last half of September

This was taken Sep. 19th. Christian continues to love cooking with me and especially loves cracking eggs. He actually does pretty well with them, I was making over-easy eggs that day and he didn't even break the yolks!

Earlier that day, Buddy had gotten ahold of a bottle of red fingernail polish and I didn't find out until he showed me his beautious manicure. I immediately searched for the inevitable mess of spilled polish that would be impossible to clean up, but found that he had been very careful. The only spills were on his shirt! It wasn't until the next day that I noticed a new piece of artwork on the wall of our family room. It looked like a piece of paper painted with red watercolor because the hue was not super bright. What I found when I went to remove it, however, was that it was painted with this same polish and then applied to the wall paint side down. I'll have to get around to repainting that wall soon >:-[

Faith is really into making smoothies lately. Of course, our version is more of a slush/shake than an actual smoothie . . .

On the 20th we had Tony's family over for the Pittsburgh/Chicago football game since many of them are Bears fans and Tony (of course) loves the Steelers. Those of us not interested in the event played games instead.

Bears won, so Tony wasn't thrilled, but he still enjoyed having people to watch the game and exchange trash talk with.

Christian is obsessed with board games. We play tons of them while Faith is in school to keep the little guy from missing his sister too much. Here he just won "Pretty Pretty Princess: Cinderella Special Edition".

Because Christian's molars have super deep grooves, we knew he would need to get those teeth filled soon. At this six month check-up, the dentist said that they are starting to get cavities so Buddy got six teeth done in two days! Luckily, he takes after his sister and LOVES the dentist. He didn't flinch once and was even excited to go back in the second day. What planet are these kids from????

On the 24th, we went to Joy's for Sierra's M week activity. First, they made treats. Christian got to add the margerine, then others got to put in the marshmallows and Joy microwaved it. Then they mixed in the cereal and molded it with their hands, making a mess in the process :)

Here is the mask that Buddy decorated.

Next, the kids got ready with dress-up clothes for the masquerade. Christian tried all the boy stuff they had (which isn't much since she has two daughters) and kept switching out pieces the rest of the afternoon.

Here they are marching into the family room to "Masquerade" from Phantom of the Opera. What a fun play day!

Fire truck project from Lowe's on the 26th.

That day we also got Christian a big boy bedroom set. Unfortunately, he still rarely sleeps in his room, so I've kept the toddler bed up in mine.

Pretty soon I'll need to find a comforter for him and redecorate his room. For now, Noah's arc will have to do.

On September 28th we went to Black Island Farms for the first of two visits this year. My mom and dad treated and took all the grandkids. I got there the earliest and Faith and Christian discovered that when you spend an hour climbing up difficult haystack rope ladders on an overly warm day you nearly get heatstroke :)

The train was a huge hit again this year.

Buddy and I only braved (read: endured) the kiddie corn maze, but Faith did one of the bigger ones with Brad, Brendon & Celeste later in the evening. I'm not sure which side they did, Edward's face or Jacob's.

We watched the pig races and Faith got picked to root for the one marked with black!

The blue one won so she didn't win a piggy nose, but she got a spider ring as a booby prize.

They loved doing the rubber duckie races with their cousins.

It was hard to get Buddy out of the corn box again. A week later when he wore this jacket again, he discovered that he'd stashed a handful of the dried corn in the pocket.

We had such a blast and I have to thank my mom and dad again for taking us!

Holy bento boxes!

I'm in the process of finally updating, but to tide you over I thought I'd post some awesome pictures of one lady's bento box lunches. Bento is a Japanese style of packing lunch tightly in a small box with a creative (and usually cute) flair. I think this mom may just have too much time on her hands, but I have to commend her for going all out on these!

Check out her blog - Pigs Do Fly and click here to read about the preparation and contents of these Halloween themed lunches. WOW!

first half of September

We decided to celebrate Christian's birthday with our families on Sunday, Sept 6th. He finally decided on a Nemo cake, so I enlisted his and Faith's help creating this masterpiece:
The kids did a great job with the blue frosting and rock border! Christian did the sparkly blue sprinkles by himself and helped me place the rock candy "sea anemones" or "coral" or whatever it looks like that's sea-ish.

Unfortunately, Tony's mom and Zach got sick, so we ended up just celebrating at my mom & dad's. It was also unfortunate that we didn't know that Sarah's family was at Bear Lake and Joy's was at the cabin that weekend :( We still had a great dinner and Christian ripped into the presents from my mom before Tammy even got there.

Tam brought with her an awesome party spread, true to form!

(Buddy's wearing his police dress up from my mom.) Lots of great gifts from Tammy & Grandma Braegger.

Then it was time for cake and ice cream!

For a Labor Day outing, on the 7th we went to feed the ducks. We hit up two different duck ponds, and there were no ducks to be found! Don't know if they got their fill earlier in the day because other people had the same idea and didn't laze around half the day, or if there was some sort of duck convention going on in Salt Lake, but it truly did bite.

Since that was a bust, we went to Olive Garden and had a great dinner with my birthday gift cards instead, so it was a pretty great day after all. We probably could have come up with something else fun to do at the pond, but instead of that well known, tired cliche, my new favorite saying is, "Unless life also gives you water and sugar, your lemonade's gonna suck."

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These are from the 10th, the first time I volunteered in Faith's classroom. Instead of playing with the toys, Christian went to all the centers with his big sis.

One of the centers that day was reading a book and taking an AR test on it. Faith is racking up those points this year!

Buddy was an absolute angel the entire time, until centers were over and the class went to another classroom for computers. He started out quiet with just a few tears flowing down his cheeks, but before I finished getting instruction from the teacher, it had turned into a loud, choking, full-blown sob session. That kid just loves and misses his sister during the day now!

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Luckily, the next day he started preschool to take his mind off of Faith for a bit. His teacher is incredible! ;) That first day at Clever Sprouts was a bit lonely, since he was the only student, but I still went all out and gave him the full two hours of learning and fun. In this picture, Buddy's modeling the "Kissing Hand" necklace he made.

Later that day, both kids went into the dentist's for a cleaning and checkup. They love the giant aquarium with "Nemo" and "Dory" fish, and also the lizard that's in a adjoining aquarium.

This time Christian had his first teeth x-rays. Last time they tried to get them, but he was too scared. Only at the very end when we were leaving did he throw a fit because he didn't get "pictures of his teeth!" On this visit he sat still like a statue and chomped the mouth piece like an alligator, what a big boy!

Faith has been doing great in soccer. She has been really getting in there and kicking the ball!

Yet another craft on the 12th, drums. Kind of unusual for a woodworking craft, I thought, but the kids loved them.

Every time I get the pictures off my camera and onto my computer, I have a ton that Christian took. Usually they're just close ups of the wall or of people's bums, but sometimes they're pretty good. I've posted quite a few in the past, and here's another gem. He took a pic of how much he weighs! Don't think I'll be following his example any time soon, but I loved his :)

And lastly, when we were leaving the school on the 17th we kept hearing a helicopter, but couldn't see where it was at first. Then we finally found it--stringing the power line for the new towers they built! Just after we got home, it was pulling the line across the street from our house. (It's the little dot just above the center house's roof.)

I'd never have thought that they would attach the new power lines that way!!