Who let the dogs out?

Lily and Beck both turned three recently and we combined forces for the ultimate dog party. We planned tons of games like fetch, grab the tail, a barking contest, puppy training school, and a bone hunt in hopes that we could entertain the kids for an hour, but three year olds have pretty short attention spans and we were done about 25 minutes into it. Luckily three year olds are also really good at entertaining themselves.



The snacks.




Ryler with the guest of honor.





Puppy training school: all the kids "playing dead" for a treat.





We let the kids eat their cake out of dog bowls, as you can see they were a little apprehensive at first.





But it didn't take long for them to dig in.





The cake. (Don't worry those are Cocoa Puffs).

Whistler's Mother

Lily learned how to whistle the other day. It must be coming from her recent interest in Snow White and Robin Hood. Both feature pretty inspiring whistling tunes. She's not quite able to 'whistle while you work' but she does whistle her one or two notes that she can do pretty regularly throughout the day. I added a clip of Finn at the end of the video just because I love how cute they are together. Lily is working the camera so anyone prone to motion sickness beware...

Dang Cute Pictures of Our Kids.

I've been wanting to record some cute things my kids have been up to. So if you can't handle the cuteness...move along.



Eric's dad took this picture of Lily while they were here and I love it. She looks so happy and beautiful. One of my favorite pictures of her.



I took this picture of Finn yesterday morning. Now that he can kind of sit up I can get much better pictures.

I feel so lucky to have such great kids. Finn is just so sweet and happy all the time. He just adores Lily and laughs at anything she does. Lily is so good to help with him. Her self-claimed job is to select his diaper. Her first choice is always a cookie monster diaper, but if those are out, then she will draw him on another cookie monster picture.



Last night Eric was telling Lily to hurry and come get in the bath. She was trying to hurry and finish a puzzle first and after he called her a few time she says to me, " Dad is driving me nervous!"

A few weeks ago, we were heading to the park with some friends. I let her eat her lunch on the way there and awhile later she wanted something to eat. I told her we ate everything I had packed. One of her best friends, Beckett, walks by eating some apples. Lily went up to him and said "Beckett can I have some?" and in total desperation she claims, "I have nothing!" So sweet Beckett gives her his last apple slice. She realizes he's out of food, so gets him to find some more. A few minutes later, Beckett comes up to me and says " Do you have any food?". He was going around to all the parents begging for food for Lily.

I hope Lily's relationship with Beckett doesn't reflect what kind of wife she'll be. If so, her future husband better buckle up. She's pretty bossy in general, but poor Beckett gets the brunt of it. I've seen her wiping his face after eating, blowing on his food and telling him he needs to eat one more bite. They were playing doctor the other day and she had him lay down. He looks over at Eric and says, "Can I get up now?" Eric says of course he can. But Lily tells him "Beckett, you're sick you need to lay down." So he submissively laid back down.




My mom bought Lily some cat pajamas and from the time she put them on until she took them off the next morning she was a cat. She would crawl around and only respond to us with a high pitched meow to anything we asked.

Finn can't even crawl yet and he can already get in to stuff. He has a way of scooting/rolling. I know I'll get tired of it eventually but already I've heard "Mom! Finn's eating my ...!" I think it's funny. Lily doesn't.

He also doesn't really cry. He screams to get our attention. Not like a crying scream like a AHHHH! Like Macaulay Culkin on Home Alone. Sometimes it sounds like he's getting tortured. We must seem like insensitive parents to others because he'll scream and most parents would go running, Eric and I laugh and keep doing what we're doing.

Halloweening

Lily was SO excited for Halloween this year and it has been a mild obsession for the past month. One day while she was taking a nap I was startled when over the monitor I heard "I am SO EXCITED FOR HALLOWEEN!"  She thanks Heavenly Father in her prayers for Halloween. She pretended to Trick-or-Treat with random objects instead of candy. When I put up my three Halloween decorations during her nap, she came down and said "Oh those skeletons are so cute!" I don't know where it came from, but I wanted to make all her Halloween dreams come true.

I always thought I had the best costumes growing up. In the era of plastic costumes, with a plastic mask, my mom made ours. She would take us to the fabric store and let us brainstorm costume ideas while flipping through the pattern books. I remember her painting my old church shoes with glue and pouring red glitter all over them when I was Dorothy. When I was Raggedy Ann she made me a yarn wig. My favorite part of Halloween (maybe even more so than the candy) was getting to wear makeup. To this day, the smell of certain lipsticks remind me of Halloween.

Raggedy Ann

Dorothy

Little Bo Peep

So when Lily said she wanted to be Tinkerbell, I was excited to make her a costume that looks just like the real Tinkerbell's. I made everything except the wings. They are twenty years old from when my sister Sarah was Tinkerbell.

