Cute Pictures

I'm usually not satisfied with Andrew's pictures, but I thought these turned out pretty cute.

Mr. Smarty Pants

Remember how Dallin learned how to spell his name by himself? Well, a few weeks later I was in nursery and Dallin was coloring on the chalkboard. I thought I'd ask him if he could write his name. It took him a minute to figure out how to shape the letters, but then he did it. Since then he's been writing his name on his nursery papers every week. I decided I'd better get some sort of preschool workbook to keep him happy and challenged. We've been flying through it with little instruction on my part. I'm surprised how neat he's writing his letters. Steve said a lot of them are as good as Caden's! The lines for Dallin to practice writing his letters are quite large, as they are with most early writing papers. Dallin thinks it is hilarious to write his letters a quarter of the size. We'll write them tiny, show me, I exclaim how tiny they are, and he laughs and laughs. But they are still neat and legible!
So, I started to think maybe I should get him into a preschool next year. There's a lady in the ward who does a preschool from her home and she would be wonderful, so I asked her about it. For Dallin to attend three days a week, two hours a day, it would be $225 a month! Suddenly homeschooling sounds great again! There are a lot of kids his age in church, so maybe I could get some mom's together to do it. At this point I'm not sure he'd be getting much academically from preschool, and $225 is a lot to pay for social time!
We are also very proud of Caden. He's reading really well and spells well too. He gets that from his dad. I never could spell and depend wholly on spell check. In fact, often I spell so poorly that spell check can't figure out what I'm trying to say. Anyway, Caden has consistently been getting 100% on his spelling tests, that his teacher had to come up with a harder list for him to challenge him. It's a challenge for me now too because now I actually have to help him study! He's enjoying the challenge though and I love to see his sense of accomplishment.

Jealous?

It's not fair how cute fat babies are, but not so cute for adults!

Yummy

I was looking for something fun to eat for Halloween and found several fun recipes on the Internet. I ended up going with these fingers and slime. The slime was actually a really easy soup from frozen peas and mozzarella cheese that turned out quite tasty. When I showed the boys dinner, they were excited about the "fingers" but Caden didn't want the slime. He kept asking me if it was real slime. They both ended up liking it when they ate it though. They really liked the "ghost blood" we drank too! They're still calling their milk ghost blood. I kept the recipes and I think I will do it next year. Maybe I'll add some eyeballs and blood & guts too!

Trick-or-Treat

The boys had a lot of fun trick-or-treating. The weather was really nice. I thought we'd have to worry about slipping on ice, but instead we had to be carefully about stepping in puddles. Probably half the snow had melted so there was puddles everywhere; some were pretty big. We convinced Dallin to wear his pumpkin sweatsuit because it was a little warmer. We had them wear thermals under their costumes and they didn't need coats! It was great! I can't remember ever going out on Halloween and not bundling up the kids. The boys didn't even complain, about being cold, that is. Caden kept saying how tired he was, and he'd sit on the porch after ringing the bell. It was a little embarrassing. Dallin had a great time though. He kept talking to the people at the door. "I'm Dallin I'm three and I'm a pumpkin and this is Caden and he's six and he's the evil spiderman and our baby brother is Andrew and he's at home..." I had to drag him away from the doors! As I was pulling him away he'd always turn around and say, "Happy Halloween!" It was really cute. After an hour I think he got the hang of it and was only saying a few things.
Andrew had to stay home. I love the pictures of my two pumpkins. If you look, you can seen 4 of Andrew's 6 teeth.

















Dallin wore the pumpkin outfit that Andrew is wearing when Dallin was 20 months! Thought I'd put in that picture as well.

Halloween Parties

Caden had his Halloween party at school on Friday. Because Steve had a snow day, he was able to come and see Caden in the parade. Caden was so excited to see us. That's his teacher behind him in the great fairy costume.








Steve took Andrew home after the parade and Dallin and I stayed for the class party. They had a bunch of extra food so Dallin got some and ate it next to his big brother. They even had a few extra favor bags so they gave one to Dallin. It was very nice. They had a good time.














That night we had a halloween party at church. Dallin changed into his Devil costume and Tinkerbell had to stay home.


We had dinner, played games, had a parade, went trick-or-treating, and had a costume contest. It was fun, but went a little too long. After trick-or-treating the boys, that included Steve, were all tired and cranky. Steve said, "Lets go." They hadn't announced the winners of the contest yet though. I looked I my boys in their very generic costumes, which they loved, and knew they weren't going to win any prizes so I agreed. Steve took Andrew and Caden while I was left with gathering our stuff and bringing Dallin. Well Dallin was especially cranky and started kicking and throwing a fit on the floor. I was trying to get him off the floor while holding all the coats and bags when they started announcing the winners. The Elders were the judges and the first was for the cutest costume. I thought of the adorable baby unicorn or the sweet toddler lady bug when one of the elders said, "to the bowman little devil." It took me a minute to realize what he said. Luckily we were right by the stage, so I scoped up Dallin, who was still on the floor kicking (not very cute if you ask me), and put him on the stage. That stopped his tantrum real quick! He got a little certificate and got to pick a box of candy.










It was especially funny because the velcro at the bottom of his hat was bothering him so his hat was all scrunchy on top of his head and he left his tail in the car, which I thought was the cutest part! I'm sure everyone was thinking, This is the cutest costume?