Halloween - It's About Time!

I know, I know. These pictures are late in coming, but I was hoping to get a few more pictures from some friends in the ward. I have decided to at least post what I've got. Enjoy! We had a blast doing it all!

The Clark Kent and Louis Lane Family

Matt was, obviously, Clark Kent and I was Louis Lane. Our kids were little Supermen. Ellie refused the title of "Supergirl". She was "Superman just like Daddy". I had a clipboard with a marked up newspaper and a pen to help my costume along, but still at first glance we had two different people ask if we were Mr. and Mrs. Smith :). I was also asked three times if I was Palin :) The real thriller was that at the end of the night Matt and I won the Best Couple Costume! We were totally surprised but weren't going to refuse the bucket of goodies that came with the title. I think Matt must have really won it for us because he is the hottest Clark Kent anyone has ever seen!!! :)
This is Matt and Ellie accepting the award

Hot! Hot! Hot!

And here are the SuperKiddos


On top of the ward party we also had a little medical school gathering. Before leaving the house for that event Ellie was feeling rather left out because she didn't have glasses like Mommy and Daddy. Here is what she came up with - the chocolate on the face was the perfect touch to this picture!

MY SUPERMEN!!

My last batch of Halloween pictures come from Halloween day. A friend of mine and I ventured out with our two kids a piece and went trick or treating in the downtown area. All the stores with balloons were passing out candy to the kids. This time Ellie decided to be a Princess - she still hung with all the super heroes though :) - Thanks again for going with me Corrie!! Later that night the kids and I met up with some neighbors and we did some more trick or treating. Sadly, Matt was on 30 hour shift over Halloween so we had to do it all alone!

Noah in his Relaxing Bath After it All

Ellie Showing Off Her Candy to Matt the Next Day

Ellie's Cave

Tears for My Mom

This morning as I nuzzled and kissed my little boy Noah tears filled my eyes as I was overwhelmed with how much I miss my own mom. I find that one of my favorite things to give Ellie and Noah are these insanely tiny kisses in their ear just as my mom would give me. A kiss in the ear from my mom was always an eventful thing. The suspense would almost kill you as you saw her preparing to pucker and lean in ever so close. The thing was that you never knew if she was going to give you this tincy soft peck or if she was going to give you a body shivering squeaky kiss that would ring through every part of you. For this reason she would lean in very slowly to let the anxiety build. Both kisses tickled like mad and as kids (and even adults) it had us all squirming in our seats as we would wait to see what mom had in store. Somehow this became a type of game. We would almost wait in line to get either one of these kisses from my mom. In fact, a sacrament meeting was not complete without one of these kisses and the seats next to Mom were fought over. I think she totally enjoyed watching us squirm and then try to keep our composure in the church pews. My mom always kept us smiling and laughing. I love and miss her so much.

Oh the things my daughter does . . .

A Few Short Stories For My Uncle Ron

Any time Ellie is asked "How are you?" she says "Doin Fine" with a confident and casual air about her. She usually nods her head while saying it too. It is the cutest thing and I have no idea where she got that response from.

When told to go talk to her Dad to see if she could watch a show Ellie plopped herself down on the floor next to Matt and in a very serious and determined voice said "Dad, we need to talk. Lets talk about me watching a show." -- and how could he say "No" to that!


Often times Matt and I will ask each other what the other thinks about Ellie doing or eating something. Ellie has now caught on to our phrasing and yesterday she came up to me and asked in a very adult fashion "Mommy, what you think about me having a treat right now?"


Last night was our ward church party so Ellie is now in possession of a pumpkin full of candy. All morning she has been playing with her candy. First she took them all out and lined them up in a straight line. The suckers were carefully balanced on their tops in this line and if they wouldn't stand she insisted that they were broken. Ellie then divided the candy into groups: suckers with suckers, nerds with nerds, and skittles with skittles. Categorizing them by color came next: all the pink wrappers with the pink wrappers and the yellow with the yellow. The candies were then gathered and placed once again in a straight line and the whole process was repeated. After a while of that Ellie brought me each piece of candy asking what it was, if it had "tummy aches" in it and if I liked it. One by one they were brought to me. Licorice, sour patch kids, tootsies, and pixie sticks. When that inspection of hers was done she proceeded to gather her purse and keys and pretended to go to the store to buy all the "candies". She went in the corner of the room and "paid" for them individually and when she brought the candy back to me she reminded me that I couldn't eat them until after I had had my dinner :) Smart Girl - so I thought . . .

