Halloween!

Yay! I love Halloween! We had a fun month of Halloweeny things! It was Faith's first year of trick-or-treating, and she handled it like a pro.

Kate was Cinderella, here with Kaylynn and Iverson (whose costumes are obvious). I went the cheapskate route and had Kate wear a costume I had when I was 4:

The dress was still in pretty good shape, and with a little love from the hot glue gun, it looked as good as new!

Faith was supposed to go as a witch, but refused to put the costume on. I decided to steal my friend's idea and dress her up as an 80's aerobics instructor (thanks Amber!)

Faith kept wanting to wear this weird tent-like holiday dress instead of spandex. Are we even related??

Kate's preschool Halloween party was at our house. Kate just loves her preschool buddies! All the younger siblings were old enough to participate too, so it was lots of fun!

Shaylee likes cupcakes!

Tayson's scary face

Faith and her owl cupcake. Check out those prominent brows. (the owl's of course)

Kate dressed as a princess with very poor hygiene.

The whole gang!

At the end of the party, they went trick-or-treating around the house. Being the responsible adult that I am, I examined and sampled each treat before letting the kids have them.

Well, we finally got family pictures done! Our friend Mandie did them and did a fantastic job! Looking through other people's family pictures is typically boring, so I will make a fun game out of it. Throughout this post, I will randomly insert several photos -- look closely and see if you can find them!



Conversations With Kate
1. We had the extreme good fortune to inherit one of my favorite childhood movies from a friend: The Last Unicorn. My friend said it was too scary and psycho for her kids, and she knows that's exactly the kind of thing I want for my girls. ("See kids? This is what happens when you do drugs!")
The movie was pretty intense for Kate, and she would occasionally climb on my lap screaming "NO! NO! NO!" but I could tell that deep down, she really like it. Afterward, she seemed particularly troubled by a certain "red pot." She wanted to know what the red pot was, and what his intentions were. I was floundering. "What red pot?" I asked her.
"You know! The fire one that wanted to get the unicorn!!" she said in exasperation.
Suzy's internal dialogue:
"She must be talking about the Red Bull, but where did she get "pot?" Ahhhhh, Red Bull, Red Bowl, bowls are kinda like pots... I get it."
You may think that a stay-at-home mom's brain gradually turns to mush from lack of stimulation, but that Kate keeps my mind as sharp as aged cheese.



2. For the last month or two, I've been making green smoothies for breakfast. It's just fruit and veggies blended up with some ice, and it tastes much better than it looks. I always tell Kate that the smoothie will help make her body strong and healthy. One morning while drinking her smoothie, she flexed her arm and said, "Hey Mom, look at my muscles." She almost busted through her shirt sleeves, they were that big. I dutifully marveled at her awesomeness, and continued emptying the dishwasher. A few minutes later, she came back (with a lovely green mustache), took a swig, and said, "NOW look at my muscles!" I conceded that, however improbable, they had gotten even bigger! That is one miracle smoothie! She asked if she could call Daddy, and I handed her the phone. With more confidence than I've ever displayed in my life, she said, "Daddy? Can you come home from work and arm wrestle me?" I'm a little insulted that she didn't think I was enough of a challenge.

3. The word of the month last month was "Citizenship" in Kate's gym class. They talked about being a good citizen, and the teacher gave a few examples that demonstrated what it meant. Later, Kate wanted to tell Daddy about it, so she called him at work. I could hear both sides of the conversation, and it went as follows:

Kate: "Hi Daddy! So, if you are outside and you throw trash on the ground, what do you think about that? Is that a good ci'izen?"
Daddy: "That's great!" (obviously hasn't understood a word)
Kate: "No Daddy. That's not. Should you pick it up and put it in the trash?
Daddy: "Uhhhh..."
Kate: "Yes you should. And whafabout (what about if) a little kid falls off a swing, should you laugh at him? NO! You should help him up, Are you okay?, and push him (on the swing, presumably). What do you think about that, Daddy?
Daddy: "Sounds like fun! I love you!"
Kate sighs in exasperation and hands the phone to me, at which point Daddy asks me, "What on earth is she talking about?"

4. Kate and I are picking up toys in preparation for our hometeachers coming over to visit. Did I say Kate was participating in the cleaning? That was a typo. Just before they are due to arrive, Kate announces that she has prepared a lesson for them. We do a little lesson for family night on Mondays, and I always feel like they are futile. But a glimmer of hope surfaced when I saw that she wanted to teach us something she had learned! I asked her to tell me what it was about, and she said it was a surprise. I finally goaded her enough that she relented. I sat down, and she described her lesson. She took out a small stuffed cow and an plastic knife. She began to saw its neck, and said, "Today, we are going to learn about how it is nice to cut cows."
Boy was I proud.
And glad I got her to give me the lesson before our hometeachers arrived.


