Movember and More

Chris spent the first week of November out in the woods of Maine looking at John Deere equipment with customers. And since it takes him a few days to get a beard looking decent, he decided it would be the perfect year to participate in "Movember" and grow his facial hair in support for Men's health awareneess. Here's the progression in pictures. First the full beard, then a goatee and then a fu-manchu. Yes..I let him go to work like this!! I have to say...it all kind of grew on me:)








Last week was the boy scout cake auction. You had to bring a dozen cupcakes/cookies or a cake or some sort and they had an auctioneer there to auction them off to families. I made some s'more cupcakes. Just a chocolate cake mix with marshmallow cream for frosting and then sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs and a hershey bar. I made a few extra for us and they were pretty tasty! Also Chris's mom made us some homemade dark chocolate fudge when we were there last so I got the recipe and made some for various things we've had going on in the last couple of weeks. It is so tasty...especially over ice cream!





Last Saturday our neighbors hosted the 2nd annual Friendsgiving. We all brought something from the traditional Thanksgiving meal and we all got together to celebrate before the holidays come and everyone's schedules are so busy. Here are a couple of pictures of the turkey and the enormous kids table:)





And lastly....Max and Mya came home from school with lots of Thanksgiving crafts and creations this week. They were all great, but this was probably my favorite. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! I have so much to be thankful for this year and I'd definitely have to agree with Max:)

birthday, baby and snow!

For Ivy's birthday we took the kids to Happy Joe's to celebrate with some taco pizza for most of the family and a sausage pizza (hold the cheese) for Ivy! Here are a few pictures. Max and Mya were pretty happy that they got to eat Ivy's ice cream sundae:) We had some dairy free cake at home and opened presents afterwards.











Here's Ivy enjoying some cake 1 day after her birthday. I have no idea why I let her do that two days in a row. What a mess!



Last Thursday (11/7) my first nephew Grady Lawrence Huinker was born! Grady is my mom's maiden name and Lawrence is Amanda's Grandpa's name. I just love his name for so many reasons.

We went up to Decorah on Saturday because I couldn't wait until Thanksgiving! Once Mya got over the fact that it wasn't a girl, she was pretty smitten. She wanted to hold him a lot. Max was not interested and Ivy was a terror. She just kept holding out her hands crying "hold it, hold it" She was a bit rough and had to make an early exit with Grandma and Grandpa. He is one cute little boy and has a couple of proud parents and big sisters:) I'm excited to see him in 2 weeks.







Lastly, the snow hit us early this year! It snowed on Ivy's birthday so the kids had to go outside and play of course. Ivy had been watching it snow all morning so when it was time to go out and play she wanted to play in the "snowing". This past weekend Chris took Max and Mya to the ski swap and got them all geared up for this year's ski season! They're pretty excited about it and saw that they were making snow at Sundown the other night so it's probably just around the corner.

2 years old!

Dear my sweet Ivy Anne,

Happy 2nd Birthday! You are such a blessing to us and we continue to be thankful that you came into our lives every day! I've been working on you telling people you're "2" and apparently I worked too hard on it because now you think your name is "2" and if I ask you how you are, you answer "2". You are quite the little brown-eyed girl. I feel like I could write about you for days, so here goes the abridged version of what you're like right now.

Max and Mya are still very big fans of yours. They get really jealous if you show more affection to one of them. You are so excited for them to come home from school. You ask quite a bit in the afternoon "Max and Mya be home soon?" Mya is awesome about playing with you and Max is awesome about doing things for you when I need help. Sometimes I think you refer to them as one person.."maxandmya". You're starting to close the gap on Mya being the happiest to see Daddy when he comes home from work. You get pretty excited about it. He was gone last week and when he got home, you asked to "wrestle daddy" within 2 minutes of him being home. And of course being the dad that he is, he got down and wrestled even though it was dinner time and we had company! Your other favorite game to play with dad is "get you" except you're horrible at it and always run towards the person getting you instead of away!

You talk All.The.Time. New words every day and we're always surprised at what comes out of that little mouth of yours. Your favorite thing to say is "I hungee mommy" and "I need somesing eat". you are starting to say some funny things...you call John the Schwans man John Deere, you think suckers are called soccer balls, and chipmunks are chipmonkeys.

You still love "a couple books" before bed. Your favorite book these days is a mammal book that Max got at a book fair a couple of years ago. You are obsessed with asking "what is that?" You have gotten pretty good at naming them yourself too. Some strange ones that you know are meercat, bush baby and a spider monkey. I have never known so much about mammals in all my life.

You love love love to sing. You can sing most of twinkle twinkle, baa baa black sheep (baa baa sheep to you) happy birthday, the ABC's, 5 little monkeys, and several of the songs from your Kindermusik class. You are very demanding in the car when you want to listen to music. We're worried you have ADD of music...won't even let one song finish before you're demanding another one! You get some looks in church when you continue on singing the song when it's over. It's pretty cute to hear you say "holy, holy, holy" when the rest of the congregation is quiet!

