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And something cute

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On Thanksgiving, Austin was sitting in a chair writing on a piece of paper. As he was writing he was saying

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That's exactly what he had written on his paper too. He's such a smarty pants! He's retaining so much at school, it's amazing. I'm so proud of him.

~ Happy Thanksgiving ~

Austin only had to attend school on Monday & Tuesday this week. On Tuesday, he brought home a turkey hat!

What's a hat post of Austin without a picture of Abigail? She was saying "Cheese" while I was taking her picture!


I'm getting ready to start preparing our Thanksgiving feast while the kids watch the Thanksgiving Day parade. We're having our Army family over for dinner. 5 single soldiers will be joining us so we're making a ton of food. We're even attempting to deep fry our turkey. It should be an interesting morning as we try to prepare everything for a 1:00 dinner. I'm sure I'll be taking pictures throughout the day...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Slacking

The title pretty much sums it up. Hardly any picture taking and no posting on the blog. Until I get my butt in gear, here are some pictures from awhile ago!

There is some exciting news going on... Uncle Ben made it home safely yesterday from his 15 month deployment to Iraq!

Welcome Home Uncle Ben!

Chuck E Cheese

I took the kids to Chuck E Cheese on Saturday because of a bribe I made with Austin. That was the most stressful $12.50 and hour and a half I've spent in a long time! The last time we went to Chuck E Cheese, Abigail was small enough to wear and not participate. Not this time, she went one way and Austin went the other. Michael was out of town, but I told him he was going next time. He can track one kid while I track the other!

I love the way Abigail has her arm hanging out of the side of the car!

They even got to ride a Cedar Point roller coaster, The Blue Streak. The game moved like the actual roller coaster.

Abigail wasn't really into it, can you tell?

I is for Inch Worm

Look how scary he made it!

Please look past the dorito faces. When Daddy's away, they get whatever they want for dinner (unless it's something totally outrageous)! Last night it happened to be chicken nuggets and doritos!

21 Months

Three months to go before Abigail's two years old, wow! We're off to the doctor for another weight check. Let's hope she's hit the 20 lb mark and doesn't have to have her blood drawn again! Check back later for a full update!

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She did it! Abigail now weighs 20 lbs, 10 oz. It still didn't put her on the growth chart for weight, but she is maintaining her spot just below the line. She's even grown 2 inches in the last three months.

She had to have her blood drawn again to check to see if she was still mildly anemic and she did surprisingly well considering last time. The doctor called me today and said her results were perfectly normal so that's encouraging. She's just going to be on the smaller side, which is fine with me.

At 21 months, she's really starting to blossom. She's talking all the time. Her first sentence of words was/is "I don't know" but it tends to sound like "I dunno", it's so cute!

Her bedtime routine has taking a drastic step in the reverse direction. She's always gone to bed without a peep when I lay her in her bed (awake). Lately she screams bloody murder and we end up snuggling in the chair together until she's gone to sleep. Her days of snuggling in the chair are limited because she feels the need to say & do the following:

♥ "Mommy eyes" (As she pokes my eyeballs out)

♥ "Mommy nose" (As she shoves her entire finger up my nostril)

♥ "Mommy mouth" (As she shoves her fingers in my mouth)

♥ "Mommy nu-night"

♥ "Austin nu-night"

♥ "Daddy nu-night"

You see a pattern, right? When I ask her if Abigail's going to go nu-night, she replies with a big fat NO!

This age is so much fun. I can only imagine how much she'll change in the next few months...

The time has come

His days of picking on his sister are limited, she's starting to fight back!

School pictures

Of course it's a picture of his school pictures, but how cute is this?

Who thinks I should have them re-taken?

Our Halloween Day Activities

Halloween morning the kids got up and got dressed in their Halloween apparel. I had a special treat for each of them that wasn't candy!

Abigail, of course, wouldn't look at me.

I sent the kids to daycare & school with their ghosts. When I picked Austin up from daycare he had a hat in his bag. I'm not sure if this hat is part of the alphabet hats they're making or just for Halloween. Either way I think he's the cutest looking spider around!

Out of 5 pictures, this is the only one where he didn't have his eyes closed!

We headed home to eat some dinosaur chicken nuggets before we headed out in our costumes. Of course once I got the kids costumes on, we had to drive up and see Daddy. Michael had to work all night last night and wanted to see the kids in their costumes. Once we saw Daddy, we were off for a busy night of trick or treating. We headed to the Civic & Conference Center first.

We were the first of our group to arrive and the kids were very impatient about going inside. They both kept running in different directions. Not fun when you're by yourself.

Abigail thought getting candy inside her pumpkin was pretty cool!

I put a bow in her hair because she would not wear the hood that was on her costume!

After getting some candy, we headed into the pumpkin patch for some photo ops!

Of course, none of the kids would look at us. They were so busy!

My kids got their faces painted (not well) and then we headed to the mall for some more safe trick or treating.

While at the mall we saw Chuckie!

After the mall, we called it an evening. A successful one at that! Hope everyone had a safe & Happy Halloween!

Making ghosts

As a kid, my brother and I would make ghosts every Halloween. It was one of my favorite things to do. I decided to make them again this year with my kids. Austin and I have made them before, but he was never old enough to participate in making them. This year, we made enough for Austin to take to school & daycare, and Abigail to take to her daycare. Austin made the eyes on all the ghosts. He had a blast!

Getting ready to make ghosts. Scary!

His first ghost.

Daddy was taking pictures of us! (He likes my new camera too! He snapped 3 pictures of Austin drawing the same eye!)

Abigail thought making ghosts were scary too!

We made 75 ghosts and lots of memories!

Pumpkin carving

Let's just say the kids didn't want too much to do with digging the goo out from the pumpkins.

They did try it once

But that was about all they did. Daddy managed to carve a face into Abigail's pumpkin, but Austin & I never got around to finishing his with all the other activities going on. It turned out to be alright, we were out and about on Halloween.