Pictures I've Snapped Lately

I love it when Audrey dresses herself.

We went to Brent and Cheryl's for Thanksgiving. It was probably one of the very best Thanksgivings ever. Really. We had the best time.

We dug in before I really got a picture of our feast, but here is everyone with their empty plates. Notice David was too cool to oblige me in holding up his plate.

This is our Christmas tree all decorated.

(My mom made the quilt that is currently serving as our tree skirt. I should have held it up so you can see. It's one of my favorites that she's made. It's so pretty and Christmasy.)

The tree didn't last more than two days. It currently has no ornaments. Just lights and the ribbon on top. It still looks nice though. Nicer than ornaments half falling apart and flug on the tree in a big clump because I just tossed them up there after the girls took them off . . .

This is the livingroom decorated. The garland on the mantle is no longer there. It lasted about 2 hours. The stockings aren't up anymore either . . . we thought they looked a bit silly there, but the mantle was out. Not sure why Jane is crying. Dave is pretending to be working on something, but really he's watching Dora.

(And, yes, my mom made all those stockings and bought me that throw on the couch . . . if it weren't for her we'd pretty much look like Scrooges)

My mom got me this cute snowflake for Christmas one year and I've finally been able to put it up. I'm totally shocked that it's survived so many moves! It's quite fragile. Those little white balls pop off all the time. Hmmm . . . but now that you mention it, it does look a bit rumpled, huh . . .

Another present from my mom. She made this little snowman wall hanging. I love it.

Word of Caution: Audrey is pretty much naked all the time. So from here until she starts kindergarten probably, she'll just be in panties in all the photos of her at home . . . or she'll be dressed like she is in the first picture of this post. Just so you know.

So the story behind this one is that I had that vegetable tray sitting on the kitchen counter, and I'd placed it so that Audrey could reach the carrots (and it was also her job to get Jane some). I found this when I got out of the shower. I just let them carry on. After all, as soon as the dip ran out they actually ate the vegetables (not just sucked the dip off the vegetables). They pretty much cleaned the whole tray out.

Ah yes. So my big plan to have a playroom where organization and fun would reign has turn out to be ruled by a dictator which has bred nothing but chaos and anarchy. Audrey is the dictator. And as she informed me after I asked her why she did this with her toys, she declaired that she "liked it like this." The Queen has spoken.

The happy part of this story is that after our Ikea upgrades there has been a lot less chaos. :) I say less, not "none," but less.

I noticed this on the rear end of her toy horse the other day. Lately she has been drawing little faces all over EVERYTHING (surprised?). And sometimes the places she chooses to put faces are quite funny and charming.

Audrey's rudolph nose! She wore it to both Christmas parties she went to. We had to tie it funny so it would stay on her face. And despite how uncomfortable it looks, she wore it for long lengths of time at both parties and on the car rides to and from. :)

I told Jane to smile and this is what she did.

The nose blinks, but it doesn't work on Audrey unless it's even tighter. Dad had to help with that. I wouldn't have bothered taking a picture of this, but Audrey insisted we get one with the light going.

No, it wasn't his birthday.

It wasn't April Fools Day.

It wasn't Father's Day either.

It was just because we love him and think he's a great guy.

And we made the banner with our own hands--really. It's all fingerpaint.

The hat is the best part for sure.

:)

Jane wanted to wear the nose too. No, she isn't being hurt. She's singng.

Ah! Finally a clear picture! This picture was taken after I FINALLY cleaned my lense! Gross. Suddenly everything is clear. Those others should have been . . .

This is Audrey's "display." It's a face. She said she made it for "Jesus' birthday." Again, she's naked.

I'd like to add here that everytime we pass a christmas light display in someone's yard, even a tiny one, Audrey says "ooooo, a display!" It's one of her favorite words.

In other news, we are ready for Chirstmas!! Jacob and Kassie get here tomorrow! All the food for the holiday feast has been bought! The Christmas shopping has been done! The carols are playing! The stockings are hung! The tree is aglow!

You get the picture.

Now all we need is a little snow! But having weather in the mid to lower 50s in December isn't all bad. :) In fact, it's 11:20 pm and a balmy 48 degrees. I'm ok with that.

Just so you know . . .

We spent some serious time at Ikea recently.

We've spent some serious time with our toolbox.

There will be pictures.