It was after this morning filled with candy that I told Ellie that she couldn't have any more until after lunch. She seemed alright with that idea for about five minutes. Oddly enough I was really torn about what to do because Matt had given me a hard time last night when I only let Ellie eat one piece of candy before her bed time. He said "It's Halloween! Let her eat all the candy she wants!" He, of course, would not be around to face any of the consequences, but he still echoed in my head and I wasn't sure what to do. I had already told Ellie no candy until lunch and it wasn't even 11am, but my husband and my inner child was saying "Just let her live a little and eat the candy!"

My solution to the problem, I thought, was simple. After short while and I told Ellie that she would have to ask Noah if she could have candy before lunch. You have to understand that Ellie ALWAYS talks to Noah. She asks him all sorts of questions and she truly believes that he answers her so this little act would be no different than any other conversation with Noah The key would be to just make sure that she knew Noah said "Yes". So the question was posed to Noah and the positive response was given. Some how this facade made my conscience feel better. I didn't have to go completely back on my word (right?) and Ellie still got another piece candy.

Well, a little while later Ellie once again asked if she could have another piece of candy. By this time my controlling motherly instinct had already kicked back in and I decided that she really needed to wait 'til after her lunch for more candy. Upon hearing my negative response to her plea Ellie quickly said "Hmph, I'm gonna talk to Noah!!" and she turned and walked right out of the room. I exploded with laughter! Over my giggles and chortles in the kitchen I heard Ellie yell out from the other room "MOM! NOAH SAID YES!!!" And she was dead serious! It took me a while to regain my composure and Ellie never did figure out why I was laughing, but it was all too funny. Oh how did I not see that one coming!!

Good Morning World!

Superman (actually it should be Supergirl) Learning to Tie the Cape

Last night Ellie was trying to tie her Superman cape on so Matt decided to teach her how to tie a bow. They practiced by tying it to her leg where she could see it. After awhile of working on it she looked up at Matt and said "Daddy this is REALLY tricky!" It was so dang adorable! She never got the whole thing done by herself, but she got the first part a couple times. In fact, she decided that she ought to teach Matt how to do it so she had him put it around his leg and she tried telling him the steps. I love my family!

Ellie "Feeding" Her Babies

My sweet innocent Ellie thinks that I feed Noah through my belly button and I haven't exactly explained all the body parts to her yet :) These pictures are from a couple months ago, but she still feeds her dolls - or in this case her puppy - through her tummy. She follows me around with her toys bouncing or patting them the way that I do with Noah. The best was the other day during a bike ride when she noticed that I had Noah in a carrier strapped to my chest so Ellie stuck her dog down her shirt with his little head poking out and she continued around the block that way convinced that that was how I was really carrying Noah. I love her! She is going to be such a great mom and meanwhile she is such an awesome big sister.

A Date to Remember

Two months ago, on August 22nd, Matt and I went on a double date with some of our close friends and it turned out to be one of our funnest dates ever! It all started when Matt bought me a set of golf clubs for my birthday - they were from a garage sale and there was even a free bottle of whisky in the golf bag! Then Matt finally got his new driver which was a trophy for making it through boards. These two events combined formed an intense need for Matt to take me golfing. With a new born baby and the ever tight budget I seriously doubted that we would ever escape to the golf course, but when our friends Melissa and Zo asked us if we would double with them for a work golf and dine event we couldn't turn it down.
The golf course was incredibly ritzy and Melissa and I soon learned why most girls don't love golf -- you aren't allowed to talk! Our husbands had to continually "shush" us when we would forget the etiquette and start talking or asking questions while someone was up to golf. Not to say that we weren't enjoying ourselves - driving the carts from hole to hole and trying to contain our laughter after wild shots was very entertaining--but the date went to a whole new level of fun when it started to rain!