I love this picture below. Check out Kate's classic sassy stance. Mandie asked her to climb on Daddy's back. With more petulance than a 3 year old should have, she said,
"I will NOT get on Daddy's back! It's all sweaty!"

Anatomy 101

Kate has said some things lately that make me worry that she doesn't quite know her body parts yet. For instance, last week she was dancing around in her princess dress, and it kept falling off her shoulder. She complained to me, "Mother (she calls me mother now), this keeps falling off my hip!" A while before that, again we were dancing, and she threw herself on the couch, stating that she needed to rest because her "nippos are tired." Okay, that may need a bit of background information. When I was nursing Faith, Kate was curious and asked what "that thing" was. "It's a nipple," I replied. She now uses the word "nippos" to describe the entire chest area. So when Kate complained that her nippos were tired, I was a bit confused, and asked her to point to where she was tired. She pointed to her hips. ??

Well, last night she proved that she has cleared things up. We were watching So You Think You Can Dance. Ever since we had a little talk about modesty, Kate likes to point out anyone who is immodest (and there are lots of opportunities on that show). A girl came out in what looked like a sparkly sports bra/vest, and Kate immediately stated,

"That is NOT modest. Oh, but she has a beautiful nippo thing!"

That Kate is going to be trouble some day.

On the GI front, Faith awoke two days ago and firmly declared:

Poo poo!

So I whipped off that diaper and hustled her into the bathroom. Sure enough, she had her first poo poo in the potty! We were all so excited! She said bye bye to it and then flushed 4 or 5 times to be thorough. I know it's premature, but I'm starting to imagine what it will be like to not spend so much money on diapers!

In Praise of Pioneers and Cilantro Lime Shrimp

Happy Pioneer Day, one and all! I am sure grateful for those hardworking people that came to the West in wagons and carts, gathering buffalo chips and giving birth in tents (what a mess!). I probably would have been exchanged for Teriyaki buffalo jerky at the first trading post for whining too much. So thank you to all that sacrificed so much to build the beautiful land we live in!

Now, these next three words will change how you see the world. Cilantro. Lime. Shrimp. Okay, maybe not those words, but what they represent will knock your socks off. I picked up a container of them at Costco last week because I was curious, and these last several days with the shrimp have been some of the happiest of my life. Each succulent shrimp is an explosion of deliciousness in your mouth. Faith is saying a handful of words now, and 'shrimp' is among them. If you have felt something missing in your life lately, don't look any further.

Ta Daaaa!

It wasn't easy to find a picture of the rare Black Elephant baby, but it does exist! (And you can barely tell that it's photoshopped!)

We went on TWO road trips in the last week, about 5 hours each. The kids did great, thanks to a constant supply of snacks and a little game I like to call 'Indefinite Questions'. (It's like 20 Questions, but the subject has to be animal, and the number of questions limitless.)

It was Kate's turn to pick the animal, and it took me forever to guess it. In fact, I eventually gave up and had to ask. See if you can do better than I did:

It has 4 legs.

It lives in the jungle.

It's smaller than a horse, but bigger than a dog.

It's black.

It has no fur.

Good luck, I will post the answer sometime in the future, definitely before Halloween. (I'm joking! really, I'm sure I'll do it even before August.) (I like parenthetical expressions (especially nested ones).)

The Birds and the Bees and other funnies...

3 whole funny things happened in the same day yesterday, and that's worthy of documentation.

1. Kate had her end-of-preschool swim party. The one little boy in her class, Tayson, had some trouble getting his swimsuit up a couple of times. Toddlers love to be naked, so I didn't care or think much of it. But during the drive home it became apparent that Kate had thought much of it. After driving for a few minutes, I hear,

"Hey Mommy, Tayson has a silly bum where his pee pee comes out! Why does he have that?"

Me: "Because he's a boy."

Kate: "How come boys have those and girls don't?"

Me: "God made boys and girls different so that they can make families together. If there were only girls, there would be no babies. Only a mommy and daddy together can have a baby."

At this point she fell silent, and after such expert explaining, I assumed we wouldn't have a conversation like this again for at least 15 years. Then she asked,

"Why do bums have to have families?"

??? So much for my expert explanation.

2. Mike so kindly came home from work early yesterday so I could get to class on time. Kate had an ouchie on her leg, so I put some ointment on it and she was running around in a shirt and panties. She was in this state when Mike came home, and I rushed out the door. Well, as it happened, Mike's friend became a US citizen yesterday and there was a party in his honor. Mike went and took the kids. When I got home from class, I found out he never put pants on Kate. When I asked why not, he said he thought the shirt was just a really short dress or something :)

3. Yesterday was my first day teaching a summer Spanish class. It is a very small class, and I forced them all to sit in the front row. About halfway through, we took a break. I went to the bathroom and discovered that my fly was WIDE open. No wonder they were so reluctant to sit in the front row.