Our Buddy Jack

For Family Night on Monday we carved a pumpkin. Eileen was very excited about the whole thing, Anna wasn't quite sure what to make of it. While Eileen was willing to dig her hands in and pull out the pumpkin goop, Anna wanted no part in it! As you can see in the picture, she would barely touch it when forced to. Eileen had lots of fun with it. We asked her what kind of face she wanted Jack to have and she said she wanted him to have a "scary face," so Dan carved a scary face for him. Eileen has been talking all week about how scary our pumpkin is and how he is going to scare everyone. In fact it was apparently so scary that Anna refused to sit next to it so I could get a picture with all of the kids next to our pumpkin. Aaron was a whole different story. He was rather curious about what everyone was doing with the pumpkin, but once he tried it once, he had no interest in touching the goop again. What he was interested in was trying to put everything into his mouth (so what's new!!) He tried to eat the pieces of the pumpkin that were cut out (the top, eyes, nose and mouth) and when we took that away, he picked up the spoon that we had used to clean out the insides and ate that. So now, our buddy Jack is sitting on our front porch waiting for Halloween and the girls are very excited about tomorrow and wearing their costumes and going trick-or-treating! We tried on costumes today and they all look so cute!! Eileen was so excited about tomorrow that we had a hard time convincing her to take her costume off for dinner so that she wouldn't get it dirty. Have a Happy and safe Halloween everyone!

Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday, we went to the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch. We met Grandpa there and spent the first hour just walking around and letting the kids go where they wanted and just making sure at least one of us was following each of them! There are tons of fun things to climb on, a tractor, a train, and a truck. There are tons of painted wooden characters that the kids loved to look at, like Nemo, and Dalmations, Care Bears and Dora. Eileen went into the maze for little kids and managed to find her way out in about 15 seconds. I barely had time to walk around the maze to the end before she was on her way out. So next she attempted the bigger kid maze. (Mom was a bit worried since adults were not allowed in) She took a bit longer getting through that one, but once she did, she ran right back to the entrance and re-entered it! Anna was not interested in the mazes, but she spent a long time running around looking at everything and climbing on everything. She knew what she wanted to see and do and did not want anyone telling her where to go. After we all met back up and the girls got to have their faces painted. Eileen got a cute orange, black and white spot that was suppoesd to be Nemo, and Anna got a black pokey spot that was supposed to be a spider. I'd blame the girls for wiggling, but they sat still as stones for the ladies, so I guess they were just in a hurry with so many kids there... Anyway, after the face painting, we went over to where the hay rides were and went on the hay ride. The kids loved it, and after running almost 10 miles that morning, I was just glad to sit. After the hay ride, we went to the bounce houses and the girls bounced for awhile where the girls bounced them selves silly, then we wandered around the hay stacks and pumpkins for a bit until crankiness and fatigue drove mommy and daddy to beg to go home. After a fun filled morning, we all drove home and most of us passed out in the car on the way! Then that evening we went to celebrate Grandma Cox's birthday with Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Jon and Aunt Sandi. After a fun, but exhausting day, we all went to bed quickly and slept soundly! Best part was the memories made. The kids will hopfully have memories of fun times together as a family, and I have fond memories of watching them explore and learn and enjoy. And the second best part? Admission= $0 Mazes= $0 Face Painting= $0 Hay Rides= $0 Bounce House=$0 Rediscovering just how brilliant, adorable and adventurous your children are...PRICELESS!!! :)

A Day at The Zoo

This morning we went to the Dallas Zoo. Now that the weather has cooled down some, the animals seem to have gotten more active. We had tons of fun looking at the animals and watching them all move and play and eat. We got to see 5 very lively otters playing around with each other, some noisy monkeys hollering at the whole zoo, and some lizards being fed live crickets. We went on a monorail ride around part of the zoo and pretended we were mongooses (mongeese?) :)

Yes that's right, there are penguins that are taller than all of our children.

My favorite part of the day was watching the otters play!!

Daddy and Aaron really enjoyed the monorail ride. Aaron got so excited anytime he saw an animal.

Our big 9 month old

Aaron is officially 9 months old today. I can't believe it's been 9 months since he joined our family. We love him and our family wouldn't be the same without him. It would also be more quiet. Aaron is 27 inches long (45%) 17 lb 8 oz (20%) with a 18 in head (70%) He is healthy, sweet, happy (especially now that his 6th tooth has popped through) and very mobile. He crawls everywhere and he loves to sing along with his sisters. We are still nursing, but mommy is kinda hoping to wean him soon since he won't sit still and pokes, prods, pinches, and hit me while he eats.... Now if we could only get him to take a bottle....

An Opportunity to Serve

Our ward is getting a new building. It has been in the works for awhile now and we are all VERY excited about it. Our excitement is in large part due to the fact that our drive to church will change from a 30 minute drive to a 10 minute (with traffic) drive. The building is in it's final stages and last night, Dan was going there to help the young men paint the building name on the folding chairs. We decided to make this a family outing and had lots of fun dusting and helping and even getting stamped! :) The girls love to be "big girl helpers" so when they were handed a dust cloth and asked to help just like mommy, they were very excited. In fact the hardest part was getting them to remember that they were in a chapel and shouldn't run around screaming as they dusted... :) As you may be able to tell, I couldn't get Eileen to look at the camera, she was just too busy cleaning! Anyway, we had lots of fun, and hopefully taught our kids a bit about the value of service.