H-A-double L-O-W-double E-N spells HALLOWEEN!

Did anyone else sing that song in elementary school? "Halloween means ghosts and goblins, scaring the people who open the door...." To this day, I sing it to myself when I have to spell "Halloween." I always thought it was a cool song, but I sang it to my girls and they were totally unimpressed.

Our Halloween began with a couple of parties last weekend including our ward's Halloween party. We ate chili, cornbread, and hot dogs. Someone made these cute little critters from half a hotdog wrapped in a biscuit with Chinese noodle legs. Emma was suspicious of eating something with legs, so we told her they were aphids. Ladybugs eat aphids, right? So... She ate it and said it was a great little aphid.

Emma and the half-eaten aphid.

Here's Ryan wrapping the girls up in the mummy wrapping contest.


Final product.


Halloween night was CRAZY, as always. Did you know that the busiest pizza delivery day of the year is Halloween? I believe it. Dinner is kind of an afterthought when you've got costumes, makeup, candy, parties, pictures, etc. to think about.

As you can see, Hannah was Sleeping Beauty and Emma was a ladybug. They loved their costumes and are already planning what they're going to be for the next two Halloweens. We had the girls dressed in layers as it was in the 40s during trick-or-treating time. We tried to walk quickly between houses to keep warm. At least it wasn't raining.

Although they were so excited to trick-or-treat, they were a little timid at first. Hannah wouldn't knock on the doors for the first block or so. Emma would get so enchanted/scared by the other kids costumes, she'd just stand in the doorway, mouth open staring at costumes. So much for "trick-or-treat." One little boy's Spiderman costume was particularly scary to her. Ryan's "spiders eat bugs" comment didn't help the situation.

We trick-or-treated until their buckets were full (I gave myself a pat on the back for choosing small candy buckets). Back at home, they looked over their loot and literally danced around it. Hannah wanted to know what each kind of candy was. Emma would have eaten it all that night, if we would have let her. This morning, the first thing she wanted was more candy. We had to have a talk about when we eat candy and when we don't. Before 9:00 AM is a time we don't.

Hope everybody had a great Halloween!

Stinky Pumpkin

We carved our Halloween pumpkin last night. Though Emma was very excited about this, she changed her tune once the carving began. Ryan pulled the stem/lid off the pumpkin and ...

Emma immediately did this:

She covered her nose! She didn't like the smell of the pumpkin "guts." She's always been super sensitive to smells (like her mom), but a pumpkin? I kind of like the smell. It brings back happy childhood memories. Nevertheless, Emma covered her nose, or made some sort of face for the entire carving.

Meanwhile, Hannah was not fazed by the smell or guts. She drew pictures of "pumkenz" while Ryan carved.

Emma, continuing to be disgusted.

"You put your hand in THAT?"

Hannah decided she would touch the pumpkin seeds and carved chunks.



Emma liked the final product and managed to forget about the smell for a minute.

Amazing how things can change in one year's time:

2006 pumpkin carving photos: Yes, that's Emma with her hand -gasp- IN the pumpkin!

Emma dumped the pumpkin guts while Hannah cowered in fear behind her. Total role reversal from last year to this.

In-N-Out Menyou

This past weekend, Ryan returned from a week-long business trip to L.A. While there he ate at the famous In-N-Out Burger. He brought the girls home their own burger-flippin' hats and they had a pretend drive through restaurant. They used their play food and kitchen stove, with barstools serving as the drive through window. Ryan helped Hannah write the menu pictured below.


Hannah: Dad, how do you spell "menu?"
Ryan: M-E-N
Hannah: Got that.
Ryan: U
Hannah: Ok.

She hears "you," not the letter U. Kindergarten spelling is endlessly entertaining.

No. 3

Baby #3 is due in April. Here's the 12 week ultrasound photos:


Baby's head is on the right, knees are up by tummy with feet in the air... in case it isn't obvious. I'd never had an ultrasound taken before 20 weeks, so I wasn't expecting to see much on this one. Despite being only 7 mm long, we could see facial features, detail of the spine, feet, hands, legs, bladder, stomach, and both hemispheres of the brain. It was absolutely amazing.



Here baby's knees and feet are pulled in, head's still on the right. :) This one is a little more blurry, but they turned out pretty well considering these are pictures I took of the glossy picture the ultrasound machine printed out. Who needs a scanner?

Dinosaur!

The coolest pop up book EVER! Hannah and Emma love this book about dinosaurs ("Dinosaurs" by Robert Sabuda & Matthew Reinhart) because each page has multiple pop ups and they're so intricate. Thanks Auntie Ann!

Meanwhile, in potty training land...

Emma is making progress. She wears big girl undies all the time, unless she's sleeping. I'm not ready for wet beds yet. We still have occasional accidents, but she's doing so much better!

Loose Tooth + Pillow Fight =

Yes, that's right. Hannah lost her first tooth during a pillow fight. It was quite loose before the pillows started flying. My Mom, in fact, said she "could have had it out of there" the day before, but she didn't want to rob us of the opportunity of pulling it ourselves. Since loose teeth and - heaven forbid - having to pull them out, make me sick to my stomach, I would have been OK with Grandma pulling it. But, Ryan wanted to be the one to do it. Yuck.