We're having a . . . .

GIRL!!!

The Hunt Women's Club is about to gain a new member.

Do you think she'll have red or brown hair? That's the next big question. :)

Names are Important

Audrey was watching an old Betty Boop cartoon this afternoon. When we turned it off she protested: "I want to watch Benny Boob!"

Speaking of names. We're still thinking and polling our readers (haha) about baby names. Again, we've decided on a boy name, but the girl name is still up in the air.

What about Claire Rose Hunt? My middle name is Rose and my late grandmother's name was Rose. So incorporating that would be nice.

Oh yeah, Thanksgiving.

It was great. I'll post more about it later. Food was excellent. Company was excellent. Everything, perfect.

Oh, yeah.

WE ATE TONS OF FOOD!!

The funny thing is, it's like the loaves and fishes. It's like we didn't eat anything! Between 6 adults and 2 kids, there is enough for another full-fledged Thanksgiving meal! Maybe even 2 more! In fact, we're going to Brent and Cheryl's again tomorrow for Thanksgiving 2. :) Not joking. It's like my dream come true!!

The only problem is, I'm pregnant, so that uncomfortable, after-thanksgiving-i'm-too-full feeling, is about 10 times worse. :D

Oh, well. Here we come, turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, salad, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, corn, stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetable platter, pumpkin pie, apple pie, chocoalte cream pie. Be afraid.

Speaking of rolls. The kids actually didn't eat anything but rolls. They seriously missed out. I think they ate about 8 rolls each. With butter of course. However, if you've seen my kids, you know a little butter isn't going to hurt them. :) Well, Audrey did get carried away with the "sunscreen" we put on her pie. She just ate the whipped cream and kept asking for more from different adults. She didn't even touch the pie. Just ate the sunscreen off the top. :) I love that.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Likes and Dislikes

Sorry I have no pictures to accompany this post. I just haven't been interested in taking pictures lately. And just for your information, I suddenly have no more interest in eating plums all the time and watching Charles in Charge every night. I still like all of these things, but I guess I'm just too busy "adjusting" to have interest in those things.

Speaking of interests, the girls have recently shifted in theirs.

Audrey Likes:

1. The movie The "I-ron" Giant (her pronounciation). She's always asking to watch "Hogarth." If you've seen the movie you'd know what I mean. It really is a fantastic movie. It is a cartoon, but not particularly age appropriate for her, and it's sort of a boy movie. I don't mind watching it with her at all, just not 15 times a day. And Dave CAN'T watch it with her because that movie makes him cry like a big baby.

2. Bringing me "lunch." She likes to have me eat pretend food all the time, as I've mentioned in a previous post.

3. Running. Much to the horror and, I'm sure, loathing of our downstairs neighbor. She runs everywhere, but her rowdiest time is from about 5:00 until she goes to bed at 8:00, with a major spurt of energy and speed from about 7:30 to 8:00 (which means we chase and get really frustrated around bedtime).

4. Playing with kids at the play area in the mall. It's a great play area, and she always finds a new best friend every time we go (usually an older kid because she's so tall). She has a ball.

5. "Butter and cheese" sandwiches. It's really meat and cheese with mayo, but whatever.

6. Singing REALLY LOUD any time we go anywhere in the car. She sings the whole time. Unless she's asleep. It's cute. For a little while. She also likes to do it when she sits on the potty, or any time she's playing (if the mood strikes her). She just makes up words and mashes songs together. You can usually count on Twinkle Little Star or Itsy Bitsy Spider being in there somewhere.

7. She's suddenly into Dr. Seuss. She's always talking about Sneetches and their "stupid little stars." It's in the song on the movie if you're wondering where the "stupid" comes from.

8. Playing with Jane. Usually.

9. Putting her dirty clothes in the laundry. I can't get her to take her dishes to the sink or put her toys away, but she does love to throw her dirty clothes into the washing machine.

10. The earth. She's always talking about it since she saw a picture of it and we talked about it for scripture study one night (we go through the gospel art kit pictures and we're past the scripture stories and church history ones . . . consistancy is the goal, just keep telling yourself that). Everything looks like the earth to her. A year ago she was fascinated with the moon, now it's the earth.

