Carving pumpkins

Daddy was gone for a few days, and the kids were missing him, so I decided we needed to do something fun.... we'd had our pumpkins just sitting outside our door, so we brought them in and carved them. Josiah wanted to know what we were going to carve, so I said, "Oh, we're just going to put some silly faces on the pumpkins." I emphasized silly rather than scary... Our neighbors all have tombs, skeletons, spiders, ghosts, and Halloween lights all over their houses, which kind of creeps the kids out. I've never lived in a neighborhood that goes this crazy about Halloween. No joke every house on our street has more decorations for Halloween than most normal people do for Christmas...seriously. Anyway, Josiah immediately said he wanted a pumpkin with his tongue sticking out... Notice there are no shots of the actual pumpkins. Mommy is not the world's best pumpkin carver!

A few good ones...

I did manage to get some cute ones though! Here are a few...

Fall Foliage

Every year I try unsuccessfully to get cute pictures of my kids playing in the leaves. This year was no exception. I should have known better... truly. Madelyn missed her morning nap due to a Women's Bible Study, and had just fallen asleep for a much over-due nap when we arrived at our destination. I let her sleep for a few minutes in the car while the kids ran around, and then hoped she would be okay with a short catnap. No such luck. She was not a happy camper. Did I mention she's stubborn? She literally had a show-down with Josiah without speaking one word! I told Reagan and Josiah I wanted them to walk Madelyn up a big hill of leaves so I could get some cute pictures of the back of all three of them. So they obediently grabbed Maddy's hands, and tried to walk her up the hill. Madelyn wasn't in the greatest of moods to begin with, so having people pull her where she didn't want to go was not a good move. She jerked her hands out of their grasp and then proceeded to yell at them in baby gibberish. I told them to try again, and this time not only did she pull her hands away, she dug her heels in as well. Reagan and Josiah are both getting frustrated, and so is mommy. I tell them to try AGAIN, (I really want this picture!), Madelyn gets so frustrated she pulls her arms away, sits on the ground, and cries. Now Josiah is extremely frustrated, and he mumbles, "I'll just walk MYSELF up the hill!" and he marches up the hill with Reagan trailing behind. Not exactly the picture I had in mind...

In The News

Reagan is on the front page of the Kindergarten website for her school! Here is the link so you can check it out: http://www.cdaschools.org/skyway/kindg.html


We have a friend who is a teacher at Reagan's school, she'll send me emails every once in a while saying, "Reagan looks cute today!" It's nice to have somebody that can keep tabs on her for us. Just recently she sent me an email with some pictures she took of Reagan during school. They're so cute! It pays to have friends in high places! =0)

Madelyn - happy, fiesty, sweet, rough n' tumble girl.

New Milestones: four new molars, walking/running everywhere, totally out of the crawling stage.

Madelyn is a mixture of opposites. I always tell people if she were a firstborn, she would be the sweetest little thing. She is generally very happy, and playful, but with two older siblings bossing her around and trampling her she is becoming VERY tough. A nursery worker put it perfectly the other day, she said, "Boy, Madelyn can hold her own..." That's for sure. I predict out of all of our kids she will be our athlete. She's tenacious. If somethings out of her reach: bathtub, toys, cell phone... she finds a way to get it. Even if she has to lunge off a couch, or dive headfirst into the bath tub...she never gives up. I think a lot has to do with birth order, seems like a lot of the third and fourth children I know have a stubborn streak, but some of it, she was born with. As a baby she loved to be swung upside down, twirled around in circles, or thrown up in the air. Whereas Josiah, even though he's a boy, and everybody assumed he would like that kind of thing, never has. He's our cautious one. She also loves to body slam whoever is lying on the floor, and runs FULL speed when wrestling with daddy! So fun to have three kids with all COMPLETE different personalities.