The Dinosaur and the Flower

Last year for Halloween, our friends Corey and Blythe invited us over to their house for dinner and trick-or-treating. This year they did the same, so a few hours ago we headed to their house for an evening of fun. For the kids costumes this year, I snagged an awesome deal at a consignment sale a few weeks ago and got both costumes for $9! Here is a picture of the two of them together....this is best picture we could get because they were too excited/hungry/unwilling to sit still.

Parker was a dinosaur! I got this costume for $4, and there is even a button to push on the left hand that makes a roaring noise.

Sadie was a flower. Her costume cost me $5, and it still had the tags on it!

Here are Parker and Daddy heading out to trick-or-treat.

Sadie wanted to walk by herself, and she would not let go of her pumpkin basket for anything.

Waiting at a house....

The kids had a great time! Parker, my social butterfly, obviously loves seeing and talking to people, and Sadie was so polite saying 'tain too' (thank you) to almost everyone. We ended the evening by returning to Corey and Blythe's house where we had some amazing food, and we all decided that this is going to officially be our Halloween tradition!

Fall fun!

This morning we went to a local pumpkin patch called Colorado Pumpkin Patch. I was a little worried about waiting so late in the season to go, but other than some wind the weather ended up being pretty nice. They had a small petting zoo that the kids checked out....

Here we are waiting for our hayride to start....

....and all of us after the ride. The kids thought it was pretty cool!

We stopped to get Parker's face painted. What did he get? A pumpkin, of course.

Parker also had his first experience with a port-a-potty, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

The slides were one of the funnest parts of the pumpkin patch. They were actually really fast and quite fun. I went down with Parker, and Andrew took a video of it that I won't be sharing here or anywhere for that matter. Here is Andrew with Parker....

....and Andrew with Sadie.

Parker even went down by himself!

Here is Parker climbing the hay bale pyramid.

My little cuties.

Mommy and son....

Both kids enjoyed wandering through the straw maze.

Little diva crawling through the tunnel.

Ironically, one of the things Parker enjoyed the most was the corn box....basically a sand box filled with corn kernels instead of sand. He kept asking to play in it again and again.

We followed up our time at the pumpkin patch with some lunch from Qdoba. If you don't know what Qdoba is, I'm tuly sorry. They are doing a kids-eat-free weekend, so we obviously had to take advantage of that! Stay tuned for a post coming soon featuring a very handsome Dinosaur and a very pretty Flower....

Party like a D-I-N-O-S-A-U-R!

We had Parker's 4th birthday party on Saturday, October 9th. Parker is totally into dinosaurs right now, so I decided to do a dinosaur theme. We even started off the morning of his party with dinosaur shaped pancakes!

Parker LOVED this balloon! Good thing since it was not cheap....

We had some fun dinosaur-ish foods....green punch, green apples and caramel, chips and guacamole, and dinosaur chicken nuggets.

I even had a co-worker who does cake decorating on the side make this cake for Parker.

Opening presents....

Time to blow out the candles!

He had wanted some of his birthday cake all day long.

Eating cake with Cousin A....

Some of Parker's guests....

Family pic!

A four-year-old boy....

Parker's 4th birthday was on October 7. How in the world have four years passed since he was born??? I could launch into a long, drawn-out "mom" story about how he was born, how long it took, etc, etc, etc.....but I'll just go ahead and assume that most of you could do without the details. Here is Parker's last picture as a three-year-old....

 ....and his first picture as a four-year-old! Can't you see the difference????

I was working on Parker's birthday, which actually made his day. He loves to go to the childcare facility were I work and play with the other kids. Andrew even came and picked him up for a special father/son birthday lunch. Parker was so excited to go out to lunch by himself with Daddy! Andrew also took Parker shopping for a birthday present that Parker got to pick out....it came as no surprise to me that he chose a remote control Lightning McQueen car. When Andrew got off work that evening, we went to the park so Parker could try it out. Here he is in the car ready to go!

Trying it out....

Sweet little Sadie girl running around.

With our big boy!

Parker wanted to swing in the baby swing because it was next to Sissy.

After leaving the park, we went to McDonald's for happy meals and fun on their indoor playground. What more could a four-year-old ask for?

All about Parker

As promised, here is a post bringing you up to date on Parker.

• Parker will be four in two weeks! Where has the time gone???We are still struggling a bit with potty training. He is 100% potty trained for number 1, and 0% potty trained for number 2. Parker even holds it when he really needs to go, causing it to hurt and making us not want to press the issue. Any and all advice is welcome.
• Parker no longer takes a nap most days. Bummer. He does sleep at least 12 hours at night, though.
• There have been no apparent  physical ill-effects of having his front two teeth pulled. He does say some thing that start with a "th" sound using an "f" sound instead. It's not always really obvious, and I'm hoping it's not something that we will need any kind of speech therapy to correct. Just the other day, he said "thru" but it sounded like "fru". I showed him how to say it and told him to repeat after me. He responded by saying"thhhhh-FRU". It was pretty funny.
• Parker LOVES to play the Nintendo Wii, and is surprisingly good at it for a three-almost-four-year-old.
• Parker talks non-stop. Seriously. Sometimes I just pray for silence. He will even start speaking gibberish sometimes because he doesn't stop talking long enough to think about what he is trying to say.
• Parker eats really well. I often hear parents talk about how hard it is to get their kids to eat things, and I am grateful that's a non-factor for us. Some of his favorite things to eat are any kind of chicken, cheese, fruit snacks, macaroni and cheese, applesauce, and cookies.
• Parker is extremely social and loves to be around other people, both kids and adults. He is constantly introducing himself to strangers at stores, restaurants, etc.
• Parker often spontaneously says things like "you're my best mom, dad, baby (for Sadie), friend, etc", like he's really trying to express himself and how he feels.
• He loves to talk on the phone, and would probably talk for hours if given the opportunity.
• We have had a lot of family visit lately, and Parker is very interested in figuring out how everyone is related.
• Parker loves to play with Sadie. They usually get along pretty well.
• Parker says so many things that totally crack us up. The other day, Parker was just walking around and suddenly said "What in my world!". Another time, he came down the stairs to where I was sitting in the living room and said "how's it been, Mom, how's it been?". A couple of day ago, I was making tater tot casserole and he was watching me line up the tater tots on the top of the dish. When I was done, I said "what do you think?" and he said "I think it's BEAUTIFUL!".
• A couple of months ago, we were driving and I told Parker about the stoplights and that "red means stop, green means go". Now EVERY time we come to a stoplight, he gives me a running commentary on what red and green mean and when it's time to go. If there's a large vehicle in front of us and we can't see the light, he's annoyed until traffic starts to move so he can see it.
• Anyone who knows Parker very well knows about Daddy Hippo. He is still as attached to Daddy Hippo as he's ever been.
• Parker loves to dance and lip-sync to music. He also loves airplanes, helicopters, dinosaurs, and playing sports.