At first the boys tried to push on through, determined to get their full game of golf in, but as the lightning flashed around us it was decided that swinging metal rods over our heads probably wasn't the smartest thing to be doing! Once the decision to turn back to the club house was made it began to POUR. And I mean POUR. We jumped in the carts and began racing back as fast as we could while the rain was coming at us on all sides. My vision was completely blurred when what felt like buckets of water continued to hit my face, making my make-up run everywhere. My eyes stung as my watered down mascara slips past my eyelids but I have never laughed so hard. I felt like a drunk driver swerving and trying desperately to stay on that narrow and winding path.

Matt was holding on for dear life as we would twist and hit bumps. It was actually quite a rush to fly across the course in what felt like wild abandon - only occasionally looking back to see if Melissa and Zo were still with us or if they had fallen victims to this intense dowsing of water. They were always relatively close behind so I continued to push the pedal to the metal while I screamed and laughed 'til I was crying. I felt like a little kid again living a video game. When we finally fought our way through the storm to the club house we managed to take a few pictures of our soaked selves and then we slipped inside to the dining portion of our evening.

After eating and declining the offers of beer, we set back to Melissa and Zo's house where we were able to change into some dry clothes and spend the rest of the evening REALLY relaxing with hot chocolate and good company. Talk about an ideal date. Outdoors, adventure, food, laughter, ending with cuddle time on a couch. Not to mention we had FREE babysitting that night! I don't think it gets any better than that.

The couples surviving the pre-storm humidity!

The Boys Determined Play on Through

The Aftermath . . .

The Sweet Ending to an Awesome Date

Sleeping Beauty or Sleeping Prince?

How does that story go again?

Ellie and her best friend Reuben were reenacting Sleeping Beauty in a very comical fashion. Sometimes it was "Sleeping Beauty" and sometimes Reuben decided that he wanted to be the "Sleeping Prince". The best part was that after each little kiss on the cheek the other would jump up yelling "HEY!!" and the kisser would squeal with laughter and run away. Innocence is so fun to be around.

The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Prince

Ellie decided to sit on him instead of kissing him :)

Puppy Is Fixed!

The decision to finally sit down and give Puppy a nose job occurred when Ellie asked if the Noah's pediatrician could fix Puppy's "ouwie" for her. She was being so sincere and it was then that I realized what a big deal it was to her. I had always told her that I would fix it, but I never sat down to do it. That day was the day. The moment we got home from the doctor's office I set to work to fix puppy. Even now she still talks about how his "ouwie" is all better and she has Puppy thank me over and over. My little girl is such a sweet angel.

I can't fix his ruggedness, but I finally fixed his split nose! I am so proud!

Brought to Tears

I love Ellie. Last night I took the two kids to a high school band concert while Matt was studying at home. The first half of the show I spent trying to coerse Ellie to take her hands off her ears because she insisted that everything was too loud, but after intermission, when the marching band came on stage, Ellie came alive. She was dancing, clapping and leading the music while excitedly jabbering to me about everything going on. She told me that she wants to play the trumpet and the drums someday. If you ask her she will "play" them for you now by holding her fist up to her mouth and moving her fingers around or she'll start patting her legs as quickly as possible. It was during one of those sweet conversations at the concert that I was completely overwhelmed with how much I loved that little girl. Bright eyed and chatty this buddle of joy sent shivers down my spine and tears filled my eyes. I felt like I was going to burst with all the love that I felt for her. She is becoming one of my best friends. She is thinking and feeling so much and it is so fun to hear her verbablizing everything.

As the night wore on Ellie grew tired and crawled into my lap telling me that she loves me "SO MUCH". Then hand in hand we made our way through the crowd as the concert ended. It was a beautiful night that I didn't want to end. I love you Ellie.

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, OH MY!

This last trip to the zoo was really an exciting one for me. Honestly, I was like one of the little kids fighting my way to get up to the front to see the polar bears swimming or the seals being trained. Those were my two favorite exhibits by far. The large glass walls that allow you to see the animals swim right passed you are incredible. My childhood desire to be a zoo keeper has been rekindled!!

Here's Ellie with our neighbors in front of the seal exhibit. Look at my little girl trying to hang out with the big kids! She is growing up so fast!

I went to the zoo with my dear friend Ailene and her kids plus one. They all spoil Ellie royally and, as you can see on this train ride, Noah is quite fond of Ailene.

My kids!

All tuckered out!!