You are still a good sleeper at night....especially before the time change, but I think we'll get back to that eventually! You go to bed around 7 and get up around 6:30 or 7. You are a 90 minute napper. Really would be nice if you'd extend that a bit, but Mya and Max were the exact same way so I'm not surprised! You climbed out of your crib once, but it was in the middle of the day when you were playing in there. You haven't tried yet when it was nap/bed time. You still love your blankee and pacifier. You used to ask for bankee/paci as if it was one thing, but now you know the difference between the two. You say pac-eeee-fier and I smile every time you say it. The comments from people have started about how you shouldn't have your paci anymore, but I just can't do it yet. I guarantee you won't go to kindergarten with it:)

You are all about pretties just like your big sister. Make-up, jewelry, lotion, nail polish, purses, shoes, dresses, etc. are some of your favorite things. You eat lip gloss so we have to be careful when we give you that! You are right about 25% of the time when I ask what color something is, although when I ask you which one you want, you always say "the blue one" no matter what. You love to color with markers, but unfortunately haven't grown out of the whole "color on your face" thing yet. You love to take my order and bring me my "food" when we're playing outside in your playhouse.

You are still an almond milk drinker, a pretty good eater (when we can get you to sit down for more than 2 minutes), are just under 30 pounds, size 2T clothes, size 5 diapers, are a pain in the rear to get dressed and to change your diaper, love to take baths with Max and Mya, to run out and see the kiddos when they get off the bus, are a pain to go shopping with or out to eat unless we give you unlimited food/drink the entire time, and are starting to resist the stroller. You are way better with thank you than you are with please, say excuse me really well, only have two levels of your voice, (loud and very loud) love to announce to anyone who will listen that you "waked up", you hate dogs and cats, love to put your babies down for naps, will occasionally watch Curious George or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for a few minutes, don't care at all what you wear (even jeans), and you call anything that goes in your hair a headband.

Phew! That was a long one! Your daddy and I are so lucky to be your parents and I can't wait to watch you grow!

Love, Mommy

11/11/11

11/11/12

11/11/13

Switch Witch

For some reason, this Halloween I was really the Grinch when it came to candy. I didn't want to pass any out, I didn't want my kids to get any, etc. I came across this idea in a blog that I read (100 days of real food) about the "switch witch". The friendly witch comes to your house and takes your candy and replaces it with a toy! Seemed like a good idea to me. I let them have the candy for a few days, but it was driving me nuts for several reasons. 1. allergies 2. my lack of self control 3. Ivy doesn't need any candy, but she's getting a lot harder to trick these days 4. they fought nonstop about who got what, who got more, etc. 5. we have been cavity free so far and I intend to keep it that way!

So...this week we set out the candy bags and put their names and ages on the bag (so she would know what to leave) and the next morning, there was a toy in place of the bag! They were so excited and haven't said a word about their candy since!




(Max left this note on an envelope full of target coupons for toys that came in the mail this week. 100% his idea:)

Leaves, leaves and more leaves!

My kids totally miss out on the whole raking and jumping into leaf piles due to the fact that we live in a newish subdivision with no trees! A few weekends ago when we were up in the twin cities we took full advantage of Chris's parents leaves! Max even devised a plan to make some money for raking other people's leaves:) I took some pictures of all the fun they were having and wanted to share! I love that Chloe is in most of them:)



Oh,and do you see those sheets hanging over the raspberry bushes in the background? Linda saved just enough of those before the frost to make us the most delicious raspberry pie EVER!!

Halloween Happenings

We had a great Halloween week! Started off with pumpkin carving and ended with a fun night trick-or-treating and handing out candy to neighbor kids. This was Ivy's first year going out. We worked on her saying "trick-or-treat" all day, but when it came down to it, she wouldn't say it to anyone! She was overwhelmed and maybe a little scared of everyone's costumes. I did two streets with her and then headed back home to hand out candy.

Max (the Marine) and Mya (the cheerleader) had a great time. Max lasted over 2 hours and Mya came inside around the 1.5 hour mark because she didn't believe me when I told her she would be cold. (imagine that...my kids don't believe me when it comes to weather!) Someday they will trust my judgment, but so far this fall it has been rough! Anyway....they got lots and lots of candy which was their main goal. This morning they woke up with sore legs so I know they worked off some calories running from house to house!

I love living in this neighborhood when it comes to Halloween. All of the adults head out with a wagon full of beer and walk around with the kids. It's fun to catch up with friends on other streets that we don't see all the time and it's just genuinely fun to see how happy kids are on this crazy night!

Some pumpkin carving pictures below. We worked hard to get them to put their hands inside the pumpkin without a scooper! They were not excited about it at all:) We got a container of seeds, but then never ended up roasting them! Maybe next year...


The end products! Mya's has the cute eye lashes of course and Chris did his magic with the name pumpkin. I loved it!


Some pictures of the crew trick-or-treating. I love the picture of Ivy and our neighbor Carole. It was the one house Ivy would even smile:)


Ivy loved handing out candy to the kids who came to the door! And the picture of the candy is all of the loot that we had to take out because it contained peanuts. I was surprised how much there was! Guess Chris and I will have to help them out with those:)