A couple of weeks ago Emma got to bring home the “basket” from her preschool class.  Mrs. Howe explained that when each child gets to bring the basket home, they are to bring back a snack for each child in the class and that child gets to be the “leader” for the day.  Emma was VERY excited about bringing the basket home!  We made (well, mostly I made/decorated) cookies for her to take to class.  Apparently, they were delicious because Mrs. Howe said the children inhaled them!  Each child got 3 cookies each; a bat, a pumpkin and a ghost!

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been 2 months since I’ve updated our blog.  This is me attempting to get it back to shape.  October has been unbelievably busy for us.  Between school, work and all of the birthday parties for friends this month we have been going crazy!

Everett is almost 11 months old, he’s crawling and cruising around furniture.  On occasion he’s stretching really far, without letting go, to get between the furniture!  Emma is almost FOUR!!!  She knows her alphabet (by recognition of each letter) and all of the sounds the letters make.  If you ask her what letter a word starts with, she can answer you (correctly, most of the time ;)!  She’s loving preschool and especially her teacher, Mrs. Howe.  She’s especially looking forward to Halloween and “trick or treating” at school.

Tim and I are doing well.  In fact, we are both losing weight and we have changed our lifestyles a little bit.  Tim has lost 16 lbs and I have lost over 30 lbs.  In addition to being more mindful of what, when and how much we eat, I go to the gym regularly and Tim is using the Wii Fit in the evenings and continues to ride his bicycle to work.  Tim is actually doing a weight loss challenge through work, “Lose a turkey by turkey day!”  The idea is to lose 10% of your body weight in 10 weeks (by Thanksgiving) and he’s almost two-thirds there at the halfway point!  I have been on my B-12 injections for a few months and am truly starting to notice the difference.  I am doing them every week at home now so I don’t have to go into the doctor’s office during cold and flu season. 

Anyways…enough about us…onto the kids!

Grandma ReeRee came to visit:

We got the kids a bubble machine for the bathtub!!  They LOVE it!

Spencer’s Birthday

My friend Kelly’s son, Spencer had his first birthday this month.  I made the “OSU” themed cake for his party!

Photos taken by Joel Culberson.

Everett was too cute, we were supposed to wear our “team gear” to the party!

Little Everett…he’s into everything now!!

Obviously, he LOVES Baby Einstein!!

Emma and Lucas on the Trampoline

Once again I have failed to keep the blog updated!  We have been crazy busy and I am finding it hard to keep on top of this thing.  Anyways, enough of my excuses, here is the good stuff…

Everett Pictures:

First chocolate chip cookie!!

Helping with the laundry!

Picture of Everett refusing to sleep in his crib…he jumps up and down! (poor quality from the video monitor on the tv!)

Everett in the bean bag, his favorite chair!

Emma Pictures:

Dolly “washing”

Emma dead asleep with all of her lights in her room on.  She is refusing to take naps, so some days she falls asleep on her own when she gets bored.

Cheese!

Miscellaneous Pictures

Family dress up time and reading Emma’s favorite book that helped her learn her alphabet, “On Market Street”.

Westin and Summer came to visit on Labor Day weekend.  We had a wonderful time and enjoyed their visit!  While they were here Summer helped me do some craft projects in the house, she’s really talented!  Thanks Summer!!

This is chalkboard paint on the door!

Cakes

I have been doing a lot of cakes recently.  Different requests, some baby shower and some birthday, but LOTS of cakes!  Tim always comes in and tries to get pictures of me working on the cakes.

Razorback Cake

Baby shower cake

Sewing

I have been making lots of Emma’s dresses for the winter!  I made this outfit out of an old pair of shorts.

Emma decided she wanted Fruit Loops for a snack.  In an effort to make snack time more “educational” I taught her how to string the Fruit Loops with yarn and a yarn needle.  We counted, named colors (not really a challenge anymore) and made patterns with the cereal.  Kinda  boring, but it burnt about an hour out of the afternoon.  ;)

Emma and I made some homemade, from scratch, pretzels (like the mall  kind) over the weekend.  They were AWESOME!  Emma particularly enjoyed rolling out the dough into snakes!  We didn’t exactly do the traditional pretzel shape, but Emma had a good time playing with the dough.

Emma and I made donuts for breakfast on Saturday morning.  She specifically requested chocolate, with sprinkles (of course!)  According to Emma they were “deeeelicious!”  Everett enjoyed his as well :) 

Saturday evening Emma requested to make a “poppet” (aka, a paper bag puppet).  We had already made a pig earlier in the week, but she had been asking to make the crab (really it’s a lobster) ever since.  They are a set of 6, out of the Martha Stewart craft line…I got them on super clearance when our Michael’s was moving across town!

Happy birthday Tim!  We had a great long weekend up in Missouri.  I went to a friend from high school, Chanel’s baby shower on Wednesday night.  It was nice to see old friends and I made the cake for the shower…

Then, Everett had an appointment with Dr. McDonald on Thursday afternoon and the doctor said he was the “poster child for plugs”.  He said his ears look wonderful, and that we’d see him again in 6 months.  I’ll take that!!

We sort of just had a lazy weekend.  Honestly, we didn’t do much…we usually don’t on 4th of July, per Tim’s request on his “birthday weekend”.  We did however go to the Hunter’s for a nice barbeque, Emma went swimming of course!

About this picture…somewhere, I have a picture of Mom holding Emma that looks just like this!  Isn’t he cute? :)

I made cupcakes for the party and a chocolate coffee ice cream filled cake for Tim’s birthday, it was AWESOME!!  Sorry about the picture, it’s in the freezer!  Also, the only shot we thought to get of the inside was the next day when it was almost gone!

Of course when we were there Emma wanted to do nothing but ride horses!  She is getting really good, I’m amazed at her skills!  She is now learning to groom them and feed them as well.

Everett also got to “ride” a horse this visit…although, I think he was more fascinated with his ears than anything!

A rare picture of Mommy (don’t look too close, I don’ have makeup on!)…

I just thought these were too cute, notice the really sweet authentic cowgirl boots…

Daddy and Everett…