't that high, so you have an excellent chance at winning! Leave a comment by OCTOBER 31st at 1:00pm if you are interested in winning... I'll pick three winners randomly in a week. If you think I don't have your email address, include that in your comment too. 

Now, I just have to keep my fingers crossed that my family pictures go well next week! 

Good luck!

UEA

We were excited to have 2 days last week that were completely free--no school, gymnastics, or preschool.  We are't super scheduled as it is (except T/Th), but it was still nice to have a complete break! Thursday we went to Gardner Village for our annual see the witches trip. Luckily we were there early enough that we missed most of the hoards of other people enjoying school off too. This year the girls were really excited to have their pictures taken with each and every witch. 

 Luke was not so excited to have his picture taken. Here's the only one I got. I'm not sure if he was wary of the witches or was just enjoying his stroller-less freedom. It's so great to be able to go on short outings with no stroller now-- I love it!

 Luke got the cutest grin in this picture, even if he's in the shadows-- I tried to recreate it with him in the sun, but he vetoed that idea. 

Our good friends Heather, James, and Samuel invited us to their house on Friday for a fall walk and a spooky lunch. I loved walking on the Farmington Creek trail with all of the huge mature trees. Maybe someday we'll have trees like that in Herriman! 

 The girls were especially excited to spot the pink leaves on the ground. Luke loved being stroller-free once again, to pick up rocks and leaves of any color. His favorite thing was to throw the leaves off the bridge into the creek. 

Heather made a delicious lunch of mummy dogs, jello ghosts, apple mouths, and the kids decorated sugar cookies at the end What a treat! To top off our fun day we visited Kissie on the way home. It was a good fall break!