My Little Sis

Before Thanksgiving, my little sis came down to spend a few days with us. We had so much fun together! I don't get to see her very often, so we had to make the most of our time! We went to Santa Monica Pier and beach, to the movies, shopping at the Grove and Century City Mall, we made treats, we ate out, we hit up the Red Box...
So fun. We love you, Krissy! Come and visit again soon!

Hooray for...

Tinkerbell. She's TayJane's favorite fairy...and Tay in Tink garb is my favorite! We had planned for her to be Tink for Halloween, but we didn't get it made until the week after.

Playgrounds right outside your door. When you don't have a yard, this substitute is just fine! We love the "purple slide!"

Cousins. We love it when they come to visit!

Cupcakes! Yum. The tiny one's just make my day a little brighter and yummier!

And the biggest "HOORAY!" goes to: Daddy and the kiddies doing chores for Mommy. Awesome.

More Halloween Fun

We had a really fun Halloween week...we carved pumpkins and roasted the seeds (yum!) and made caramel apples (super yum!). We went up the street to check out a Halloween store - turned out to be super dirty, chaotic, and not at all what we thought. To be honest, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I thought it would be a fun outing for the kids to look at Halloween costumes and decorations. Well, the store looked like it had been ransacked! Won't do that again...
Adam's mom bought these stick-in faces for pumpkins...turned out to be a huge hit with the kids. They were obsessed with these little guys and carried them around everywhere! And, much much easier than carving :)

We had an awesome Halloween evening. We got together with some friends and had a Progressive dinner/trick-or-treating event. We started at one end of our complex at a friend's house and had hors d'oeuvres. Then we came to our house for Chili and cornbread. After dinner, the kids trick-or-treated through the complex down to another friend's home for yummy pumpkin/choc. chip cookies. So delish! I would trade all of Taylor's candy for another plate of those cookies right now (let's be honest, I am the one who eats most of the candy - can't let my kids eat all that junk, right?! I'm really doing them a favor.)

Luke got a little side-tracked by the playground...I let him play for a few minutes while sister kept knocking doors.

Mulan and the Spider

The kids had a great time - Luke would have been happy with just one piece of candy. He kept unloading his bucket and sitting on the sidewalk. Tay wanted to go trick-or-treating again on Sunday - it was hard to break the news that she'll have to wait a whole year to do it again.

Now, on to Thanksgiving and Christmas! I love the holidays...

Number Preschool Halloween

We brought Tay a dress from China Town in San Fran - and I told her it was her Mulan dress...well, she decided that's what she wanted to wear for Halloween. Easiest costume ever! Slap a little eyeliner on her eyes, hand her a parasol, and voila! Mulan! (even though it really doesn't resemble Mulan's get-up at all...Tay thinks it does, and that's all that matters, right?!)

Here she is with the rest of her class enjoying their Halloween party - they had a great time!

"Cheese!" Luke loves the camera.

More pics to come of the upcoming Halloween festivities! We love fall/winter time and all of the fun holidays we get to enjoy!

preschooler

I've been meaning to post this picture of Tay on her first day of preschool this year...she is going to a co-op that several of the moms/kids in our complex do together. There is a little classroom in one of the buildings here that we use and we take turns teaching and helping out. It's stocked with lots of supplies and has cute school posters all over the walls.

Taylor LOVES going to preschool - and has named it her "number preschool" - I think because the address of the building is in huge numbers on the outside of the classroom. Anyway, it has been a really positive experience so far! She gets so excited when it's time to go - and it's nice for me that school time falls right during Luke's nap :)

Luke didn't want to be left out of the pics, so here he is in all his pj'd, fraggle-rock-hair'd glory!

Nursemaid's Elbow

We had a strange little accident happen yesterday with our sweet little Lukey man...

Adam was walking around church with him holding onto his hands (like you do when helping a little one walk). All of sudden, Luke sunk to his knees and just started screaming. Adam thought maybe his feet were hurt or something, but then we noticed that he would not move his right arm. He screamed especially loud when we had to move it to put him in his carseat.

Well, there were no urgent care appts. available, so we headed to the ER...our first trip with one of the kids - and I'm sure it won't be the last! They got us in fairly quickly, probably because of all the loud screaming Luke was doing.

All I can say is, thank goodness for modern medicine! A Physician's Assistant came in, asked what happened, then started moving Luke's arm and after about 5 seconds said, "Ok, it's back in place." What?! It was out of place?! Apparently one of his forearm bones had popped out. It is supposedly a very common accident called nursemaid's elbow that happens to little kids ages 0-4 because their bones are so little. But, extremely scary because we didn't even know how it had happened...Adam hadn't pulled hard on his arms.

We are just so thankful that it was an easy diagnosis and fix - and that we have doctors readily available to fix us when we are a little broken.

Here's to a fixed man who was pointing and grabbing and smiling 5 minutes after having his arm popped back in! We love you, Luke!

San Francisco treat

The last trip of our summer of fun...we actually left the kids with Adam's parents and sister (I know, awesome, right?!) and headed to San Fran.

I loved all the Victorian style homes...especially the "Painted Ladies" the famous row of houses that are on lots of postcards and paintings.

It was so much fun to be able to come and go as we pleased without worrying about the munchkins...we did miss them terribly, though! But, nice to know that the screaming kids in the restaurants were not ours :)

Japanese Tea Gardens at Golden Gate Park

Another favorite at Golden Gate Park was the Rose Gardens. Very fragrant and beautiful.

We also went to a King Tut exhibit at the museum in Golden Gate Park...it was very interesting and exciting to see artifacts that were so old - but preserved so well. Definitely a highlight on our trip and something we had not planned to do!

We loved China Town! We went there a couple of times - once to shop around and once to look at all the interesting and different things they had in the food markets...we even saw a little shark just laying on the sidewalk in front of one of the shops.

We ate at a little restaurant in Little Italy after China Town...we had a hard time deciding where to eat because there are so many choices. Great food - we love Italian!

Alcatraz...one of my favorite things we did - I've always wanted to go, so I was very excited about going. Very cool. I loved that they had an audio tour with sound clips from actual former inmates.

We also stayed at Fisherman's Wharf for a night and were able to see some of the street performers and of course visit Ghiradelli Square. Yum.

One of the last places we went was called Land's End. We didn't take pictures because it was so foggy, but it was definitely one of the coolest things we did. It's just the edge of San Fran - the literal coast...we parked and walked down to the sea cliffs and watched the waves crash against the rocks. The sea spray was huge and awesome to watch. We could also hear seals but couldn't see them in the fog.

We had a great trip, and were so grateful to Aunt Weez and G&G Burnett for watching the little ones so we could have a little time off. But I must say, I was happy to come home to these two...

Love em!