Meeting Cousin Abigail

This past weekend we went to visit our new baby cousin, Abigail.  I took so man pictures, and it was especially easy to get pictures of Ava cuddling her newest little cousin!

Grandma with her Granddaughters

Uncle Mike with Abigail, Ava looking on

Initially Carter was a little reluctant to hold his newest cousin, but he enjoyed holding her.

John Deere holding Abigail

I love these pictures

So precious

cousin Andrew and Dawson, they really bonded over their love for John Deere!

Lazy Weekend

Thanks to our sweet new niece, Abigail, we had a wonderful lazy weekend with no plans.  

I'm a sucker for a caught reading picture.  Carter and Ava reading in front of the fire.

Terrible picture, but they were having a LOT of fun.  We spent most of Saturday in the basement preparing it for the winter months so the kids can play basketball, soccer, nerf guns and sword fights.  It will be great to have a place to run around and burn energy!

Then we topped off the day with the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie and pizza, of course!

I'm also a sucker for brother reading to brother!  Carter was reading Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel from to his little brother.

And as I'm sure you already know, Miss Abigail decided to make her appearance yesterday!  Happy Birthday little girl!  I'm very excited to meet her soon!

Veteran's Day - For the kids

As borrowed from Uncle Mike, I wanted to post pictures on the blog of Veterans from my side of the family.  Carter, Ava and Dawson, this information is for you three.

This is Meme's Dad, William Chester.  He would be your great grandfather, I wish I had gotten a chance to met him!

John and James Chester are the brothers of William.  And Mom, I need your help with identifying the fourth man?  I'm assuming this is also a relative.

Thank you to all Veterans for your service!

Heard Around the House - Strange Theology

Today the kids were playing with the key board in the basement.  No singing, only music. 

Carter:  Mom! Mom!  Did you hear the song we were just playing?
Me:  I sure did.
Carter:  The one with Elephants and sailboats and clams in it?  It was our song for Jesus.  And whatever we send out to Jesus, he sends back to us.
Me:  Speechless

I still haven't figured out how they had a song with elephants, sailboats and clams in it!  Keep in mind, there were no lyrics!

Fire Truck Lunch

Today I asked Dawson what he wanted for lunch and he told me "a fire truck."  

Hmmmm, not sure how to make that.  

But no worries, he had it covered.  I followed him to the kitchen and followed his directions and this is what happened:

A yummy delicious fire truck snack!  He wanted a wrap for the bottom, sliced apples as the body of the fire truck, pepperoni for the tires, sirens and lights.

I have to take credit for the triscuits sliced into strips to make into a ladder.  Well, I didn't think it looked very appetizing, but this kid ate most of it!  

Latest and Greatest

• In the picture Carter is standing in front of the indoor tornado at the Mckinley Museum.  This weekend we visited with his cub scout den and one of the bears den.  Carter and I had a great time!
• Recently there was a clog in the shower drain.  Carter told me that "your hair combines with Dad's ear wax to make the clog."  How much ear wax do you think your Dad has?!?!?  But luckily Dad recently bought an insanely long snake, so we can clear any drain from here to Hawaii!!!
• I'm so proud of Mr. Carter boy.  He has always been very sensitive to scary things and recently he was invited to see Maleficent with friends at the dollar theatre.  I was nervous that he was going to be terrified or have lots of nightmares.  But we went anyway, and he did great!  

• This crazy kid has become really interested in writing letters.  I took a picture of a crane that I drew from our "How to draw" book and then we colored it together.  He wrote the word crane at the bottom with my help and then he wrote Dawson on the picture for the first time with no help!  Now, it's hard to tell because the D is backwards and his name is written backwards, but if you start in the top right hand corner of the picture you can see (backward)D A W (sideways) S O N.  Good job buddy!  We're going to have to work on the left to right directionality, but still great!
• He is also doing really good at preschool drop off.  We still watches me in the window and waves good bye every single time, but we have made so much progress since August!
• This kid has always been very obsessive with his interests and he has become very interested in two things:  fire trucks and John Deere tractors.  This has become a problem because he has three shirts with fire trucks or John Deere tractors on them and that is all he wants to wear.  Fortunately we also have a shirt with a crane on it that he will wear if the other three are dirty (which happens frequently!)  I also had a friend that lent me three extra fire truck shirts which helps!  It's pretty tough to keep those three shirts clean!

• That leaves little Roo.  She was sick this weekend with a fever and I took her to the doctor on Monday and found out she has strep.  So she missed school Monday and Tuesday and finally went back to school today.  This poor girl she has missed three school days already this year!  
• Monday Ava didn't get medicine until the afternoon so she still pretty lethargic and whiny.  But on Tuesday she was feeling so much better and it was nice to watch Ava and Dawson running around and playing together.  Dawson gets a little lonely sometimes with me as his only playmate!
• I asked Ava about the best thing that happened to her today.  Her answer?  My friends at school gave me big hugs when I came back.  So glad to hear it!

Happy Halloween!

This week was busy, full of parties!  At their school parents are put into a lottery and picked to volunteer at parties.  I was very fortunate and I was able to help with Ava's Halloween party and I'll be able to go to Carter's Valentine's party.

Party!!

My sweet little bee making her play dough monster.

Luckily Dawson's preschool party is a little easier to get into!  I had fun going around with him and a friend to different stations.  He loved pumpkin bowling and leaf raking the best!

After all these parties, Halloween felt a little anticlimactic.  Here are the kids with their pumpkins that they carved last week before trick or treat.

Ava came home with her face painted like a butterfly and a pumpkin that she got to decorate like a mummy.

Then our Halloween dinner:  mummy dogs.  This seems to be turning into a tradition because Carter brought it up a couple of days before, he remembers eating them last year.  Happy Halloween, as you can see we had plenty of celebrating around here!