heart-stopping playgroup

i just had the scariest moment of my life. my worst nightmare almost came true. last night i got an email from some women at church telling me about a halloween potluck playgroup for today. i decided to go, thinking the girls would want to wear their costumes again.

so we went and had some fun. hazel was good about sitting and eating for the first little while, though she wanted me to take her costume off within the first 10 minutes.

lucy on the other hand, just wanted to wander and pilfer from every one's plates. it was a bit stressful trying to keep her from stealing cups, cookies and grapes.

while the kids were running and playing, i got to meet some women that i hadn't met yet at church. i was chatting with someone when i realized i hadn't seen lucy for a minute. i quickly spotted hazel with some friends but lucy was not in the gym.

after scanning the room again to make sure, i worriedly went out into the hallway to check the other classrooms. right as i was leaving the gym, another mom saw that her son was missing too. that was when i started to really panic. if lucy had older children with her, she could get anywhere. so i jogged around the church, calling her name.

i made it all the way round, running now, when i heard someone crying outside. my heart dropped and i bolted out the door in time to see two women carrying lucy, a little boy and two 3 or 4 year olds (one of them admitted to opening the door) up the grass hill. lucy had been in the busy road and luckily an attentive driver was the first to come by. she saw lucy's pink dress, stopped and got her off the road. i feel sick to think about what almost happened to my baby. i'm still shaking and thanking heavenly father for keeping lucy and the other kids safe. i'm so, so grateful that lucy is safe in her crib, even if she is refusing to take her nap.

monday night flashback: halloween edition

halloween 1990-ish:from top left: aaron as a vampire, jared as jason, mark as mystique, esther as a 1920's flapper, matthew as batman, me as a cowgirl & rachel as raphael the ninja turtle.

happy halloween-week!

zoo boo 2009

yesterday we went to the houston zoo boo. we did it last year and really liked it. lucy dressed as:

minnie mouse. she was pretty good about keeping the ears on, at least for pictures. and she loved the gloves. she wanted to wear them all of friday night, when we tried the costume on for size. (it's so great that i have two girls and that i can recycle costumes.) hazel's jessie costume was new. i had originally planned on making it but time ran out and it was available online, so we ordered it and finally got it friday afternoon. it was a very frustrating wait: it was supposed to have been delivered on the 12th, but it wasn't, at least not to our door. i emailed the sender and they talked to ups and ups called me and i emailed the sender again and then ups showed up here to tell me that they had delivered it to the apartment office. i still don't understand why. it was the same ups delivery guy that has brought us packages several times before to our door, so why he felt the need to leave it at the office, i'll never know. and why the office decided not to call us and let us know that they had it or send some one the 50 yards to our apartment to bring it over? i don't know. but luckily we got it before yesterday. hazel was very excited to be jessie. i had to hem and tweak her costume so that it fit her better. it was a 4t and meant for a child 20 lbs heavier and 4 inches taller. hazel had me braid her hair and put a yellow bow in it, "wike jessie": here's the full costume (we didn't have any boots for her and they were just too expensive to buy when she'd grow out of them quickly. i finally convinced her that her sunday shoes were brown just like jessie's):

right as we got in, we sat down and tried to feed the kids some real food before the sugar high began. you can see hazel's enthusiasm for that idea above. eventually she just fed her granola bar to grant:

lucy was pretty content to sit and eat. do you like that she's an emo minnie mouse?

after eating, we had them pose for pictures. they were pretty good about standing there, mostly because they had some suckers to distract them:

nearby, a dj had set up shop and was blasting halloween music, i.e. thriller, monster mash, etc. at one point she put on a justin timberlake rap song inspiring hazel to dance:

as you saw (if you watched the video), lucy was inspired to run away. finally we moved on with the mobs of people to visit the animals:

in between animal exhibits were booths of different activities. hazel got to color:

then we watched a grizzly bear gnaw on a pumpkin:

after which we went to pick out our own pumpkins:

lucy seemed to think it was an apple:

then we went to the bat cave turned "pirate's cove". hazel didn't like it. maybe because she had to pose by this guy:

we decided to head home after that. both of the girls were tired and grumpy. unfortunately we had to walk quite a ways.

