From First Date

From First Date

To Soul Mate

and best friend EVER!

Happy 12th Larkin Weyand

Cutest Turkey, twice!

Is it not?

I love this turkey.

My mom made them and had them sitting on the plates at the "kid" table for Thanksgiving.

So so cute!

It's just a pair of dollar store mittens, one stuffed into the other with a few extras added on! How simple and darling. I guess she saw them on Studio 5. There is probably a video there you could watch if you wanted. I wish I had brought my camera so you could have seen the whole table. It was darling.

Then,

I had brought paper and stuff to have all the kids make a candy box turkey.

Here is the sample one I brought.

Again,

I wish I had brought the camera beause as you can imagine, their turkies turned out way cuter than mine, with how they each cut out the body piece and all the colored feathers they added. It was a fun pre-dinner activity!

Happy Thanksgiving

Here is Paige with a Thanksgiving song she learned in Kindergarten.

Turkey Turkey in a pen,

It's Thanksgiving time again.

Still you strut around with pride,

Soon you should take off and hide.

Big fat turkey we have a date,

I will see you on my plate.

Hope you have a happy day with people you love. I'm so excited to go to my parents and enjoy the day with my brothers and their kids and my Grandmas. What a nice afternoon we will have.

Ashley had her piano recital last Saturday. She was so nervous. When I asked what she was most nervous about she said, "Standing up and saying my name in front of everybody!" She did a great job! Here's the video.

Lindsay and Ashley

Ashley takes piano from Lindsay's mom. It's been so fun to see how much she is learning and the fun songs she can play. We are excited to have Abby start lessons in January also. Abby can't wait!

Finishing October

LOOK AT THOSE FACES!

What fun!

We were lucky to have Larkin's parents come down from Pennsylvania for a visit in October.

Grammie helped Ashley come up with an activity for FHE...decorating pumpkins. In this case, it was one and we each took a turn adding to the face. Abby started with the eyes, Ashley was the nose, Paige did the mouth, August did the shoes (on the back of the head...but it worked for him), Grammie did the ears and Grandpa the hair and Larkin and I finished with a mole and some cheeks. What a cute little pumpkin!

My kids aren't much into carving,

so this was perfect for our family!

Thanks Grammie and Grandpa!

Thekids dressed up for Halloween on the Friday before at school.

Here's Larkin in his costume. He had fun scaring his students as they entered his classroom.
Paige was a cute little witch!

So was Abby!

And, Ashley opted for the cheerleader this year. GO ASHLEY!

Here they are right before they went to school that day.

Hope your October finished well also.

And,

ready or not,

here comes NOVEMBER...

Little Man

Now that Paige is in Kindergarten, August and I have a lot of time together. He loves to talk. He talks and talks and sometimes I get to say something too. The other day we were at Home Depot and were parked right by a big manhole. Here is our conversation.

A: What's that?

M: That's a manhole.

A: Huh?

M: A manhole.

A: Huh? (This is his favorite response, I'm still trying to decide if he really knows what it means, or he just knows he can say it after we say something.)

M: It's a manhole. It covers a big hole that people can go down.

A: I want to go down there.

M: Only a man can go down there. You are too little. You have to wait until you are bigger.

A: I want to be a man...(in a wishful voice.)

My little blue smurf

So, the last few days August has been getting quite creative.

He colored the hood of the van with crayons and all over the garage floor, colored the train table with pen, colored his hands with marker, etc.

Today, Paige came to tell me he had colored on his hands again. I thought great, but probably not a big deal. Well, this time it was a bit more color.

And, he got the table.

And he got the wall as he walked up to his timeout. And he got his face. And he got it all over the kitchen chair he had his timeout on.

And,

I thought that was all.

I cleaned him up as best I could

and then I took him in to change his diaper.

And,

this is what I found.

Wow August.


My little blue smurf.

Ashley, a whole decade old!

Happy Birthday to you
Ashley
Ten whole years!
We can hardly believe it!

Ashley has been planning her birthday party for over a year, hoping that I would let her have a sleepover party. We decided since she was only going to invite a few of her closest friends that that would be ok. She was thrilled. So, first came the invitations.

I think they turned out pretty cute.

Next came the decorations.

I made some popcorn bags out of white paper bags I had...

and some fun festive pinwheels to decorate with and to send home with each girl.

We had large lollipops to send as favors as well since Ashley had requested LOTS of candy and choclate to be consumed durning the duration of the party.

We were set for a great time!


First, we had them each make their own pizzas.

After dinner, Ashley opened her presents and I love this picture of Nicole's face as she realized Ashley just got the Justin Beiber CD. I wish you could have seen those girls dance to that song Baby. It was pretty funny. It was Ashley's first time hearing him, but I think it helped for her to see how much her friends loved him and knew those songs by heart!

Next, they each made a sundae...or at least a huge bowl full of toppoings! It was funny to watch.

After sundaes, the girls each made little booklets. It was a fun craft, and they each got to choose how their own would look. We gave them each a pen to go with it and the spend the next little while running around jotting things in their new notebooks. It was cute to see.

So, now that it was pretty late, with just a movie left, we thought that they would all get tired and hopefully some would even fall asleep. We started the movie around 9:45 I think. You would have thought that maybe they would be a smidge tired...

Somehow, though, the movie idea didn't work like we thought (the "we" meaning Larkin and I.) The girls were wide awake through the whole thing and even more hiper when it was over...Larkin and I were worried it was going to be a LONG (or should I say LONGER) night. After we hid all the rest of the candy and chocolate, hoping they wouldn't find the rest, we asked them kindly to please stay in their sleeping bags and if they were going to talk, to do it quietly. That lasted 10 minutes tops. After a couple trips downstairs, and the clock past midnight, Larkin and I fell asleep, not to be awoken again until 7:00am, thankfully. It sounded like they went to sleep as well, around 1:00 in the morning...not too bad, I guess.

That morning, we made scones and "special drinks" (orange julius)

and the girls had fun playing together.

It was the best party ever, according to them, so I guess it was a success. It is atonishing though, the noise level, just a few happy girls can create. In fact, our 5 year old alone can reach that level, a "talent" (for lack of a better word) I'm afraid comes from her mother...

We are glad to have a ten year old in the home and so happy that it's Ashley.
Happy Birthday!