Catch Up

You better believe tonight will be all about costumes and candy around here so I’ll try to quickly catch up so we can move onto Halloween 2014!

The last weekend in September the girls and I attended the general women’s conference at the stake center.  They were so excited to have a GNO and go shopping after the meeting – nothing special Walmart, Target, and Old Navy.  Our first stop was Claire’s where Abigail got to pick out some earrings now that she was able to switch out the originals.  We also picked up a few cute necklaces and hairbands.  Thankfully, we had a 50% off for our entire purchase cause those girls can shop!  We shopped til the stores closed down then made it into Red Robin with just enough time to eat before they closed as well.  

It’s official – Drew wins the prize for being my toddler who gets into the most stuff.  Since he’s been mobile he’s loved to get into my tupperware, the kids cupboard, and the dishwasher – not terribly unusual, right?  Now that he’s tall enough he’s into drawers too.  I’ve found him with a sharp knife in his mouth on more than one occasion.  He walks around daily with a toothbrush in his mouth – he doesn’t care who’s it is.  He gets into the pantry every. single. day. and has even started helping himself to snacks.

With most of my other kids I only locked up one or two cupboards – you know the ones filled with poisonous cleaners and liquids.  With Drew, I have hairbands around pretty much every cupboard in my kitchen.  If someone accidently leaves it undone, Drew’s little radar goes off and he’ll be sure to find it and help himself to whatever lies within.  This week he has started to climb – I’ve found him on tables, sitting on my desk with about a dozen windows open on my computer, etc… He’s been caught with his hands (or legos and pencils) in the toilet on many occasions.  He’s unspooled floss and completely unrolled toilet paper into a puddle of tissue on the bathroom floor.  I’m sure I could go on and on.  Thankfully he really hasn’t caused any damage or harmed himself – yet.

I’m absolutely smitten by Drew though so he can rarely do wrong and because he’s my baby, I usually think even the naughty things he does are adorable.  I got a chance to snuggle my sweet boy a few weeks ago.  It was so, so hard to have to wake him up to get kids to soccer.  Thankfully Drew wakes up happy and ready to get back into action.

We got our family pictures taken the first weekend in October.  Dressing a family of seven is so stressful, especially when you’re trying to avoid buying all new clothes and you don’t want to be matchy-matchy but you want to look somewhat coordinated.  In typical Holly fashion I ordered a bunch of clothes online so we’d have options and returned most of it.  I’m still waiting on the pictures so hopefully they turned out.  Drew is at such a busy age that our photographer had her work cut out for her to get all of us smiling (‘real smiles’!) and looking in her direction.  As a reward we headed to Herfy’s afterward for shakes and fries!

Drew was evaluated recently for speech therapy.  During the evaluation they asked if he can eat with a spoon and fork.  I admitted that handing a spoon over to a one year old is something I hold off doing as long as possible.  I’m not a fan of cleaning up messes and even without a utensil Drew makes plenty of messes.  I’m easing into it though, perhaps starting with noodles with red sauce wasn’t the wisest of ideas.

Katie really is good about entertaining herself while Drew naps, but lately she finds herself “bored” and in exchange for cleaning something she gets time to play on the DS.

On Friday, October 10th, Justin was able to sneak away from work for a date night at Benaroya Hall.  I’m pretty sure this is our first time attending the symphony together and we were certainly one of the youngest couples in attendance.  They were performing John Williams arrangements so it was actually quite entertaining – our favorite was Jaws, but there were also pieces from Jurassic Park, Hook, E.T., Indiana Jones and of course Star Wars.

Abigail spent this last Sunday cooking Halloween treats.  She made chocolate dipped Oreo bats, candy corn sugar cookies, and chocolate mousse ‘ghosts in the graveyard’ – all recipes from ourbestbites.com.  So yummy!

I need to get out and take some pictures of all the fall colors in our area.  I’m so grateful I still look around and appreciate where we live – it is so beautiful.  Katie and Drew were playing at the park earlier this week and our crazy fall wind had dumped mounds of leaves on the ground.  Drew kept sitting down and throwing them in the air.  These are more terrible phone pictures (new phone coming soon! – hopefully) but to me they are adorable.

As much as I dislike the busyness of fall I think it might be a contender for my favorite season.