In summary, Parker is a sweet, happy go-lucky, talkative little boy who makes us laugh. Here are a few of my favorite pictures of him taken lately.

All about Sadie

It's been a while since I posted with an update of each of the kiddos, so here is a posting with the latest Sadie info.

• Sadie is now 16 1/2 months old. At her 15 month appointment, she was 19 lbs. 13 oz. which put her at the 5th percentile for weight. She was 25 1/2 inches which put her at the 20th percentile for height, so she's still our little girl.
• Sadie took her first steps on July 11th, and within a month she was walking full-time. Now she is unstoppable and trying to figure out how to run.
• Sadie has quite a few words that she says when she's not being stubborn. She says mama, dada, "Kaw-Ker" for Parker, no or "mo", yes, up, "tease" for please, dog, "tain too" for thank you, and lots of other things that I am probably glad that I can't understand. For at least the last six months now, she shows if she wants something by nodding or shaking her head emphatically.
• She is SUPER sassy, and way more opinionated than I can remember Parker ever being. She is also spontaneously sweet and will give hugs and kisses unsolicited.
• She now has at least 12 teeth. There may be more in there, but she won't let me get a good enough look.
• She is still a great eater, and eats a large variety of foods. Neither of the kids are too picky, which is nice. Some of her favorite things to eat are yo-baby yogurt, blueberries, peas, chicken and noodles, and macaroni and cheese.
• After months and months of Sadie refusing to drink out of any sort of cup or bottle, Sadie is just this month completely weaned and now seems fairly attached to her sippy cup.
• Sadie LOVES to play with Parker, and doesn't even seem to mind if he gets a little rough.
• She sleeps through the night at least 12 hours, and still takes two naps a day which is awesome for me. When I ask her if she's ready to go to bed at naptime, she usually nods her head and looks somewhat excited.
• Until recently, Sadie hadn't been attached to any special items. Lately, she has taken a particular liking to her blankie, bear, and dolly.
• As active as Parker is and always has been, Sadie gets into FAR more than Parker ever did. I have to keep a very close eye on her as she is always climbing or getting into something. The other day, I left the room for under a minute and came back to find that she had put a lego in the toilet. Just today she got ahold of some child suppositories and ate/chewed them up before I noticed anything. GROSS! Oh, and don't worry - I called Poison Control, and they said the only thing I had to worry about is the obvious....that she might have some diarrhea as a result.
• Sadie is very much an observer. She studies things carefully, and takes her time in deciding how she feels about people, situations, etc. She absorbs everything.
• She like to give hi-fives, dance to music, and sing.

To sum it up, Sadie is a happy, healthy, active, sweet little girl. She definitely keeps us on our toes, but hey, I didn't have anything else to do with my time, right???? Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of Sadie taken recently.

Home makeover - Phase 2

In my post about the 4th of July, I mentioned that we had a pretty bad hail storm come through that evening. Fortunately, our roof had enough damage for our insurance to pay for a new roof! My dad has done roofing on the side for years, and he offered to come and help us do the job ourselves. Here is the house before starting work (notice the white roof)....

Here is Dad (a.k.a. Bob the Builder)

The absolute WORST PART was tearing off the not-one-but-two layers that were currently on our roof. Talk about back-breaking work. Notice the darker second layer Dad is tearing off in this picture....

All of the shingles had to be thrown off of the roof into the roll-off we rented for the job. This part was also a ton of fun.

Here is a view of the roll-off from the roof after we finished tearing everything off. After I took this picture, we filled it even further with other trash and junk that had been sitting in our back yard since we moved in three years ago.

 

Here are Dad and Andrew rolling out the felt paper....

 Laying out the shingles and happy to get a picture of what the finished product would look like.

 We even managed to tear off and re-shingle our shed in the back yard.

 

When it was all said and done, it took us 8 days to complete the job. Dad, Andrew, and I did most of the work with a little help from our good friends, Troy, Stephanie, Corey, and Blythe. Thanks, you guys, for helping us out so much!!! We had completely dry, hot weather the entire time which was super helpful. We ran into a little snag on Day 6 when our neighbors behind us had their house re-roofed in 5 hours. FIVE HOURS!!!! I literally would not have believed it possible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. It was rather depressing and demoralizing if I do say so myself. Anyhow, we are thrilled to have it done, and we love how it looks!

 Saying good-bye to Poppy....