you see, the houston police thought it would be a good idea to block every entrance to the zoo except one, creating a traffic nightmare.

so to avoid most of the mess, i parked at rice university (the building below is not part of rice). it worked out nicely since grant spent the morning there and i was going to pick him up anyway.

sadly, the walk was long enough for lucy to take a little nap in the stroller:

which means she didn't take a proper nap once we got home. oh well. it was a fun day.

last night @ pizza planet

when we explained to hazel where we were going, we told her that chuck e cheese's was kind of like pizza planet and she understood because she loves toy story. some of grant's school mates had been wanting to go and grant suggested friday. so there we were, grinning ear to ear:

eating our pizza so that we could go play:

first stop, the carousel:

lucy wasn't a big fan, but hazel did fine, hopping on after it was already spinning:

they both took turns driving; hazel with a mouse:

lucy with some stranger:

she was pretty upset, especially since we'd just read her the berenstain bears learn about strangers.

hazel is well on her way to teenage years. she wanted to gab on the phone all night.

grant threw gutter balls (just kidding, hazel tossed that ball just as i was taking the picture). and what were grant's buddies doing?

this is mike. he had a good time playing "where a kid can be a kid". he has a very tolerant wife:

way to be, stacey!

guess what?

let's play a guessing game. it's called 'guess what hazel is'. you see, hazel has a new trick. she likes to pretend to be things, and not just the usual, normal things, like a puppy, cat or a monster (though, she does those all very well too). she chooses rather random things to impersonate, such as a carrot: yes. that is hazel the carrot. perhaps even 'the angry carrot', she wasn't very clear when i asked why she made that face. guess what she is here:
give up? obviously, she's flexible. i'll give you a clue: she's a fruit. . . . . still stumped? a grape. yep, a grape, just one not a bunch. next, we move on from fruits and veggies to sea creatures:

an eel? no. nemo? nope. a mermaid? not quite. how about a stingray? ding ding ding! we have a winner. here's her interpretation of another aquatic beast:

well 'beast' is perhaps the wrong word to use to refer to a starfish. out of the water and into the alphabet:

hazel as the letter 'I' and below, as the letter 'X':

yes, this 3 year old has talent.

shenanigans

here are a compilation of pictures taken over the past month or so. they are kind of random so i've just saved them up for this post. first: lucy often goes off to play by herself in her room. this particular day she was picking up all of the orange square blocks and putting them together. she was very specific. it was fun to watch. she's so smart: grant is such a great dad and a super hard worker. he leaves for school by 6am most mornings. understandably, he's very tired when he gets home, but he makes sure to give me a break and plays with the girls:one of lucy's favorite off-limit areas to play in is our closet. i found her there cuddling our clothes, after she had pulled the shoes off the rack:

when she saw that the gig was up, she made a run for it:

straight for the bathroom, but not alone:

she had a little pat of butter attached to her diaper. that made me giggle. not long after that incident, i went to get her after her nap and found her putting her toothbrush down her shirt. a little back story: lucy l.o.v.e.s her toothbrush. it's not that she likes brushing her teeth, she just likes carrying the brush around, chewing on it now and then. we used to take it away once we brushed her pearly-whites, but after several long and loud meltdowns, we started letting her sleep with it. anyway, she decided that it was funny to stick it down her shirt:

bath time is something that both of the girls love. lucy enjoys drinking the sudsy water and hazel enjoys impersonating batman:

while i was getting hazel's party put together, grant was taking pictures of the girls in this empty box that had been sitting in our room for over a month:

despite their forlorn expressions, i think they had fun. the morning after hazel's party was lots of fun. hazel discovered that the balloons had lost most of their helium, causing them to fall ever so slowly which then gave her plenty of time to be there to catch them:

lucy also had fun swatting at them too:

hazel is becoming a better sculptor every day. at the end of last week she made a stingray out of playdough:

he didn't last long:

well i hope y'all enjoyed that little tour of the little things that make our life so interesting. thank you, come again.