11. Sneaking suckers from the pantry . . . She's quick too. She can get them and devour the whole thing before I even notice she's been too quiet. And we're talkin' the big Blow Pop kind. I keep them for potty treats when she goes #2 in the potty (which she's been doing with great success so far this week). I don't know she's eaten them until she comes to me with sticky hands and asks me to clean them for her. Oh well. At least she doesn't leave half-eaten suckers lying around, like Jane does. And it's actually better if Audrey eats her suckers in private when Jane won't see her and scream fit-to-die until she gets one too. After this bag of suckers is gone, we will no longer be sucker purchasers. In fact, I bet that's why they call them suckers.

12. Wrapping things and giving them as presents. She wraps them in towels or paper or napkins or whatever she can find.

Audrey Dislikes:

1. To stop running.

2. To do anything she's told to do. She's got her own agenda. And when I say anything, I really mean it.

3. To wear clothing. Unless it's a princess dress or my dress shoes.

4. Loud toilets . . . and despite her love of putting things in the washing machine, when it's running, she won't go near it.

Jane Likes:

1. To do everything Audrey does. Really. Everything she does, says, you name it. It's adorable, but frustrating sometimes--especially when it is misbehaving at the dinner table. When you let THAT get out of hand, you're in big trouble.

2. To cuddle. It's her favorite thing ever.

3. Eating. The funny thing is, she's a bit more picky about her food than Audrey is.

4. Pooh Bear and Elmo. Lately she's started getting more excited about the Princesses, probably because Audrey likes them. I was suprised one day to learn that she knew all their names and could point them out to me and name them without any prompting.

5. Counting. She's getting pretty good!

6. Singing Itsy Bitys Spider and Patty Cake. It's ridiculously cute to watch her sing and do the actions. I should really record it.

7. Running around naked after bathtime. :)

8. Did I mention that she does EVERYTHING Audrey does?

Jane Dislikes:

1. Being helped, particularly at dinner time. If you help her scoop food back onto her plate so she can get it better, or offer to feed her a bit from her plate, or help her use her fork or spoon . . . it's all over. She gets furious and cries her eyes out. She also yells at you if you look at her. She just gets extremely mad. Insulted, really. It takes some real distraction to get her to calm down and keep eating. And a lot of apologies. Where did this child come from!?

2. Sleeping in her own bed. Her #1 choice is in someone's arms or at at least sitting beside them. She prefers my bed, even if we're not in it (which I can't say I blame her). She'd even rather sleep on the couch or on the floor probably. I think it's getting better. She goes to sleep without as much fuss, but it's clear she does not like it at all. Our first purchase (after we get a paycheck) is new beds for the kids. Theirs are terribly uncomfortable.

3. Being scolded. If she actually chooses to realize that we're upset at her about something (which she usually just grins and acts like she doesn't know what's going on), even if we don't get very mad at her at all, she gets her tender little feelings hurt. Breaks my heart. She's very sensitive.

David Likes:

His new job

How excited the girls are when he comes home at night

David Dislikes:

Stressing about Audrey's running

Only getting to see the girls at bedtime and on weekends

Crystal Likes:

When Jane says thank you EVERY TIME you give her something

When Audrey doesn't ask for a high five instead of giving a kiss

Sleeping in her wonderful bed when she's really tired (even though it makes her feel really guilty about the girls sleeping in those little crappy beds)

Milk and peanut butter. Can't get enough of it.

The second David walks through the door every night

Crystal Dislikes:

Putting the kids to bed

Hearing so many sirens and garbage trucks all the time

I need some advice.

Actually, I need lots of it. So, this post is open to anyone who has anything to say about any of these things.

#1. I need tips on how to get my kids to clean up their toys. They're 0% interested no matter how enthusiastic I get.

