tiny dancer

He's a dancer.

since we last talked...

- My computer stopped letting me upload pictures to my blog without making me wait for forever.  That's why I haven't been around lately.

- Oliver became a full blown toddler.  Walks everywhere now.  Unless Zach is home, in which case he's crying if he's not being held.

- Maxwell gave me this winning face:


- Quinn started sounding out words.  This will likely be the last year that I can make a Christmas list of who's getting what and be able to leave it lying around.  He also insisted on wearing these to school and told his teacher he had to sit on the front row because he can't see:

- One of us really can't see and ended up getting glasses.  After an awful experience where a girl narrowly missed hitting me and three of my friends, but ended up hitting my friend's dog instead (who survived and is fine, miraculously), I kept hearing the phrase, "Did I hit a person????  I didn't see any of you!!" repeat through my head every time I got in the car.  It was haunting.  And easily the worst experience of my life.  So I got glasses to help make sure I never put anyone else through a similar experience.  Luckily, the thick nerdy glasses style is in:

- We counted down to Christmas with great (and sometimes terrible) anticipation:

- Almost all of us got sick on Christmas day (everyone but Zach - he had it the week before) and spent the entire holiday season recovering (we're all still coughing).  I took this picture on Christmas Eve (In their matching Christmas jammies, opening a Christmas book from Nanny and Poppy) right before the kids went to bed, and didn't take another picture for like, four days - way to document Christmas, Mama:

- The boys were beyond thrilled to have Papa home for so long and barely left him alone the entire time:

- My sewing machine and I made an abundance of hot pads and a few other things that I need to take pictures of at some point:

 

And since this took me all day to put together because of my computer's fantastic uploading time, I'm going to go put kids to bed. Then I'm going to lounge on the couch with the hubs and a black cherry cream soda and say "So long," to our Christmas vacation.

Happy 2013, everyone.  May this new year be a blessed one.

hold on to your uterus

Seriously though.

mr. show off

Here's Oliver's best impression of an old man:

smarty pants

Quinn and Max are both loving school/preschool this year.  As a parent it's been awesome to see them get so excited about the things they are learning (apparently I had really low expectations....).  I keep finding pieces of paper lying around the house that have 1-20 written on them. One of the papers had a huge 100 on it with fireworks bursting out of it.  Quinn is super excited about the idea of knowing how to count to 100 (not there yet, but getting there).  I went to his class yesterday to parent help and I was amazed to see Quinn be so on task and studious.  It was like I was in the twilight zone.  That's not the kid I know.  But I'm not complaining!  I was so prepared for him to have all this homework that was going to be such a hassle and would take time away from him playing, but it turns out he LOVES doing his homework.  WEIRD.

Anyways, I really just wanted to share these cute pictures from yesterday.  I could hear max on the other side of the living room quietly repeating, "M-A-X, M-A-X..." for the longest time.  I didn't know what he was up to till he brought me this awesome piece of paper:

While he was doing that Quinn was busy writing a letter (he can't spell/read yet, so he was telling me what he wanted to say and I was giving it to him letter by letter).  He randomly brought me a piece of paper and said, "Mama, I'm going to write a letter to Marc Brown."  I said, "Who's Marc Brown?" And he said, "He's the illustrator!  I want to ask him how he puts the names in all the books!"  I guess Marc Brown hides his kids' names in all of his books and Quinn has been trying to find them in the Arthur library books that we have.  So he wrote him a letter that included a picture of our town (aka: Utah) and Marc Brown's town, which, based on the picture I assume is New York, and a picture of a book with Quinn's name on the cover.  Then we stuck it in an envelope and put the address that's listed on the guy's website and Quinn stuck in the mailbox.  When he came back in the house he whispered to me, "I really hope he writes me back!"  And let me just say right now - Marc Brown, you better write him back.

And since this cannot be left unshared, here's Quinn's Kindergarten picture:

We can't stop laughing about it.  What the heck is that??  I mean sure, it's cute.  He's cute.  But he's way cuter than that.  My best guess is that they showed him a picture of Stephen Hawking and said, "See if you can smile like that guy!"  And thus, this face.  The best part, as Zach pointed out to me - We paid for this picture.  I don't know how Quinn, the skinniest kid on the planet, managed to give himself a double chin.

halloweenies

Here's a quick rundown of Halloween:

Quinn was "Starscream" from Transformers Prime, and this is what almost an entire roll of duct tape looks like:

Before I started on the costume it dawned on me that he might have ulterior motives in wanting to be a Transformer for Halloween, so we sat down and had a little talk: "Quinn, you understand that when you're dressed up as Starscream you're not actually going to be able to transform into a plane, right?"  "Why not???"  Yeah, I consider it a tender mercy that I had the inspiration to have that conversation before making the costume.  I can just imagine if he had put it on and then been disappointed when it didn't transform.  This is how he wore it for school, but for trick-or-treating it also had wings. 

Max wouldn't give us a clear answer on what he wanted to be for Halloween.  Most times when we asked him he would just say, "I don't like clowns...."  Then last week he settled on being a bird, and luckily didn't budge after that.  And I got the opportunity to sew a completely ridiculous bird costume.  Really, it was like a treat for me.  He happened to be running around the house in his underwear when I finally finished the costume and I was lucky enough to get this beauty of a shot (Max is a genius of posing):

Max hates (hates) walking, so for trick-or-treating Zach wore all brown and carried Max on his shoulders and called himself a bird's nest.  Clever.  And a good thing bird poop isn't brown.
Here he is before we left for preschool - another great pose:

This is a shot of the wings before I sewed them all together.  I wanted to make sure I had a good idea of how I was putting them on, so I put them all on, took a picture, and then took them off row by row and sewed them on, row by row.  I'm a sucker for punishment.  But it sure turned out awesome.  Oh, and just so you know, I didn't cut out a single triangle.  My sister found them in a ziplock bag in her attic 12+ years ago and I've been holding onto them, knowing there was something great in store for them. ;)

I'll post pictures of Ollie in his costume later, but this is one of my favorite pictures from the evening - We had a bunch of teenagers show up at our house, three of which were boys dressed as superheros that I think came for the sole purpose of wearing our boys out before bed.  It was awesome. The one dressed as Robin put his gloves on Ollie and while everyone in the room was having a good laugh over it (except for the one on the couch being pummeled by Quinn and Max) Ollie gave him this look:

Not amused.

This is the greatest picture of the night - the stand-off between Quinn and Max and the Superboys (and Oliver).  Seriously, they could have played with these guys all. night. long.  Next time I'm looking for babysitters, I know who to call: