Pretty in Purple

We were blessed to have Becca's Grandma Olsen here for Thanksgiving this year. When everyone came for dinner we realized that Grandma and all of her great-granddaughters were wearing purple. So of course we had to take a picture. Shaylin and Emmalyn are usually wearing matching outfits when we see them and they always look so adorable! (The big patch of orange in the background is one of the many 'leaves' that Christian cut out free hand and decorated the house with for autumn)


Jessica and Emmalyn had a great time together. Soon Emmalyn will be running around everywhere with Jessica. I'm grateful that we have cousins living so close to us.

Gratuitous Pictures

We recently had our family picture taken for our Christmas card and got some extra pics of just the kids taken. So these are for all the grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc. out there that are interested in seeing these. Love ya!

Daddy's Truck and the Car Farm

We were fortunate enough to have Andy work for a couple of days down in Maricopa at the Nissan Test Track. That meant he brought his truck home and had a shorter commute in the morning because he didn't have to drive all the way into Phoenix to the yard just to turn around and come back to Maricopa.

Declan would ask me, "Is Daddy working at the car farm?" because Andy had said that Nissan was down by Shamrock Farms. He remembered 'cars' and 'farm' hence "car farm"

We took a quick pic one night of Andy and the kids on the big truck. I love this picture! I have fond memories and more than a few pictures of myself as a little girl with my Grandpa Olsen and his big trucks and equipment and with the tractors and other big equipment on my Grandpa Hedges' ranch.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all our friends and family! We enjoyed going to the trunk-or-treat this evening at our church. We finally got a family pic at the very end just as we were ready to leave. Our costumes had deteriorated quite a bit at this point. Andy was "Patch Adams" with his scrubs, silly hat, and big red clown shoes. He also had a clown nose, but I'm not sure where that ended up. Christian and Declan were a cowboy sherriff and deputy. The cowboy hats didn't stay on very long. Jessica was a witch with a black dress and a black witch hat, she even had on black socks with bats on them. As you can see from the picture, we lost one of those somewhere along the way tonight too. :) As for me, I had cotton balls taped on my blue shirt and I carried a squirt gun - so I was "partly cloudy, with a chance of rain"
The kids had a great time getting candy, got to see their cousins Shaylin and Emmalyn, and played games and watched the Peanuts Halloween movie outside. We also enjoyed a chili and cornbread dinner. The favorite game tonight was bowling - a friend had painted 2-liter bottles white and drawn ghost faces on the front for the bowling pins. Very cute!!!

Cheesy S'mores

I've been doing pretty well this year at having a decent snack every afternoon for Christian when he gets home from school. I've even made a few special treats like homemade peanut butter cups and muddy buddies. If he doesn't get a snack within 10 minutes of walking in the door he is "STARVING" and cannot make it until five o'clock for dinner. So a couple of days ago he walks in and I start to get out the ingredients to make some quick nachos. Yum, tortilla chips and Tillamook cheddar cheese. (I LOVE Tillamook cheese.)

I almost fell over when I heard Christian's question. I am not making this up. He said, "Mom, are you making s'mores?" S'MORES!?! After I picked my jaw back up off of the ground I said, "Christian, what do we usually make with cheese and chips?" His response, "Oh yeah, NACHOS!"

In his defense, I had hidden the bag of chips on the very bottom shelf way at the back, and the bottom shelf is usually our graham cracker shelf. So maybe he didn't see the cheese in my hand, or notice it was chips instead of graham crackers. But I still think that was a pretty funny question. :)

I might just have to tease him next time we have nachos and tell them they are NOT nachos, just cheesy s'mores.

One Day at a Time

The other night Jessica was tugging on my legs while I was standing next to the hot stove making dinner. So, I asked Christian to put her in the family room with her toys so I could finish. He came and got her and I didn't think anything about her until 30 seconds later I could hear her fussing. I walked into the family room to see Jessica stuck in this basket - she was not happy about that at all! I just started laughing and Christian said something to the effect of he put her there on purpose so she couldn't bother me in the kitchen.

But she cheered right up when Christian and Declan came and sat beside her so we got a quick picture.



This week was my turn to teach for Declan's preschool. Here he is enjoying cutting up lots of paper with scissors today. We have a really good group of kids that play really well together. We also put together puzzles and made maracas today.




Jessica cracks me up! She has never really sucked on a binky, and has always preferred to just chomp on them when she finds one. (Maybe because she started teething at such a young age) I finally thought to take a photo the other day of her with her binky. She has the nipple wedged in under her tongue so she can chew on the top part of the binky without using her hands. So silly!



And here's a quick shot of Jessica walking towards me. It's getting harder to take a picture of her because as soon as she sees the camera she wants to get it. (Maybe so she can wedge it in her mouth and chew on it, ha ha!)


We're enjoying life one day at a time around here.

Countdown to Christmas

Yes, you read the title right, we are counting down to Christmas already this year. Only 94 days to go! (I am just a little crazy when it comes to Christmas) I don't like to feel stressed and rushed at the end of the year so I like to plan early. I think this year we are going to focus on a lot of handmade gifts so I need to get started early. I'd post some cute ideas, but then some of ya'll would figure out what you're getting for Christmas and that would spoil all the fun.
For anyone else that would like to get started early, Flylady has a great Holiday Control Journal to help plan for Christmas. (Click on site index on the left, then Fly Lady's Control Journals near the top right)
I've also found some other great Christmas sites if anyone else out there is as crazy as I am. Here they are in no particular order:

christmasgifts.net/Christmasblog

organizedchristmas.com

christmasorganizing.com

buynothingchristmas.org

christmas-cookies.com

What Can I Say?

