Trick-or-treat!!!

Austin is out of town for a work leadership training in Michigan this week, so he missed out on trick-or-treating and my dad came with us instead. I was going to email the pictures to him, but figured since I had to do a blog post eventually, I might as well just put them up here first and he can see them this way. The boys were really excited for Heidi to be a care bear for Halloween even though I had pretty much convinced them to be Max and a wild thing from Where the Wild Things Are (I already have the Max costume). But once they saw Heidi's costume they decided that they also wanted to be care bears and so we got a matching set :) Introducing Lucky Bear, Tender Heart Bear, and Sleepy Bear:

 

Trick-or-treating was extremely exciting at first- the boys ran to every house for about the first 1/2 hour, then they started slowing down a bit, and by the end Leif just wanted to ride in the stroller and get home (Heidi rode the whole way since she is too little to go up everyone's stairs and doesn't eat candy anyway) and Asher ended up knocking on the last few doors by himself (our neighbors that knew he has a brother gave him extra candy for Leif). 

 They were so excited to get home and dump all their candy into a big pile and check out what they got. Heidi was excited to dig through it too and just play with it. She was not happy that I put her to bed soon after getting home, but she sure was tired.

Seventeen Months

Little Miss is seventeen months going on seventeen years. She is still a sweet girl who bring sunshine into our home, but she is getting to be quite the handful! Heidi is such a girl! (even though she loves to imitate her brothers by driving cars around with sound effects) She bats her eyes and gives these funny little feminine glances all the time. She loves clothes and shoes and snuggling stuffed animals. She loves to scream like she is being hurt if she doesn't get what she wants (including getting dressed herself instead of me doing it- which, by the way, she hasn't quite mastered). She says new words everyday and occasionally talks in full sentences, the most common being "I want . . ." or "I don't want . . . ". Even with that vocabulary though, she still prefers to just repeat "No" over and over when you have something she wants or when you are trying to give her something she doesn't want. I have worked with her quite a bit to say "please" instead of just demanding something by repeating "no" or "mommy", and she is getting pretty good at it, even if she needs to be reminded a lot.The boys just taught her the word "cookie" today as we were making/eating pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Heidi is great at repeating words you tell her to say, so the boys get a huge kick out of making her say things (sometimes over and over again). They have also tried to get her to say some pretty silly words and phrases, but of course she can't remember the nonsense, so she doesn't say it. Heidi is an incredibly loving little girl. She loves to snuggle and give kisses and gets pretty concerned if she sees someone crying. So even with the girl drama, we love having her around and wouldn't be sad if she gets a sister in a few months (although a brother would be great too ;)
Here are a few pictures of her playing in the back yard today. She loved that I just let her roam around and do whatever she wanted since I usually follow her around every where or trap her onto the trampoline with her brothers. Some of what I call "girl drama" may just be her exerting her independence, but she definitely does it with some girlish flair!

Fall Festivities

I love Fall! I'm so glad it's finally cooling off and I love all the fun activities that go along with Fall. We had a cousin "sleepover" last weekend (which really only turned into Amanda sleeping over) but we had lots of fun before bedtime. We ate pizza, played Halloween Bingo, made monsters from graham crackers, frosting, marshmallows, and sprinkles, and watched a movie with treats.

I also got my little monsters motivated to rake up leaves when we bought a few of the bags that look like jack-o-lanterns. They were very excited to use the rakes too (we have an adult one and a kid-sized one) although they did more spreading the leaves around than gathering them into one pile. But, I was glad for the help to get all the leaves in the bags. We have many more bagfuls of leaves ahead of us this Autumn, but we got a good start on the front yard and added some decorations for Halloween.