So here is Tinkerbell,

 

Finn was the cutest Peter Pan I've ever seen,

 Eric was Mr. Smee,

and I was Captain Hook, ARRRRGH!

Lily with a mouthful of candy.

We had a church party on Friday night and on Halloween we went trick-or-treating in my parents neighborhood. After we had dinner Lily said "Okay, let's get ready to go Halloweening!" In their neighborhood a lot of the neighbors all join up on one person's drive-way, set up a fire pit and hang out while handing out candy. One group required every kid to perform some kind of trick. So Lily bravely sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to about fifteen adults. Another neighbor wore a Jason mask laid in a coffin and held a bowl of candy. I could tell Lily was scared, but she went right up to him, reached in the coffin and took her piece of candy. She reminded me several times throughout the night that "It's just pretend..".

Stettler Super Saturday

Only this Super Saturday does not include a craft, spiritual thought, or soup in a bread bowl. It only takes three ingredients for a Stettler Super Saturday to succeed.

One: Grandma. My mom came all the way over to Richmond to babysit Finn.



Two: McDonalds. Only if Happy Meals are included.

 




Three: Music. And no one does music for a two year old like Yo Gabba Gabba. We didn't tell Lily we were taking her, only that there was a surprise coming. She was pretty surprised.











She was still pretty hyper on the walk back to the car.




As expected after any Stettler Super Saturday, she was pretty pooped. (Sorry for the poor quality, it was the only shot we could get.)

Stettler's Come to Visit

Eric's parents came out forever ago, but I've been busy on lots of different things. One of them being Halloween costumes. We tried on one part of Finn's costume this afternoon. Can you guess what he might be?

So back to Eric's parents. It had been awhile since we had seen them. Last time we saw them Lily looked like this:

and Finn looked like this:

Yeah, a long time. So I was excited for them to see how much they have changed. I think Finn's was a little more shocking.

Eric was able to take off his clinical days so it really felt like we were on vacation too. They have already been to DC so we focused all our traveling time on Virginia. If you're wondering why my pictures look so much better it is because I didn't take them. Eric's dad is a much better photographer. It was a little harder to find pictures to post since I was in a lot of the pictures and well, I can't put up pictures that I look like I still have seven pounds left of Finn on me.

The first day we went to the Confederate White house and Civil War Museum and then the Capitol. Pretty much anything you do in Virginia has some kind of American history involved.



We went to Monticello again. Which is one of my favorite places and every time we've been I've learned and seen something new. Lily kept asking where Claire was. Last time we went my friend Melinda and her daughter Claire were visiting us from Utah.











We went to our favorite park in Richmond, Maymont.





We went to Williamsburg.







and Gary found a new place for us to go— the Three Lakes Nature Conservatory.



We had so much fun with them and they only bad thing about them coming was we are all homesick all over again.

I saw these short films on A Cup of Joe and thought they were so amazing and I wanted all my friends to see them. Warning: You will get the traveling itch, super bad.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Staunton, VA

A few weeks ago we took a little Labor Day excursion with some good friends ours, the Church's, to Staunton, Virginia. Staunton is near Shenandoah Valley. We were excited to find a place that seemed to be perfect for two families to stay-- a two bedroom suite with a combined living room. Little did we know this place was run by the Baron and Baroness Bomburst.

I'll explain. When we reserved the room we put we had four adults. I called ahead and asked if it was kid-friendly and the replied yes. So we show up have a good evening there and go down to breakfast the next morning. The kids were really good and one guest even came up and said how well behaved all the kids were. While Dane was walking Beck outside and the "Baroness" shushed little Beck! The "Baron" approached Eric as we were leaving and told him he was confused at how many people we had in our party. He said we don't normally allow kids here and you guys should be paying for the additional guests. $15/night/child. That would be an extra $120. I just couldn't imagine how my 3 month old and two year old could really use $60 worth of ammenities. So Eric said no way but offered to pay for their breakfast. They then asked us to not bring our children down the next morning. We were so bugged that we were ready to head to another hotel. Until we realized that would be a huge pain to pack it all up for one more night. Needless to say, we felt uncomfortable the rest of our stay and felt like the child-catcher was looming in the corners.

"Come here kiddie-winkies!" 

Other than our hotel, the trip was really fun. We went to a nice park that had a miniature motorized train that the kids loved, drove through Shanendoh Valley and had a picnic, strolled downtown while they had some kind of festival and went to the Luray Caves.

Everyone asked if Finn and Quinn were twins. A "no" wasn't too convincing when they have rhyming names.





I wonder if it is still Jessica's dream to have twins...



Shenandoh Valley.

 








 
Aren't these two cute? We're hoping they'll get married one day.

The Luray Caves.