#2. My computer won't run any downloads I get, my AVG 8.5 is messed up and I can neither delete it nor download AVG 9 (because of the previous problem) and that means I can't get rid of the virus or malware that is messing with my downloads. This means that I can't download firefox, any anti-malware software (I have Super Anti-Spyware and Adaware, which when running full scans aren't changing anything). I've tried manually deleting the files by going to my registry editor (is that what it's called), and deleting them there (which is scary and I'm careful not to touch anything else), but the corrupted files seem to be uneffected besides being gone from my registry editor. For all I know they weren't corrupted, it's just some mal-ware or virus messing things up. But I want the new version anyway, so it's not a big deal. It's not my security settings because I've tried adjusting those and it doesn't do anything. In my internet options, all my download options are enabled. I've tried restoring my system to before I thought the problem started, with no luck. I've tried creating a new administrator so that I can download firefox and get some things working that way, still nothing. I have full internet capabilities, but nothing will download. Because I can't download anything, I can't get a download accellerator or anti-malware or firefox or anything that might help me fix the problem. When I try to download something, say AVG 9 or anything, the box pops up, I click run, it takes it's time downloading, it finishes, I click run when it's finished, and then it all disappears, no startup wizards, no trace of the files on my computer anywhere. I've tried saving the .exe files instead, but the same thing happens--they never show up and they can't be found on my computer. Besides using the internet, I can only delete a few old simple programs from my programs manager (except AVG), run those ad ware scanners I mentioned (which has turned up a couple things, but nothing really and doesn't change anything), run my disk clean-up (which doesn't change anything), and basically get really frustrated.

I could just take it in to get it fixed, but I can't for a few more weeks, SO if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, let me know.

#3. Which name do you like better? Wendy Grace Hunt or Grace Ann Hunt? We have a boy name already picked out (I haven't found out what it is yet). We're still going to go with which ever one we like best, which I'm sure we'll decide on when the time comes, but we're curious about what everyone else thinks. Don't judge us for picking boring names. We like boring.

#4 . . . there was another thing that I can't remember right now. I'll post it later if I think of it.

A Very Important Lesson

The other day Audrey was bringing me pretend food to eat, "presents" to unwrap, pretend things to look at. I was writing an email or something and would always do what she requested but wasn't really paying attention. This became apparent when Audrey brought me a pretend thing that I thought was another yummy thing to eat. I loudly scarfed it down. Audrey gasped, eyes wide, mouth wide open. "MOM!! You just ate your new puppy!!!" Oops.

Today Audrey brought me a birthday cake, but I ate the candle before blowing it out and burned my mouth and choked.

So, be very careful when you eat pretend things.

The New Place

So here is our new apartment, both the day before we got all our stuff (the truck came a day later than planned, bummer) and after we got it all unpacked. Jane is here in the playroom, doing her best to play without any toys. She's enjoying the luxary of watching Dora alone . . . not sure where Audrey was. She may have swooped in and stollen her blanket and pushed her over and sat the movie on her lap so no one else could see for all I know.

Never fear. Daddy is here. Well, not so much anymore. But in spirit, definately.

This is from the front door.

The kitchen is small, but I'm surprised at how much storage there is. In a lot of ways there's more than in the townhouse.

The girls' room. They only have beds in there so there are no shenanagins in the night. I realized after waking up to all drawers being taken out and emptied in the middle of the floor that there had to be another plan. I moved their little dresser into the bathroom there . . . tacky, maybe, but SO much better. The closet in their room is just for storage.

This is the kids bathroom/guest bathroom. It is also the "beauty parlor." :) Which is why the chair is in there. The chair also gives me a place to sit while I read books to Jane or Audrey when they are using the potty . . .

Our books. There will be bookshelves here someday.

The livingroom. The girls played awesomely the day I took these pictures. I took them in haste since it was hard to say how much time I'd have to do stuff like this while they were still awake and I had daylight--the house usually gets destroyed again so quickly after it's cleaned. We got lucky because I'd just happened to replace all the batteries in their toys, it was like they were brand new. It was also a loud day. Notice the lack of entertainment center. That will come later too.

The master bedroom. There's a door to the deck behind that laundry basket on the right.

The master bathroom and closet. I like that there is a nice shower and seperate garden tub in there too (to the left behind the door). And the closet is much bigger than it looks in this picture.

This is the playroom! Yay! It's just the right size. Everything has a place and it all fits nicely. Even with the new play kitchen for Christmas coming (and the dollhouse), everything will still fit great. This is the best room in the house! You can't see it but the bookshelves are on the left wall. And there are more shelves on the right.

This is the bathroom off of the playroom. Um, we haven't unpacked those boxes yet . . . it's office stuff. Dave's office is in that little closet. Which is actually a big closet and fits everything great. No one uses this bathroom except for bedtime bathtime, so it's nice. We actually don't keep anything but a few towels in here . . . and the large linen closet on that right wall . . . all the movies are in there. Weird, but brilliant. The girls never go through all the movies and make a huge mess. And it fits them all perfectly. Really, this room serves a few weird purposes, but who cares.

