Thought We Meant More To Her

Jess comes home tonight.  We can't wait.  The kids have handled it a bit better this time, only one meltdown from Cason because he missed daddy.  Neely goes a day or so and then asks "When daddy come back?"  I was very happy that this time I could say "TONIGHT!" 

I took them to McDonalds for breakfast this morning and on the drive home we passed Lily's school.  Paige said "Lily's soooooo lucky.  She gets to go to school FIVE days.  I LOVE school and I only get 4."  Cason asked her "Do you want to LIVE at school, Paige?"  She goes "YEAH!" So I asked "You're going to leave us and live at the school?"  She goes "NOOOO!  I just waaaant to."  Haha.

Couple Things That Made Me Laugh

In Vegas Cason was shooting for an "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse" kind of thing.  He told us all "I'm so hungry, if something smelled so good I would just eat a tree."  Paige goes "I would just eat the thing that smelled so good."  Haha.

I was going through the papers Paige brought home from school on Thursday.  She had made this little book, and had her first inappropriate misspelling.  Haha.  It makes me laugh every time I picture Mrs. Arnold grading it and noticing the mistake.  :)

She Toooold Me

On Friday Tiffany texted, asking if we wanted to come down to watch Bayleigh's soccer game and then leave Cason and Paige to spend the night with Kayson and Bayleigh.  She's a heck of a nice mama, letting her niece and nephew spend the night when she has a 10 day old baby.  Cason found out right away, and was SO happy.  He's been DYING to stay the night with Kayson.  I picked Paige up from piano and told her as we were getting home.  She ran through the house screaming excitedly.  So we drove down to the game, where apparently I took no pictures.  :(

But then we all went to Wendy's after the game, where I got this PERFECT picture of Devynn smiling.

 Grampa thinks it's because he was holding her, but she could sense me nearby.

Then the older two went home with their cousins, to decorate cookies and keep Tiffany up late.  Jess and I took Neely to Target with us.  Cason and Paige know how awesome Target is so trips there are really chaotic and it's hard to really shop.  So this was nice, getting to shop there with only one of the kids.  Neely was really good.  She also got to pick out a toy with her birthday money from Uncle Randy and Aunt Mindy.  She picked out this shopping cart.  She was so cute, pushing it through the store.  She tried to put about 10 lbs of Hershey's Kisses in it.

She's been so funny lately, busting out these little phrases I didn't know she knew, out of nowhere.  Like when we were in the kids' clothes, and she spotted a picture of a scarecrow on a display.  I was on the other side of it so when she said "WOOK!  A scarecrow!"  I said "Oh there is?"  As I walked around the display, I saw it and said "Oh yeah!" and she goes "I toooold you." in the funniest voice.

Thanks Aunt Mindy for her shopping cart!  She loves it.

On our drive home she was saying cute things about everyone.  She goes "Mama when Cason come back?"  I told her he'd be back tomorrow and asked her if Cason's her best friend.  She said "Paige my bes' friend.  Daddy my bes' friend.  Mama my bes' friend."  Then she talked about baby Devynn for a while.  She said something about "my baby Devunn."  She looked at a picture of her and said "Aww, baby Devunn TOO CUTE."  :)

This morning we're getting ready to leave for Las Vegas.  Jess is flying out to Oklahoma City for the week, to work there, sign all his paperwork and everything, and then get his laptop to work on from home until we leave in January.  I was packing, and Neely asked me "I have a baf?(bath)"  I said, "No, you can have a bath tonight baby."  She goes "Aww.  Too bad." 

Woodland Creatures Party For Our Girls

Sorry, it's been a crazy couple of weeks.  After Halloween I realized I had like 2 days to plan the girls' birthday party.  Usually I do a good job of planning well beforehand but this time it seemed like Halloween and their birthdays snuck up on me.  Plus Paige changed her mind on what kind of theme she wanted for the party only about a week before.  She saw these forest animal cookies we could make in a magazine and decided she wanted a woodland creatures party.  I couldn't find ANYTHING to go with that theme except for some cupcake toppers on Etsy.  They were REALLY cute though, so we ordered them. 

Other than that we made those cookies and pretty much just bought plates and balloons and things in foresty colors.  

 

I just plopped the cookies on top of the cake and she was happy. 

I was torn between inviting lots of friends now that she's in school, and just keeping it small with family and close friends since it's their last party before we move.   In the end we kept it small and intimate-partly because I procrastinated so badly.  Ha.  Grama was kind enough to let us use her house. 

Even with just close family and a few friends there are always lots of people who love them.

Even Matt and Tiffany bravely came with their family-including their 3 day old angel baby girl.  She visited with everyone.

I figured this would be the year that Neely would be in to opening presents, but she opened MAYBE 1 or 2, and I did the rest.  She only payed attention to a couple of gifts at all, until we came home and she realized it was all hers.  :)

They had a nice party.  It was ON Neely's actual birthday, so she really was 2.  Paige's actual birthday was 3 days later.  She was turning 6 on the 6th, so it was her golden birthday.  We woke her up to the usual chocolate muffin breakfast, and had gold balloons all over for her.  She ate her breakfast, opened a couple of small gifts, and fielded birthday phone calls.  :)

She couldn't wait to go to school.  She got a flower from Grama, and we dropped off a balloon for her.  She was DYING to get home and get her big gift though.  We had told her she was going to LOVE it and that it was such a big one it was for her birthday AND Christmas.  So she couldn't wait.  We got her a Kindle Fire.  I felt a bit weird about it at first.  I knew it was a good idea for her, as smart as she is and as much as she loves to read and learn, but I felt like those people who get their 9 year olds a cell phone.  Ha.  But like Jess said, most kids get and Xbox or whatever, and this is something that can be educational AND fun.  She of course LOVED it, and in fact only had it for a day before having it confiscated for a couple of days.  She's going to have to learn not to be TOO possessive of it.  ;)

Can't believe our girls are SIX and TWO!  We're so blessed.  Both of them are so sweet, beautiful, smart, funny, and a tad feisty and stubborn.  We love them like crazy!

