big week.

big things happening this week. Last night we welcomed brother Chris home from the MTC. foot surgery. he’ll be home for about 2 months. bittersweet. such a bummer to leave the spiritual high of a mission to come home, instead of heading to Chile with his district, but we’re a little excited that he’ll be home for the holidays. I guess if you had to come home for surgery, now would be the ideal time. So with one brother home we have another one on the way! Marty is coming home from his mission in Australia on Saturday. and boy are we excited. It’s been almost 4 years since my entire family was all together so it’s going to be loads of fun. Aaaand, this little gentleman turns 9 months on Friday. I can’t even believe it.

still no teeth (so cute), still no crawling (although he sways back and forth on his hands and knees building momentum, so we’re close. just need to move that hand forward… he is excellent at scooting backwards.

new skills: clapping, which is super recent, and giving kisses, which just melt my heart. A henry kiss entails him leaning forward, mouth open until he reaches your cheek where he then drools all over you. I love it. he’s such a happy easy baby, and loud… always talking and cooing to himself which is cute, but makes things like church a little rough. For some reason he is the most high maintenance at church, doesn’t want you to put him down, but doesn’t want you to hold him either. he gets fussy and loud and by the end of sacrament I am exhausted and my arms feel like they’re about to fall off. I have yet to make it to a full 3 hours of church.

 

lots of firsts coming up especially with the Holidays. like his first experience with snow the other night. he was intrigued.

and first wearing of a tie. we are so blessed and love our sweet babe more than we ever thought possible.

we carved pumpkins

or I guess I should say Mckay carved a pumpkin, whilst the babe supervised.

I, for the second year in a row gave up after about 20 minutes. One day I’ll actually complete one. But a fussy babe, picture taking and the roasting of the pumpkin seeds kept me too occupied. The carving got a little competitive this year when we learned there were prizes. Had I known the winner would get a gift card to Café Rio I probably would have tried a little harder, although I did benefit from Mckay’s second place prize. also a gift card. I on the other hand was cheated out of my last place prize (apple pie caramel apple) when brother Adam ate it.  the night was complete with delicious steak sandwiches and corn chowder and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Mckay replicated the mom tattoo, pure brown-nosing skills at their finest (my mom was the judge).

Monday we continued the Halloween celebration with some epic chili courtesy of Mrs. Klappoth, Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake (thank you Paula Deen) and my first Zombie movie ever. ew.  I love celebrating a holiday over an entire weekend. Next up, Thanksgiving which means a visit from auntie Mairin. hooray!

Mr. Pan

As of the beginning of the week I had all but given up on finding Henry a costume I liked. I was pretty sure I wanted him to be Peter Pan but wasn’t willing to spend 30+ dollars on an outfit he would wear for a day, plus I wasn’t obsessed with any that I saw online. Tuesday I found the most perfect Peter outfit on makeit-loveit.com, a site I used to frequent all the time but hadn’t been on in awhile. I remembered she always made the cutest costumes for her kids and was so happy when I saw her tutorial for the Peter Pan outfit. it looked so simple, even for me. I got the supplies Wednesday (poor Mckay had to experience the line to cut fabric at Joannes, which is always insane) and had plans to make the costume on Thursday, talk about last minute... It took the majority of the day but I have to say I love it, mostly because of the little man that’s wearing it. Those of you that are experienced sewers please be kind… :) this was my first time sewing any sort of clothing and my sewing skills are limited at best. but, thanks to the tremendous help of my mom it all came together. Not bad for less than 11 dollars.
 






thanks to husband for indulging me in a little impromptu photo shoot. Hope everyone is enjoying their Halloween weekend! This has just got to be the best time of year, love love it!

Halloween puppets

since we don’t have our own little space to decorate for the holidays this year I’ve been finding other crafts to do to celebrate. Last week I made a bunch of Halloween finger puppets during nap time. These were fun, easy and relatively quick to make. an ideal craft. Henry’s already shown some interest, by putting them straight in his mouth. I’m sure he’ll enjoy them more in a year or two.

the letter T and Z.

 

I finished two more quiet book pages this week, t and z.

T- for Train took me awhile, mostly because I was looking for pictures of the each of us that I liked and that were the size that I needed. I cut out the shape for the window and then lined it with a clear page protector to cover the picture.

I was kind of figuring things out as I went along, so there are definitely some flaws, but I like how it turned out I suppose.

Z- for Zoo. I started this page months and months ago, but for some reason just finished it this week. I loved the animal finger puppets from the farm page that I decided to make some more. These are so quick and easy to make! So easy in fact that I got a little distracted and kept making more puppets in honor of the upcoming holiday. more pictures to come!

photos from our weekend

 

school has pretty much been a full time job for mckay this semester and homework often has to take the place of playtime so weekends are much anticipated around here. Saturday morning we took a spur of the moment trip to the local beto’s for breakfast burritos and headed for a drive up the canyon still in our pajamas. I live for those moments. it was beautiful.

Later we enjoyed a late night at Cornbelly’s with the Klappoths.

Sunday brought some quality family time, relaxing, eating, board games and football. hooray for weekends!

october, how I love thee

 

 

sometimes my obsessive picture taking embarrasses Mckay.

8 mos

 

our little man is not so little anymore. he turns 8 months old today. I’m kind of sad, time goes way to fast. but it is so much fun to see him learn and grow. he is so curious and I absolutely love watching him experience new things. babies make everything new and exciting. today we will celebrate with some family pumpkin picking, a little lunchy with friends, and a flu shot. big day.

quiet book progress

I’m slowly getting closer to finishing the quiet book I started two years ago…I tend to work in it like crazy for a few days and then get sick of it and take a break for a few days/months. I’m making progress though, thanks to henry being a phenomenal napper so as of right now I have three pages in the works plus six new pages to do. that sounds like a lot, but it’s a lot closer than where I was a month ago.

I finished these pages a few months ago:

I- for Ice cream. nothing fancy here, just a variety of scoops to customize an ice cream cone. I like to have each page target some sort of learning skill but it’s not always easy to come up with one, so this one could help with decision making I guess.

L is for “Lift Off”. I had to get creative for some of the pages just so I could do the ones I wanted. I couldn’t decide whether to do rocket or robot for R, hence the “lift off” page. The rocket slides from the earth to the moon on a thin ribbon.

These pages I’ve done in the last few weeks:

Q- “Quack” The ducks are velcro-ed on. pair the babies with the mom.

S- Shapes. I embroidered around each shape to create an outline onto the page, match the shape to its outline.

P- for Potato Head. the top of the body is velcro-ed to the page and holds the extra pieces. this helps with learning the names of body parts

X- is for X-ray. another body parts page. again, all the pieces are attached using velcro.

U- Under the Sea. a few years ago I saw this template for ocean felt magnets on purlbee and was obsessed and that’s what I used to make this page. the fish are just attached to the page and since everything is so colorful I guess it can help with learning colors.

the Z,T and J pages are almost finished, so hopefully I can move on from those soon.

swing

there is nothing better than a quiet morning at the park. oh how I love this boy.