The laundry room, which has plenty of room for storage. And this game/blanket closet.

I forgot to show you the pantry in the kitchen. It's great! Everything that doesn't go in the fridge goes in here. If you think about it, that makes all that cupboard space in the main part of the kitchen seem like almost too much! But it's not. It's perfect.

And of course, this is the deck, which a view of "Audrey's pool." Which it hasn't been warm enough to swim in. Actually, the day after my last post about it being so nice and warm, it got colder. Now it's in the mid 50s to mid 40s. Been that way two days in a row. Maybe it is going to decide to be winter here after all. Still, at least there isn't a foot of snow! Anyway, the neighbors probably think we're tacky for having all this stuff out there . . . but until we have a place to put that garage-type stuff, that's where it goes. This is only half of the deck, the other half has lots of space and holds just the bbq grill.

So that's it. We like it.

Halloween

No one wanted their picture taken at all this year. It was hit and miss all day. Audrey was a witch and Jane . . . was Jane. I was sick. And we were getting ready to move a couple days later. So, it was crazy. But all-in-all, I think it was a good Halloween. (By the way, that pumpkin we carved . . . totally mush by the end of the week. It looked like it had aged into an old man pumpkin by Halloween.)

The unicorn costume we had for Jane was, apparently, torturous.

I didn't get a picture of it, but she kept throwing her head back in despair every now and then. I've never seen her hate something so much.

Cute costume, though. Too bad she only wore it for 3 seconds.

I didn't take many pictures because I wasn't feeling well, and I just wanted to watch all the fun. It was fun. Got lots of candy. In fact, the kids had some today! Yay for Halloween. :)

Happy News and Sad News

I asked Audrey for a hug today after she successfully went #2 in the potty (yaaaaay!). She said, "NO, Mom! Just a high five!"

. . . oh.

So I gave her a high five, of course. I hope she decides to let me hug her again. :(

Still here

. . . I've just been decompressing from all this travel (uh, literally, actually . . . my baby belly is really starting to show). And enjoying our last days with Dave before he goes into the fray for ever and ever. We're doing awesome here. Had dinner with our new friends today. Love our new ward. All settled in. May put Audrey in ballet soon (she'll do a test-run this week). The weather is awesome (still in the 70s). We're getting used to the city, really starting to know our way around. No pictures for you yet, but soon. Soon.

Funny Things Audrey Said on our Trip

1. "Dad, the sun is hurting my eyes! My eyes are bleeding!"

2. She was watching Pinocchio and I asked her if she had a little wooden head. She said no. So I asked her what her head was made out of. "It's made out of baby." Right you are, little girl.

An Update

We made it to Dallas in one piece. Our things are all moved into our apartment, and we have groceries . . . but that's about it. We haven't unpacked much at all. But, the apartment is nice and the complex is nice. We love it so far. Our apartment is very easy to access, we don't have to walk far or park far or do anything crazy when we bring home groceries. Everything is very convenient. We have plenty of space and it looks like everything will fit just fine. The weather has been in the mid 70s, which is super exciting. We love being right by the lake with all of it's trees and water and paths and places to play. We love having a nice pool right outside our door. We love how close we are to Dave's work, yet how safe the neighborhood is.

The only thing I'd change right now is that I can stop being sick. I'm not sure about the swine flu thing, but who knows. I'm not feeling deathly ill anymore, but for the entire drive and even today (I had to stay home from church) I'm coughing (but can breathe ok now) and have a sinus infection. Nothing serious, but considering the amount of work I have to do, this is incredibly annoying. I am functional, and with Dave being around to help this week, hopefully we'll be able to get stuff done.

Speaking of Dave, he's happy to report that he did pass the Bar. Yay! So, things can go on as planned. He starts work on Monday, the 16th. I'm going to have to get used to being alone with these kids again . . . I sure hope I can get better by then!

Speaking of the kids, I think they're adjusting well. My parents came to help us move in and the girls really had fun seeing them. They now have a whole playroom to themselves (which, to my dismay, I can't get them to play in). They've been doing pretty good at night, considering the upheaval they've just endured. And neither of them are sick anymore, thank goodness, so they're adjusting well. Since the weather is so nice, we should be able to do daily walks to the park by the lake and feed the ducks (and million other kinds of birds that live there--seriously, so many kinds of birds! all clustered around by that inlet and dock by our house. It was so cool). And when the weather is warm enough, we've got the pool just an elevator ride away.