Punkins

We carved our pumpkins only a couple of days before Halloween this year.  Tyra came over and carved with us.  Cason and Neely painted theirs.  

Caso was funny because he wanted Jess to carve out a lid even though he was just going to paint it.  He painted it quickly and then abandoned us.

Neely had fun painting hers, 

 

until she noticed there were also sharp tools to be had.  She spent a lot of time trying to sneak a carving tool.  Finally she settled for the scooper and scooped all the innards BACK into Cason's pumpkin.

Paige mostly carved hers by herself.

She did ask Jess to help with the mouth.  He failed apparently, because she ran to her room crying that she'd never forgive him.  Ha.  Bit of an overreaction if you ask me.  :)

Jess gave his the annual star eye . I've decided I'm only carving white pumpkins from now on.  It looked so cool.

I did have a picture of Tyra's but can't figure out where it is!

Here's one of our Jack'o'lantern family:

Jess has started working from home.  He said he likes that he can wake up at 5:58 to be "at work" at 6 am(8 am in Oklahoma City).  Once we're all awake it's a bit hard for him to focus.  That's going to take time for him to get used to I think.  His first day was Nov. 1st.  We tried not to distract him, although the kids did seem to like playing near the computer where he was working.  I don't think I could focus if it were me.   They're too cute and funny.

Neely was way into affectionate poses for pics that day.

I took them for a walk to give Jess some time to work.   There were far more leaves on the sidewalks than even the day before.  They knew November had arrived.

Halloween and the Best Husband EVER!!!

I was planning to get up early on Halloween and start baking, cleaning, and cooking for our Halloween dinner, and finish the kids' costumes.  I had only finished one wing for Paige.  She'd worn sparkly gold foam wings to church and to go trick or treating at MCC, but I was working on feathery white wings for Halloween night.  I was cutting feather shapes out of fleece and hot gluing them to a wing shaped foam board, but it was pretty time consuming.  Cason wanted to be Bomberman, but I still had to make the whole head part, and his gloves and boots.  

Instead of spending my day doing that, I found out about my new niece, so I went to Bullhead to meet her.  Since I rode with family, I couldn't rush home to get everything ready, and Jess ended up pretty much throwing the Halloween party.  He spent the whole day taking care of the kids, baking pumpkin muffins, cleaning the house, cooking pumpkin pasta.....and he did an AWESOME job.  

I got home with about an hour and a half to finish the kids' costumes.  I had to pretty much throw Caso's costume together in 45 minutes.  Ha.  I had plans for it that went out the window.  I ended up sewing two giant circles of black fleece together for his helmet, and cut out a hole for his eyes.  I threw in a piece of boning to hold it away from his nose so he could breathe, stuffed the helmet to make it puffy, and had Paige paint a styrofoam ball pink for me to hot glue to the top.  I planned to make him pink boots, but with so little time I just hot glued pink fleece to a pair of his crocs.  Haha.  It worked though.  Then I had to sew some pink mittens to be his gloves, and Jess even sewed one of them for me.  He was the best!  

Anyway, the costume wasn't exactly how I planned it, but Cason felt like a Bomberman and was super happy. 

There was still only one "feathery" wing, so Paige wore the gold foam ones.  She didn't mind though.  Neely was quite happy to be Super Girl again.  

Pretty soon everyone arrived.  

 

We ate and visited for a bit...

Stole those last two from Tyra's instagram.  Cason's amazing in the last one.

Then some of us took the kids trick or treating.  They were cute, of course.  Neely and Aivree mostly got pulled in the wagon.  Neely was hilarious, she'd get out of the wagon, march up to a door, say "trick or treat" before getting to the door and then wouldn't say it when someone was actually answering the door and offering candy.  She'd hold out her pumpkin for them to put candy in, say "thanks" and hop back in the wagon for the 6 second ride to the next house.  

When we'd gone around the neighborhood we came home to hand out candy, let the kids play, 

 

 and  visit with our last arrivals-Skye, Will, and baby bat Ever.

It was a lovely Halloween!  Now Neely asks every day if we can "go trick or treat".  :)

Halloween Baby!

This was a WONDERFUL Halloween!  I woke up ready to sew, clean, cook, and bake for our Halloween dinner, but instead found out my newest niece was on the way.   Lucky!  I wanted Neely to come early on Halloween or the day before so we could have Halloween themed birthday parties.  :)  Not even 30 minutes later, I found out Devynn had already arrived!  So instead, Jess did ALL the work today while I went down to Bullhead to meet my newest beautiful niece, with Grama, Grampa and Grama Trudi, Coco, and Tyra.  

I'll do the Halloween post tomorrow, but for now here are the decent pictures I got.  I'm not used to Tyra's camera so I had to take about 1000 pictures to get these few good ones.  

The family of 5:

Lots of the angel baby girl:

I know lots of these are very similar, but deal with it, I'm in love.