Super heroes = super fun!

    
      We all dressed up as super heroes this year for Halloween. It was seriously just so much fun to think up, then find the perfect costumes. Sam was Batman, Addie was Wonder Woman, and I was Spider-girl. Sam’s costume was too short in the torso though, so we had to cut it in half and sew in a few more inches for him. The end result looked fantastic, so hooray!
     After so much time and effort being invested into our costumes, we made sure to make appearances at as many Halloween places as we could squeeze in.
     Addie went to 2 toddler parties on Friday morning and must have been tuckered out, because she did the funniest thing that afternoon. I put her down for a nap at noon, then I heard her moaning over the intercom at 2:15 or so. Two hours is a normal nap duration, so I went upstairs to get her. When I opened the door to her room, she was just standing there in her crib looking a bit spooked/sleep-faced. I went over to get her, and she just laid down and put her face in the mattress like she does when she sleeps. She frequently likes to dork around and show me her crib tricks when I get her from naps, so I asked if she was playing. She looked up at me and put her hand on her cheek, which is the sign she uses for bedtime. I didn’t want to just be stuck sitting there watch her pretend for attention, so I decided to call her bluff by putting her rain sounds machine back on, leaving the room, and closing the door. I expected instant screams of abandonment… but there was silence. That party animal didn’t wake up until 4:30 later that afternoon, making a 4.5 hour nap all together!
     Anyway, so Addie love love loved all of the parties. She gets SO excited to play with kids. Really, she pees her pants with excitement if she even sees another kid. Add costumes, music, crazy dancing, balloons, and door-knocking into the mix and she thought she’d died and gone to heaven.
     We went to 2 toddler parties, both of which were way fun; our costumes were a huge hit. Then on Friday night, we had our ward party. It was fantastic; we had a good turnout and everyone was in the Halloween spirit. Then on Saturday we went over to our friend’s house for a yummy Halloween meal (thanks Marcie!), then we went out to trick or treat.
     Adelaide thought that trick or treating was pretty much the coolest thing ever. She REFUSED to hold our hands though, she was very determined to run up to each door on her own. Everyone thought that we were all cute as could be dressed up in our matching costumes, so I felt that the overall holiday was quite the success.

 

 

     So overall, Halloween was a huge success. Our only sad part about it was the fact that some jerks stole our beautiful, uncarved pumpkins from our porch. This couldn’t be just some punk teenagers on bikes or something… there were 3 pumpkins, weighing 25+ pounds each- so there had to be at least some forethought/effort to take them. We hadn’t even gotten to carve them yet :(   Anyway, so I’m now a firm believer that there is a special place in hell reserved especially for pumpkin stealers!
     I hope everyone had a great Halloween! I can’t even wait for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I SERIOUSLY am just so excited. Something about having our own house and Addie being a bit older now makes me just instantly filled even more anticipation and excitement than I’ve had in years past. Let the official holiday season begin!

You can see the rest of our Halloween pictures here.

Silly sleeper part 2

One of the funniest things about kids is the ridiculous positions they can get into when they sleep. I don't think that this tops my first silly sleeper post, but I doubt anything ever will.
Addie's recently learned that she can remove her jammies if given enough time to work on it. We came in to get her from a nap and found her standing in her bed naked and proud as could be of the fact that her full-body footy pajamas were in a heap on the floor in front of her. We've considered that perhaps she was getting hot, but she doesn't sleep with blankets yet and she gets cold in normal jammies. I think that really, she just loves to play with the zipper and thinks that it's a fun game. We pin it at the top sometimes, but we don't make it a huge priority. Whatever the cause, this is the result of her night-time antics:

Pumpkins, pumpkins, and more pumpkins!

     I was SO excited to take Addie to the pumpkin patch this year. Last year she was cute in the pictures, but couldn’t really participate in the glory that is a pumpkin patch.
     We’ve had a rainy week this last week, so I was afraid that our pumpkin patch days were limited. We had a dry day and I was at-home-all-day-crazy so I asked sam if we could try getting to a patch after he got home from work. Well… we left late, then couldn’t find the place, and before we knew it it was getting dark out- but Addie had a blast running around in the mud and looking at all of the cool things there anyway. It was too dark for me to feel satisfied with pumpkins for this season though.

Lucky for us, we had great weather today, so we went to a different pumpkin patch that we’d heard about from friends. It was a seriously beautiful farm and we plan on making this place a tradition. Addie was hilarious running around and pointing at everything. She’s a regular little farmer, that one.

 








 

Look how grown up her face looks in this last picture!

A year and a half old

Addie turned one and a half today. I kept thinking about it on and off and it just made me so excited but so bummed at the same time. Having kids is the most amazing thing that can happen to a person- but the feeling of knowing that you’ll never get to hold your sweet baby ever again… whew. I can’t even think about the reality of that statement. I’ll never have my little baby Adelaide ever again. She’s turned into the adorable, funny, crazy little munchkin that I chase around all day. I am excited to see who she will become, but I’ll never stop missing the little bean she used to be.

Happy, growing family= the necessity to take gigs and gigs of pictures

     I know, I take and post too many pictures. It’s not a secret, I’m not unaware of the problem. I just can’t help it. Not when Addie changes so quickly and when so much is going on in our lives.
     To at least help my addiction be aesthetically pleasing, I'm continuing to try to learn to use our camera better. Lately, I’ve really been trying to shoot in manual if I have enough time before addie stops doing whatever funny thing she’s doing. Here are a few of the cute pics we’ve gotten the last week or so:

Addie frequently spoils cute shots by reaching for the camera though. Perhaps she is testing my ability to shoot in focus with a narrow field of depth?

     Most any time we play in the back yard, I listen to books on MP3 on my ipod or I get crazy bored (playing in dirt doesn’t hold my interest much). I got too close to addie to take a picture though, so she stole my earbud and started listening. I think she likes what she heard: 
Here are some funny ones from Addie’s first time eating powdered donuts:
 
Who could resist that cute little face?!

     Anyway, I’m just so happy to be a mommy and a wife and I love my family more than I can even describe. I feel compelled to do my best to capture and record all of the fun times we have together and be able to look back at our family in all of our different stages. So far, every day and every stage has been better than the last. Sam and I were giving each other a big fat hug in the kitchen that turned into a slow dance the other night and Addie came over, hugged both of our legs, and started rocking back and forth with us. Seriously, life doesn’t get any better than that- it just doesn’t!

The rest of october's new pics can be seen here.

Day to day with a cutie patootie

     There are boring days as a stay at home mom for sure, but not nearly as many boring days as I had while I was working. Addie is changing and growing daily and she is SO fun to watch. I seriously get such a kick out her and I absolutely LOVE that I get to be here with her and not miss a beat. She’s perpetually trying to say new words now (few with much accuracy, but the attempts are so cute!), she likes to sing songs to herself, and she is getting just so smart about how she goes about things and plays; it’s just crazy to watch how quickly she changes.
     For some reason, she’s made up the word “kuhkrah” for food. We seriously have no idea why. We’ve never really say cracker  at all, we call most all edible things simply “food”. She decided that food isn’t a fun word though, kuhkrah is. She makes the rules, so that’s what the word for food is when she says it. She’s obsessed with making K noises and spouting off babbles that sound like full sentences in Russian. So perhaps her language skills are far more advanced than we give her credit for, she’s just not speaking english is all, lol.
     When we moved here, Addie had hardly any hair on top at all- but the NW climate has done wonders for her hair! It’s completely filled in and become thick on top and is a few inches long now. It’s weird to see what a difference that has made in how old she looks in such a short amount of time. This has also opened the door to crazy wakeup hair!