Catch-Up

I cannot believe that I haven't blogged in two weeks.... oops! Instead of a normal weekly highlights post, I'll just do a bit of a catch up. Here's what we've been up to the past two weeks:

A couple of weeks ago, we had some family in town from Germany. So, one Sunday after church, we had a picnic at the reservoir with some of my extended family. It was fun, but it was pretty chilly! We also didn't eat lunch until 2:30, and the kids are used to eating at around 11:30. They were troopers, though!

We ended up with ANOTHER bout of the stomach bug! Aubrey came down with it again. Thankfully, it didn't last long and no one else got it. But hopefully it's gone for good this time, because we've had THREE different rounds in about a one month period. Aubrey got it, Alaina got it, and Aubrey got it again. I think we've paid our dues!! ;) Aubrey had to miss a day of school because I wanted to make sure she was no longer contagious. She was feeling fine, though, so we went to the park and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

We had a house showing last week, and we found out about it several days in advance (that's NEVER happened before!). It was nice because we were able to get several projects marked off our list. The showing didn't result in a contract, but I'm happy to be done with projects. We told our realtor that unless something breaks, we are D-O-N-E doing stuff to this house. If someone makes an offer, we'll be happy to consider further improvements, but until then.... nope! It is what it is. (Can you tell I'm over this whole process?? WAY over it.)

 

Aubrey attended a birthday party a couple of Saturdays ago for a little boy in her class at school. She enjoyed herself! It's fun to see her forming her own little relationships completely independent of me or David. Up until now, all of her friends have been our friends' kids, but now she's starting to make friends with children from school who we don't know at all. It feels like the beginning of a new chapter :)

We had our Fall Festival at church last Wednesday, and it was so much fun! We had a TON of visitors, which was wonderful. Aubrey was a ballerina, Jude was a dinosaur, and Alaina was a lady bug :) At first, my plan was to do coordinating costumes, and we were going to go with a Peter Pan theme. But then I remembered that I always end up spending SO much money on costumes, and I'm not even that into Halloween anyway. I also remembered that I had a cute lady bug costume that Aubrey wore when she was about Alaina's age that would fit Alaina perfectly. About that same time I was in Old Navy and they had a plush dinosaur costume in Jude's size on sale for $10. I casually asked Aubrey if she would like to dress up as a ballerina for Halloween (we already had ballet clothes), and she was ALL over it. And it was a done deal. My dreams of coordinating Peter Pan costumes went out the window for practicality ;) I still think coordinating Halloween costumes are about the cutest things ever, but I have to say that my babies looked pretty darn adorable in their non-coordinating costumes!! :) And I am KICKING myself because we took almost NO pictures. I literally don't have a single shot of Aubrey, and all I have of Alaina is a blurry cell phone picture :( David was working a game at the festival, and I was trying to keep up with all three kids in the midst of chaos, so getting pictures was not a priority. But just take my word for it: they were cute :)

We had family pictures taken on Saturday! I can't wait to see how they turned out. Going into the photo session, we told Aubrey and Jude that we would get them some ice cream afterwards if they cooperated and did their best to smile in the pictures. I don't like to think of it as bribery.... more like motivation. We're all more motivated if we're working towards a goal, right?! Anyway, it worked like a charm. Anytime they'd start to get a little restless, we'd just mention "ice cream!" and suddenly they'd be all smiles! :) Sadly, Alaina is a little too young for that type of "motivation" to work. She was just ALL over the place. She's also going through a SUPER clingy, shy stage right now and she was kind of nervous around the photographer. I don't think she smiled once for any of our family pictures. She also wouldn't sit still for any pictures with Aubrey and Jude. She'd freak out if I tried to walk away. Oh well. I have to remind myself that we're not in the stage of perfect family photos, and we'll look back at these and laugh in a few years. As long as everyone is IN the pictures, that's all that matters. Right??? We did go to a park after we had gotten some posed shots, and I think we were able to get some good candid's of the kids playing and having fun.

In our free time, we've just been enjoying the beautiful fall weather and doing a lot of playing!

We had a cold morning, and since Alaina couldn't wear her coat in her carseat, she snuggled with it instead :)

Tortilla face masks!

How many kids can you fit in the back of a Buick? At least five, apparently. When we pick the girls up from school, all the kids like to pile into Sarah Denley's car ;)

Is this precious or what?? I was cooking dinner, and Alaina pulled this chair up to the counter all by herself and watched me. Melt. my. heart. (By the way, I realize that I totally look pregnant in this picture. I'm NOT!!! I don't think I'm really that chunky either. It's the jacket ;))

She was so proud of herself!!

I think that about gets you caught up. I'm going to try to do better with the blogging!!