What can I say? Jessica is just like Christian and Declan were at this age and loves to climb in, on, under and through everything she can. Here she is coming out from the tiny space under the television.

Wow, a whole month!

I cannot believe I have let a whole month slip through the cracks like this. I promise I have been taking pictures, hopefully I'll get them up soon. Here's an extremely quick recap of July and August:

*HUGE wonderful family reunions on both the Olsen and Hedges sides of the family. (See Matt and Jayna's blog for some great pics)

*Our stake split again and we are now in the new Maricopa 7th Ward

*Christian has now lost two teeth and the replacements are growing in rapidly

*Christian started first grade, and Declan has started pre-school

*On Declan's first day of pre-school when I quizzed him about what he did all he would answer is "I had fun and EVERYTHING!"

*After 8 months, our battle with our health insurance is still not over

*Jessica can walk, but prefers to crawl, because it's faster

*Andy is now the super-troop leader for the boy scouts

*We went camping with the Baker side of the family and experienced lots of rain! (That's an understatement)

*Our niece, Shaylin, turned 2 years old

*Our niece, Linley, arrived just over 4 weeks early!

*We celebrated Becca's birthday in July and Christian's birthday in August

Standing Tall

Jessica has been having a great time pulling herself to a standing position and cruising along whatever furniture she can find. Here she is under Grandma Hedges' table.

Love those big blue eyes! They are a nice mix of mom and dad's.

Here she is, standing tall. She is growing so fast!

Extra Pics

Not sure how this happened, but this first picture uploaded and switched to upside-down. It's right-side up in the original picture file. I'm not sure how to delete it and try again, and my mom had trouble one time trying to delete a pic from the blog and erasing the original pic, so it's probably best I don't try.
These are just some extra pics that didn't make it into previous blog posts and I wanted to show them.

Jessica likes to wrinkle her nose before she works up to a full-blown smile. I think it's pretty cute.

And I just like the goofy look on her face while she's crawling under her toy.

Obviously, this is Christian. it's getting harder and harder to get a true smile out of him when I take a picture, so I had to post this. One of his bottom teeth is very, very loose and won't be hangin' around much longer so I was glad to get a good smile while he still has all of his baby teeth.

Home-Made Bubbles

Christian and Declan had a blast making home-made bubbles for the first time. We had to field-test the recipe we plan on using for the Hedges reunion. Here's the solution right after we mixed it up.
My mom found these great bubble wands at the dollar store.

We enjoyed using the bubble wands and we also made our own out of pipe cleaners.
Here's Christian with his pipe-cleaner creation.

If anyone's interested in the recipe, here it is:

1 cup Dawn or Joy dish detergent (we used dawn)

10 cups water (distilled water works best)

4 tablespoons glycerin (we used Karo syrup - some recipes omit both)

Mix at least 2 hours before use.

We were able to begin blowing bubbles immediately, but the solution DEFINITELY made better bubbles after sitting for a couple of hours, like the recipe says.

Ping Pong

We came back up for some more Utah fun! Didn't get enough the first time. :)Andy drove us up before flying home for work. Here he is enjoying game of ping-pong with the kids before rushing off to the airport.
Declan loves to say "bam-it, slam-it!" before hitting the ball.
Christian plays a mean game of ping-pong. Seriously. If you're not going to hit the ball, you better get out of the way because it will hurt when it hits you.
Look at that handsome guy! Back off ladies, he's mine! :)

Big Brothers

Big brothers are the best! Here is Declan playing with Jessica.
Here's Christian clowning around with Jessica.


Playing together one morning before church with Christian.
Some quality snuggle time with Declan.

I hope Jessica knows how lucky she is to have TWO big brothers who love and adore her.

Climbing Mt. Daddy

Andy is such a great daddy! Even though all he wanted to do was go to sleep after a very long day at work, he stayed up long enough for Jessica to get some climbing practice in.
Climbing up, up...
...and still climbing up...
..up and OVER!
I love the look on her face when she realizes she made it up and over Mt. Daddy!

Mr. Lizard

Our family made a new friend last week. His name is Mr. Lizard. Not an overwhelmingly exciting name, but it fits. I woke up in the morning to find this little guy in my bathtub. (Little is an exaggeration. This guy is TINY)
The boys thought this was so exciting, they could hardly stand it. All day, they kept running to the bathtub to make sure he was still there.

This picture shows a little bit better how tiny this guy is.

We had a big lizard-releasing party after Andy got home so he could see it too. The lizard is on Andy's hand, although you can't really see it in this picture.
So, here's the close-up shot of Mr. Lizard.
And one last shot of Christian with Mr. Lizard. He needed to go back to his home outside to grow big and strong and eat all the bugs in our garden.

We *heart* Uncle John!

Uncle John came down to give us a night out without kiddos for my birthday date. We didn't think to get pics before we left, so the boys were already in bed and asleep. But we got a great shot of John with Jessica. The kids love their Uncle John! He is such a fun Uncle.