In the end, Hannah pulled her own tooth out... sort of. While playing in the living room of Grandma and Grandpa Mattson's house, under the watchful care of Uncle Greggy, a pillow fight began. Who started the fight is any one's guess (cough, cough: Greg). By his own account (and feel free to comment/defend yourself if I'm misquoting you), Greg lobbed a pillow at Hannah. The pillow hits Hannah in the face/mouth. Hannah recovers quickly and, laughing, says something to the effect of "hey, you're going to knock out my loose tooth!" Greg, having forgotten all about the loose tooth until now, decides he'd better make sure the tooth is still there and not somewhere on Grandma's white carpet. Upon inspection, he confirms the tooth has not come out. Hannah says that the pillow loosened the tooth more, so she grabs it between her fingers and - yank! The tooth is out! Both Greg and Hannah think this is very cool, so they exchange high fives and run into the kitchen, where the rest of the family is. Greg and Hannah are both running with their hands up in the air, over their heads. One of Hannah's hands is holding her tooth. She's smiling broadly with blood from her gum starting to drip onto her lip. After we mopped up the blood and found some Tupperware to hold the tooth, we had a good laugh. I wonder if she went to school the next day and told her friends, "My uncle knocked out my tooth with a pillow!"


Sweet Hannah told my Mom that she was hoping to get "a shiny penny" from the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy must have been feeling generous that night, because she got four quarters. Ryan walked by the girls' room the morning after the tooth fairy's visit. He overheard Hannah whispering to Emma, "It's 6:53 Emma. I can't wait until it's 7 so I can show Mommy!!!" Many of you probably don't know that Hannah is required to stay in her bed until her digital clock's first number is a 7. So, she was awake (for who knows how long) sitting in bed, waiting for her clock to get to 7, so she could get out and show her fairy loot.

Do the Puyallup

This past Saturday we went to the Puyallup Fair. I LOVE the Puyallup Fair. Does anyone else dream of Elephant Ears? Here's some pictures from our visit.

Hannah & Emma with the pig "Annelise" in the background. We found out that this pig was named after the character in the girls' current favorite movie "Barbie's Princess and the Pauper." Emma even sang the pig one of the songs from the movie.

Each year at the fair, it's our tradition to find the mama and baby pigs. These pigs were only three days old. Hence, the mama's passed out in the corner.

Ryan and the girls "milking" the "cow." Another yearly tradition. The girls must have enjoyed it because they played dairy instead of princesses that evening.

Ryan and Hannah on the swings. Emma was too scared to ride.

This ride was more Emma's speed, though she still wasn't too excited about it.

And this ride, the Kiddyland Train, was my speed. No spinning, twisting, racing, or tipping.

The final ride was the river canoes. After enjoying our Trans-fat Free Elephant Ears, we headed home. Until next September, Puyallup!

Kindergarten

Yesterday was Hannah's first day of Kindergarten. Before school, she couldn't stand still she was so excited. She was ready to go 20 minutes early and didn't understand why we couldn't leave NOW!! We used our extra time to take some pictures:

No, they're not wearing uniforms, they just wanted to wear their matching outfits.

Waiting in line outside class.

Emma and I were able to go into Hannah's classroom for the first 15 minutes. We watched her find her cubby (so exciting!), hang up her coat and backpack (so exciting!), put her lunch in the lunch bucket, and find her seat (!!). She loved all these tasks, but started to get grumpy when she was at her seat with Emma and me. After her teacher called the class to come find a seat on the floor, Hannah started rubbing her wet eyes. Her teacher asked the children to wave bye to mom. Realizing that Hannah was sad, if not already crying, I gave her a big smile, grabbed Emma, and raced out the door. In retrospect, I think she would have done better if I'd just said bye at the beginning, before going into class. Much like my friend Cailean's Kindergarten experience (see her blog, linked to the right), when I peeked back at Hannah, she was looking at her teacher, sadness apparently over.

After school, Hannah told us all about her day. She said she didn't learn anything, "just rules." She liked eating her lunch at school and carrying her princess lunch box to the lunchroom "like a purse." She toured the school and told me the name of the PE teacher, though she didn't participate in the optional PE games. Instead, she "just got used to the gym." :) Her favorite time of day was free choice time and quiet time when she went to the reading corner and found new books to read. She didn't go to the bathroom at all for the entire 6 hours. Yes, I asked. She said the bathroom has a "loud flusher" and was, therefore, not usable. Despite my insistence that she go during her time at school, she refuses. We'll be working on that.

All in all, a great first day. She couldn't wait to go back the next day. She was quite tired and was in bed and asleep by 8:00 PM that night. I went up to bed at 8:30 PM. The first day of Kindergarten is tiring for Moms too.

First REAL Haircut

I've cut Hannah's hair before, but she's never had a professional cut. I though before starting school was a good time to take her in. She sort of tolerated the actual cut. She didn't like sitting so perfectly still for so long. Her efforts were rewarded with candy from the stylist, so she thought it was all worth it in the end.

Before

After. LOVE IT! She looks so grown up! Sniff.