I'll take pictures when we get unpacked. BUT things are going really well. Pray I get better! I can't see a doctor here for a little while, so I must endure . . . or it's gotta go away. :) I'd prefer the latter.

P.S. Thank you, Jill, for calling to check up on me. I'm doing tons better now. Tracy, we are living on the east side of White Rock Lake, we're in the Lake Highlands ward; but we'll be up to Plano to visit friends and family often enough to hopefully see each other soon . . . I'm kinda staying away from all of them for now, though, until I get better.

Too Much Going on to Blog

Halloween, our next major move, both kids getting sick (and better again, thank goodness), and then me taking my turn on my death bed = you probably won't get to see any pictures until we get settled in Dallas, which should be next week sometime. I will, however, give you highlights.

Halloween was fun since Audrey was really into it this year. She was a witch, but refused to wear her hat the whole time, and wearing her big winter coat, you couldn't tell at all what she was. I think in places where Halloween is traditionally a freezing cold holiday, they should just give up on the whole costume thing. Jane was supposed to be a unicorn, but didn't want to wear her costume. We got it on her for a few seconds to take a blurry snapshot, but she was screaming fit-to-die so we spared her. She went trick-or-treating with no costume at all. :) And yet, she still got tons of candy. Go figure. Jane was surprisingly into the trick-or-treating thing too, but she got too distracted by the candy to keep focused. She gave up after a few houses to sit in the stroller or the car and just eat candy. Favorite candy? Chocolate. No contest. She does not like Smarties. Audrey will pretty much eat anything, but she was really just having fun saying "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" then going to the next house. She'd have gone to every house in town if we'd let her. Her only major problem was she refused to hold Daddy's hand. So, we had to cut the evening short on account of her need for independence. Oh, well. We were all getting hungry and tired anyway. Not to mention cold. We went and had dinner at Frontier Pies then came home just in time for me to go to bed and stay there miserable for the next 30 hours or so.

I think that's been the most stressful part of all this weekend. I don't remember ever being so sick in my life. Thank goodness I didn't have to go to the hospital. I'm still too sick to do anything but at least I'm clearly improving. I just hope I'm feeling almost normal for the next three days of driving! If I didn't know better, I'd say I had swine flu . . . but I did get vaccinated so . . . it's hard to say. My symptoms started the day after I got the vaccine so I'm thinking it just triggered a massive cold and added uncommon symptoms like chest pains and hard time breathing, chills, headaches--stuff that normally doesn't accompany a cold. I think I'm ok though. I just know that I'd better not get sick again for a long time because I did my time. Have you ever had a migraine for several hours at a time?? I was begging for death.

Anyway, the move is going awesome. The is loaded, and since we didn't use as much space as we thought, we'll get a good discount. And it's loaded well, so things shouldn't move around or break unless the truck gets into an accident or something. It's been nice having new moving boxes that are all the same sizes. I totally under-estimated how nice that would be. And it's great having Jessica and Chandler still here so we can still have things like dishes and towels and all that stuff you usually pack at the last minute--with this set-up that just wouldn't have worked. AND their help has been invaluable, with me being sick, Jessica has helped me with cleaning and cooking and watching kids, even packing; and Chandler has helped Dave carry and pack everything into the truck. They've been wonderful. (Thanks, guys.)

We leave tomorrow morning, and we'll get to Dallas Thursday night. Our moving truck will get there Friday (as will my parents) and we should be all settled soon. It just so happens that David finds out how he did on the Bar on Friday, too. So we'll blog about that as soon as we hear. I hope it will be a happy post.

So, that's what's up. And hopefully I can give you more details soon.

Just some stuff

Audrey drew a picture with a speech bubble the other day. The drawing was on the window with a crayon, so I didn't want to encourage any more of this "wild" behavior again and take a picture. But she's getting reeeeally good. We have no idea where she figured out the speech bubble. She doesn't really know letters, but she makes alien letters on all her pictures now for labels and speech. It's great.

