Snow!

It started to snow yesterday as Willa and I were going to school, and she exclaimed, "This is the best day of my life!" School let out 2 hours early, so they had plenty of time to play in the white stuff.

They had a lot of fun playing with the neighbor's dog.




The dog especially loved following Willa around, licking her and stealing her gloves.



Don't worry, I warned Andrew about yellow snow.



I was too mean to take Christian out with them. Mostly because carrying him around these days really does a number on my back. Poor kid.

Crawling

By popular demand, here are pictures of mobile Christian.

He pretty much has this look on his face whenever he's crawling. He is loving being mobile.



Andrew and Willa love it too, and they get so excited for the end of the day when homework is done and they can play with him.



Andrew is the greatest babysitter. I actually love the evenings when homework and school are finished too, so Andrew can take over and play with the baby until bedtime. And Christian just worships Andrew.




One of the downsides to his being mobile is this. Wherever I am, Christian finds me and starts climbing up my legs. What can I say, he's my little buddy.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a relaxed affair at our house this year. It was the first year in at least 4 years that we were on our own, without Brenda. Which means it was the first year in a while that I've had to do the cooking, hence the relaxed attitude. Oh yeah, it was also the 3rd year in a row that I've been pregnant for Thanksgiving, which is a little crazy. I'm looking forward to not being pregnant or having a baby on major holidays.

Andrew and Willa were fascinated with the turkey. I was a little afraid Willa was going to get her fingers chopped off while Casey was carving. She kept insisting that it wasn't a real turkey.




Andrew had his customary dinner of rolls and sweet potatoes. One of these years we'll get him to try the turkey!



At preschool Willa's class got to dress up as the pilgrims, while everyone else was the Indians. This was my 4th year at the preschool Thanksgiving feast, and I found myself getting a little nostalgic because it will be my last for a while.

Baby Dave and Baby Jane

When the kids were born they got these beautiful Madame Alexander dolls from Grammie and Papa. And because I didn't want them to get ruined, I put them away until they were older. I was digging through our "storage" last week and came across them, and decided that maybe they are old enough to take care of them now. Baby Dave and Baby Jane have become their favorite toys. Andrew sleeps with his baby, and even took it to school for show and tell last week. Thanks Grammie and Papa!

Laundry

Every week. Wash, fold, put away. Every week. I really hate laundry, especially now that cold weather is here. My laundry almost doubles. Complaining about it really helps, though.

1st Haircut

Willa has never had a haircut before. She loves her long hair, but it was getting to be problem to take care of so I've been trying to convince her for a few weeks that the time had come to get a trim.




I finally convinced her, and on Friday she woke up excited for the big haircut. She acted like a queen bee the whole time at the salon. She told them she wanted hair like Mommy's, which made my day.



Big times for a big girl!

Soccer

This was Willa's first season playing soccer, which means it was our first season of juggling multiple soccer games every Saturday. Today was our first week with no soccer, and I must admit that I was relieved.

Check out these game faces.




















Andrew got to play on a bigger field this year, and the boys and girls were on separate teams. He really improved this year.



Willa had a slightly more difficult time learning to play a team sport. I'll let the video of her first game tell the story.





Of course, the favorite part of the season is always the trophies.

Pumpkin Patch

This year we didn't make it to the pumpkin patch (which actually has no pumpkin patch, but try getting Andrew and Willa to call it anything different) until the day after Halloween. But that's okay, it was a beautiful day, the kids didn't have school, and we had a ton of fun.

In reality, the "pumpkin patch" is a farm with a lot of big slides, animals, and a hayride. Andrew loves the slides the best, of course, culminating in the giant "castle slide." Last year Willa was afraid of the slides, but she hung in there like a champ this year and ran around with Andrew everywhere.








Of course Willa's favorite part was all the animals. Surprisingly, Christian loved the animals too. They have a goat pen where you can go in and feed and pet the goats, and Christian became obsessed with petting every goat in the pen. Maybe we have another animal lover in the family.





Sadly, I couldn't hold the baby and get pictures of him lunging for the goats at the same time, so you'll have to be satisfied with a picture of him munching on snacks instead. Since he got his first tooth last week I've finally started giving him finger foods, which he loves. He munches on them with that 1 little tooth, so it always looks like the food is about to fall right out of his mouth.



Overall, it was a really fun afternoon. But I learned that when I have an outing like that in my delicate condition it takes me a full week to recover, and left me regretting that my next chiropractor appointment isn't until next week. Sigh.

The Stew

Casey went hunting in Utah last week and brought home some venison from the buck he shot. It's the first deer meat we've had. So today, we had ourselves some stew. I admit, I was scared to cook it, but it turned out really good.



Willa was really excited and hovered over me the whole time I was putting the stew together. She dove right in and chowed down, and absolutely loved it. She said the blessing and made sure to add in a thank you for Daddy for shooting this yummy deer, and kept on and on while she was eating about how yummy it was. It was a little disturbing when she said that Bambi tastes good, though.



No, Christian didn't get any stew, but how cute is this little face? (I can say that now because he's finally sleeping again.)




We made cookies for dessert since we didn't get to go trick-or-treating tonight. I thought the kids would be upset about missing out on the trick-or-treating, but they were totally okay with it. In fact, we still gave out candy to the neighborhood kids, and Andrew and Willa were the ones who did the handing out. They were great, complimenting people on their costumes and wishing everyone a happy Halloween. Frosting does soften the blow, though.

Happy Halloween

Willa was so excited about her school party and parade this year. For the past month she was set on being Snow White for Halloween, but we had a last minute change of mind, and she went as a ballerina. Thank goodness for an extensive dress-up wardrobe!



If you look closely, you can see that Christian's first little tooth just poked through the day of the parade. What a big boy!




We went to the ward Trunk or Treat tonight, which was a lot of fun. We had a huge turnout. I had to go buy more candy for the trick or treaters tomorrow night.




Andrew was a ninja, for the 2nd year running. But this year Casey found him some cool ninja weapons, which made Andrew's year.



Christian did not like the costume or the whole trick-or-treating thing.



Andrew was definitely down with it.



Willa hates candy, and although she was really excited to dress up in her costume, she was adamant that she wasn't going to collect candy. We finally convinced her to get chocolate for Daddy, so at every car she told them, "I need to get lots of chocolate for Daddy!"