November Mish Mash

I've been decorating a bit in our little abode and I saw these ikats that were featured in one of the HGTV dream homes.  I fell in love with them and my mom offered to duplicate them for me as they were over $500 for just one.  It was like Christmas morning when I got them in the mail.  Thanks mom!

The one on the right is a less saturated one, she sent me two sets of four to choose from!

I was scrubbing our tile floors one day and Nadia decided I was missing a very important accessory, which she promptly taped to my head.  My daughter is the best! 

Rowan is quite the little artist sometimes and he did this drawing for me.  Apparently we need to discover a better way to draw pectoral muscles on centaurs, but otherwise it was pretty awesome.

Rain, rain...

Elsa loves the rain!  Snow, not so much.

Preschool Science Night

 Nadia's preschool hosted a Science Night for their students and their students' families.  They had booths throughout the school and it turned out to be a really fun event.  Nadia has blossomed so much at this preschool.  A few weeks after attending, her teacher told me she showed no signs of selective mutism and even occasionally gets in trouble for talking too much.  That's one misbehavior I can get behind!

 Volcanoes.
Rowan's needed a little more juice before it got going.

 Making boats out of aluminum foil and seeing what floats and what doesn't.

 Magnet table.

 Rowan acting as part of the solar system.

Elsa was more enthralled with watching the people and enjoying her beverage.

We've been conflicted with knowing what to do with Nadia for her kindergarten year.  BYU also offers a fantastic kindergarten program and after seeing how Nadia has thrived in her current class, we don't want to let the opportunity slip by enrolling her in the public school.  There are also some fears of her regressing since the public school classes are bigger and there's more of a chance that she'll slip under the radar.  I want to keep pushing her to come out of her shell and not feel inhibited by any anxieties that she may feel.  That being said, Nadia has been determined to go to school with Rowan and keeps insisting on being able to walk to school with Rowan etc.  A friend of mine had the genius notion to put her in both schools as they have half day preschool here.  It never occured to me that that was possible and it has proved to be a perfect solution to our dilemma.  Rowan did really well with all day kindergarten and I know Nadia will do the same.  She'll go to school with Rowan in the morning, come home for lunch and then I'll take her to preschool at BYU in the afternoon.  A bit of running around for us, but since both schools are less than 5 minutes away, it'll be perfectly doable.  I'm really excited for her!

Caroline's Birthday

It's so nice to be able to go to cousin's birthday parties now.  Here's a few shots of Elsa and Nadia at Caroline's 4th birthday party.

Caroline clearly loves donuts.

Elsa ate something!  Hallelujah!

Nadia hates games where she is under pressure.  I think Randy just held the stick so she could snack on it while using her hands.  They were playing dressup before the games, thus the dress.

Surprisingly, bobbing for apples had the same enthusiasm as donuts on a stick.

Got it!

Who wants ice cream?

Halloween!

 She's not a bit excited that today is the day.  Not a bit.

Obligatory jump on the sandbox cover.

While Elsa might not like hats on herself, she's intensely interested in hats on other people.  I think she kept trying to take off Nadia's.

She loves the camera a lot more than hats though.  So much so that a lot of the pictures I take of her wind up looking like this.

No costume for her after the last traumatic experience, but at least she's kind of dressed for the occasion.  She had a lot of fun handing out candy with Steve.

Posing with our pumpkins.

We went trick or treating with Isabelle and Rowan's best friend from school, Austin.

The whole gang.

The loot!

 She's clearly ashamed at being caught red handed.

Most of the time, she just sucked on the glow sticks.

For the adults, it was trick or sleep while the kids ran around hopped up on sugar all night.

No Trunk, but lots of Treats!

In preparation for our ward activity, we broke out our traditional 18-24 month Rhino costume this year for Elsa to wear.  It's the only costume I've had all three kids in.  Needless to say, Elsa was not at all thrilled about the hat portion of the costume.

I'm so cruel to take pictures like this, aren't I?

After this success, we decided that Elsa would stay home and hand out candy with Steve on the day of Halloween.

Others in our family were a lot more cooperative.

 Our cute witch.

Sassy poses.

I took the girls outside in the hopes that Elsa would be distracted by the outdoors and I could get at least one decent picture of her.  I was right in that she would be distracted, but most of the pictures turned out like this...

The girl doesn't hold still.  Here's the best of the bunch.  They had fun jumping on our sandbox cover.

Rowan came late to the photo shoot with school still in session.  Before we got to the church, I thought that it might be a bit of a bust since there wasn't a trunk or treat portion to it.  I was glad to be wrong.  It was probably the best ward Halloween activity we had ever been to.  The Young Men and Women had booths all over the church building- Face painting, photo booth with a green screen, bean bag toss, fishing, donut on a string, spook alley, remote control car races, complete with a chili cook off.  The kids had so much fun!

Say hello to Mr Indiana Jones.  The whip and gun stayed home, but he got to have them for trick or treating.

You probably don't need to guess that this was Rowan's favorite booth.  It was also Nadia's least favorite.  She HATES pressure or anything that causes her stress.  She was so torn for her love of donuts, but her hatred of any game where she is under a time constraint or some kind of performance stress.  I eventually went and asked them if she could have a donut without participating.

The bean bag toss was more up her alley.

Rowan and I competing in a remote control car race.  They set up a whole room with obstacles and tracks.  It was a lot of fun!

Face painting or rather, hand painting!  Nadia didn't want her face painted, so we opted for the hand.  She chose, of course, a cat!

The green screen was way more high tech than I thought it would be.  You got to choose from a variety of backdrops.  The man in charge is the father of Nadia's friend from preschool Samuel who we carpool with.  He works at BYU in the IT department so he's really tech savvy.  The Yoda behind him is Samuel.

A picture of the picture we got (thus the flash).  Our scanner is broken, but I think it turned out super cute.

The kids went off to the spook alley on their own, so I never got to see what they encountered.  All I got for feedback was "that was creepy, I don't want to go back."  Happy Halloween!