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Lucy update:
Our Lucy has finally been sleeping a little better!  We were on a trip this weekend and she slept through the night 3 times in a row until 4 or 5 AM which is truly miraculous.  Truly.  And the last two Sundays she took a 3 plus hour morning nap.
I always love her, but I'm very happy to see her in the morning when she's been sleeping all night!
(post 3.5 hr Sunday nap last week, SO HAPPY!!)

::sunday mom and lucy::

Are we cute? I think we are. We were taking some pretty pictures to send to Kris since he was on a biking trip.

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Lucy tries on Max's old ski boots.  Think she's ready to go skiing?

::sandy hair::

Sandy's hair is all long and shaggy right now.  It's cute and curly and adorable but so dang hard to manage.  I showered him the other day and used some of my fancy cleansing conditioner on his hair and it turned out SO cute.  His hair was so happy and smooth and curly.  I was proud of myself.  Look how cute:



Now I'm not going to want to cut it.  It's just too dang cute.

::fall cookies::

We always make our traditional delicious sugar cookies for Halloween, but sometimes we run low on time and they end up being fall cookies instead.  This was totally one of those years.  Fall cookies all the way.



They still taste just as good--except if the dough has been in the freezer for way way too long and smells and tastes like freezer burn.  Yes, that happened to me today, but I didn't realize that the dough was nasty until after I had spent quite a while cutting out and cooking cookies as well as making all the frosting.  I had to start all over.  Oh well.





Lucy watched the process and Kris tried to feed her sweet potatoes.




Then we had to switch because Kris couldn't get enough potatoes in the baby, so he had to frost the last few cookies.


Max is weird.



Sandy is cute.



And there are some fall cookies, decorated by a little person.  We love them.


Happy fall!

::halloween 2014::

Halloween was just another super busy work day for all of us. When I got to the office I was very pleased to see that everybody had taken the time and effort to dress up.  Don't they all look great?  I brought all the kids in costume at the end of the day so that the staff could see them.  It was pretty fun.



Lucy was very unsure about Jessie's mask.



Everybody loves our Lucy at work.  And when she's dressed up like Tinkerbell she's all the more cute.



And after work we hurried over to the ward trunk or treat.  The kids were excited, and that was good because Kris and I were quickly running out of steam (Sandy had been bouncing off the walls since about 6:30 that morning, and it was getting old).



Cute Kris as Jake from Jake & the Neverland Pirates.






These guys totally crack me up.  Sandy finally had the guts to go and beg candy without a grown up, so Max and Sand made the rounds together.

I don't love the trunk or treat, it's quick, boring and just somehow less classy than real trick or treating.  But the one thing that's good about it is the high concentration of good friends.  And that's nice.





Oh that mustache.  And the curls on the other one.



And that's about all we did.  It got dark and cold and we went home.  We let the boys trick or treat at all of the outside doors of our house (4 or 5 doors) and then we sent them to bed.




The End.

::cookies and stuff::

Halloween cookies are one of our things. We love to do them.  All sorts.  But lately we've just struggled to have time to do anything.  Max saw an old photo of he and I making these Nutter Butter ghosts before Sandy was even born a while back and he remembered how fun they were.

So when I realized we needed cookies for Max's school party and the church party I resolved that we would dip ghosts again.  Max was delighted.



Classic picture face!

These cookies are so stinking good, you could eat like 10 of them in one sitting without even realizing it.



So speaking of halloween parties, on Thursday Sandy and Max both had school parties, so they got to wear their costumes to school.  Lucy wore the downgraded version of her Tinkerbell costume.  She likes to suck on the skirt.



Sandy had a fun time, but he was most psyched up that he got to go to Max's school party.  The night before he said to me, "I won't be four for THIRTY YEARS, but I still get to go to Max's party??!"  He was happily incredulous.

Max's school is in a new location across the parking lot which has a large fully fenced outdoor area which is GREAT.  It about triples the functional space of the school.
Max was inside playing halloween bingo and Sandy was outside running and playing with the kids.  He was really shy when we first arrived but after about 10 minutes he was having the time of his life.

And Max was having a lot of fun too.  He's in a good spot here at this school.  It's been great for him.





When it was time to leave Sandy started to cry--real true sad and miserable tears because he wanted to stay and play.  It was pretty cute, but no I'm not enough of a softie that I let him stay.  But I told him he can go to school there next year and he was pretty excited about that.

::pumpkin hunting::

(cute pumpkin faces on the board at Sandy's school.  so dang cute.)

We tried and tried to find a time where we could all go and pick out our jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but no matter what we did, one of us was gone. So the kids and I went to do it while Kris was gone.  we made sure and picked out a good Daddy pumpkin for him though.

For the last few years we've gone to a big church nearby that brings in tons of pumpkins as a fund raiser for their youth programs.  I figure it's the next best thing to a real pumpkin patch since there are so many to choose from.

Basically, my role was just to make sure nobody picked a pumpkin that was too big.  I don't want to spend hours scraping out the inside of an immense monstrous pumpkin this year.  And that's a harder job than you'd think.

Everybody found the prefect pumpkin after a lot of fooling around.  Sandy especially was way more interested in fooling around and dancing and spinning and tripping on pumpkins than picking one out.  Shocker I know.
But he picked a great one.





And Lucy was there, watching it all.  So I thought she deserved a selfie with pumpkins.



She was serious about all this.  At least one of us was.


Now to see if we can find time to actually carve these dang pumpkins.

::this and that::

Here are some "this and that" pictures from my phone that I took the last couple of weeks.  They're a little random, but way too cute not to post.

I'm feeding Lucy some sort of mash up of green vegetables and Max says, "What're you feeding her, wasabi??"
Ew!



Here's Sandy playing with his new set of Octonaut toys donated to him by his friend Emily who suddenly found herself too mature for them.  He's in heaven.  I love his cute little tie dyed shirt too.



Kris laughed at me the other day because he came in the room while I was putting Lucy down for a nap or something, and there she was, gazing into my eyes.  He said something to the effect of "Yes, and I can't go to sleep without gazing at you the whole time either."  Haha funny, but really she has to stare at me until she sleeps.  Little stinker.  She's very intent on making sure I'm still there.

Sometimes I wish it was me in the bed going to sleep and by the time I get her to sleep it almost IS me in there.



Sandy says to me "Look Mom, I did it!!!!"  And I look over and there he is.



Now that's a skill that's going to get you into college someday.
Well, maybe the skill won't be the smile might.



Sultan joins Lucy on her blanky.  She was pretty excited that he came over.  She loves to feel his fur.
It doesn't get much cuter than that.



And there you go.  All my little randoms gathered up, just for fun.