Jane can count. It's probably just parrotting what she hears Audrey do, but it's so darn cute to hear her. She goes 1,2,3,4 . . . 8,9,10. And is very proud of herself. Anytime she hears any of those numbers, she just picks up whatever she thinks the next number is and goes off. She loves to take up rally cries, too. If Audrey is downstairs in the kitchen, hollering for a sippy, we can count on hearing Jane, up in Audrey's room, taking up the cry of justice--"SIPPY!!!" Whatever it is, she's on board. It's incredibly funny.

Something Eventful

Today I took Audrey on a date. Just the two of us. I had planned on taking her out today to do something fun with just Mommy, but I'd had no idea what it would be. Last night I checked to see if there was anything for her to see at the movies right now, but I was still nervous since she'd, up until today, never sat through an entire movie at the movie theater.

I decided to take her to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs since I figured she could get into the idea of food falling from the sky. So, she and I set off for the 1:30 showing. We took a potty break, got some popcorn, waited in the foyer and watched people for a while, then went to go sit down. Everything was going perfectly . . . until then. For some reason she refused to go into the theater. I suppose it was too dark or something. She freaked out and insisted that we go home, she wouldn't budge. A kind woman holding the door for me told Audrey that her kids were in there and it was going to be fun. No use. Audrey just informed her that we were going home.

After a few moments of this, me wracking my brain about how to get her to con her into going in (wondering if I could get my money back if we did end up going home), a couple of little girls came out. I think they were the daughters of the nice lady holding the door. They were so sweet as to try and convince Audrey that she should go in because there were lots of kids in there and the movie was going to be funny. She still wanted to go home, but she let me pick her up and take her inside for "just a look." As soon as she saw all the kids (there really weren't that many, but enough), she pointed to the top seats and asked if we could sit up there. :)

She was great in the movie. She sat on my lap most of the time and snuggled with me, which I thought was great. She's not a really cuddly kid so I take what I can get. I actually thought she was sleepy, but she just wanted to sit with me. It was cute. She'd talk to me about things in the movie. I think she liked it. The best part was at the end when the guy and his dad hug and the guy kisses the girl. When she saw them hug she turned to look at me and said, "I love you, Mommy." And then she gave me a big hug. And then she kept watching. Then when the guy kissed the girl, she turned to me, put her hands on my cheeks and gave me a sweet little kiss on the lips. She was all smiles and super cute. It's funny; she's not a cuddly kid, but she's always very sentimental. She's always saying things spontaniously like, "Mommy, you're my best girl ever," or "Daddy, you're my very best friend." She just loves to communicate that mushy stuff. I love it.

Anyway, we had a great time. When we got home, she told everyone about the funny guy and the big noodles in a circle and the big vegetables. :) Later today, after coming home from a car ride, she had fallen asleep, she woke up and groggily asked for some giant vegetables. I asked her if she'd rather have dinner. She said no, just giant vegetables from the sky. So, I ran in and got a bowl of dinner while she was still in the car (Janey was being unbuckled and then she was, she was still too groggy to pay attention to me), then I stood outside the garage with the bowl held up to the sky . . .

I know this sounds strange, but bear with me . . .

When she saw what I was doing, she was very interested. David asked if I'd gotten any sky vegetables. I said, "Hm, let me see." Then I pulled the bowl down for her to look. We were all sufficiently surprised to find warn chicken stir-fry and rice in her bowl--fresh from the sky. ;) She thought that was pretty cool.

Anyway, again before bed she asked if big food was going to fall down from they sky, so I think it's safe to say she was impressed with the movie. I just think it was great spending some time alone with my girl.

P.S. We've officially started packing. It's happening. Another move. Bring it on.

The Traditional Carving of the Gourd

Audrey and Jane yelled "EWWWW!" when I opened the top of the pumpkin. And they refused to touch it after that. So, this is really MY pumpkin. :)

We used Jane as a model.

Notice Jane's feet at the bottom of this picture? Don't be fooled by Audrey's innocent appearance. She kept pushing Jane away from the pumpkin any time she got near it.

Jane had to kiss the pumpkin . . .

And bite it.

Which is usually what she does when she meets new people.

Audrey put a stop to all that nonsense pretty quick. He "lives" outside. Audrey was very worried that he'd get cold in the night. I just hoped he wouldn't freeze solid and turn to mush. This morning she woke up and announced, "Mom! I looked out the window, and the pumpkin is awake now." At least he survived the night and didn't run away.