Madison loves kisses.  I love how she waits for them, opens her mouth, and squints her eyes once you start smacking your lips.

Cole and I made this pretty awesome fort last week. We left it up for 3 days and had all kinds of fun in it, including a popcorn & movie night and a few 45 minute puzzle sessions (Maliya is obsessed w/ puzzles ... and she likes to do the same 3 over and over and over ... ). At one point Nick stuck Madison in the fort and let her chill with the kids, which she of course loved.  Although the messiness of forts sometimes drives me a little bit nuts, forts sure do make for a lot of fun!

We made homemade stars and ornaments for the kids' Christmas trees last week for FHE.

(You have to use your imagination)

I asked the kids to show off their stars. 

My camera wasn't quite fast enough to catch Maliya's smile:)

A few days ago I walked into my room and found this.

Per Cole, 'We're just makin' a fort Mom.'

I love that they love forts, that they're so creative, and that they have so much fun together.

 When I brought the camera in to snap a picture of their fort, Cole just HAD to take some pictures of his own:)

Last Thursday our ward missionaries gathered 4 other elders and came over for round 2 of leave raking.  We fed them lunch first and afterward they played pool and foosball while munching on cookies and hot cocoa. It was a really fun afternoon!  (And our awesome missionaries finished the yard!)

I didn't notice until I downloaded this picture that Maliya was actually helping rake.  Adorable. And so sweet of the missionaries to let her.

I took pictures of all of the missionaries and texted them to their parents. A few moms thanked me, and then I told them I'd be happy to pass messages on to their boys.  One mom asked if I meant just texts or video messages too, and when I told her she could send whatever she wanted, she said 'Bless you woman! What is your name? We're friends now.' It cracked me up!  We then spent the next half hour texting back and forth. I sent her a video of her son and then she and her 5 kids all made their own videos and sent them for him to watch.    I also talked to her a bit about her baby, who is only 2 days younger than Madison.  (Seeing Madison made the sweet elder, who is young and has only been out for 2 months, miss his baby sister.) It was SO much fun. It seriously made my day!

5 Months

{She had a rough day today, plus my camera stinks, so this isn't the greatest picture. Luckily she's cute anyway!}

Madison tid-bits at 5 months:

-She loves to make spit bubbles.

-Jabbers all of the time. Sometimes with her mouth closed while sucking on her bottom lip, sometimes while making spit bubbles with her tongue.

-Is always sucking on her hands and really likes to try and jam both into her mouth at the same time.

-Already knows how to manipulate us! She whines until she gets what she wants and then gives us a giant smile.  

-Is sassy. She has the funniest little sassy scream that we hear every so often.

-Likes to look at us and tell us stories.  

-Often tells 'woe-to-me' stories when she's all alone

-Doesn't like tummy time but is getting much better at it!

-Enjoys her bouncer, but not for too long at a time because she prefers to be with people.

-Still LOVES playing with her siblings more than anything else.  

-Just started sleeping in her own bedroom at night! She still wakes up about once a night, giving us a good 6-8 hour stretch between bottles.  It's nice.

-Has beautiful eyes and a beautiful smile (and is very generous with her smiles!)

-Is building up her ab muscles quite nicely. She's much less wobbly when we hold her on our hips and is getting a little closer to sitting up on her own.

-Still has her positional torticollis and does NOT like doing stretches w/ Dad.  

-Is definitely a daddy's girl. She loves him and oh how he loves her!

-Is, thank goodness, still adored by her big sibs.  By all of us. We love our little chunky monkey! 

Giggles! Nick is the best at getting these out of her.

Phone Pictures

On Monday, Cole and Hayley had quite the day.  First they went to school together. Then Cole and Maliya played with Hayley and Russell at their house.

Next Hayley came to our house. She and Cole played while Maliya napped, then we all bundled up and went outside to rake and play in the leaves.

After their hard work, Nick and I treated the kids to a drive through the car wash (always fun!) and then to dinner (and playing of course) at Chick-Fil-A. 

Cole and Hayley were together for a total of 9.5 hours! They had a fun day and survived without any huge issues, which is quite the accomplishment, I'd say.

Here are a few more pictures from our weekend with Grandpa Jack & Grandma Lexie

This was Maliya's first time bowling and she loved it!

She'd 'help' Nick roll/throw the ball and then turn around and run to her grandparents while squealing with delight.  She'd smile at them and say 'good job!' without bothering to see what the ball or the pins were doing.  Within minutes we were all more excited about bowling than we've ever been.

 For FHE this week we used twigs and fabric scraps to make stars and ornaments for the kids' trees.

Cole was happy to show off his hard work and his super cool headband.

Madison 'played' at the mall play place this week and she loved it! She was all smiles and giggles and really enjoyed watching and talking to Cole and Maliya as they played.

Since we're going to be gone for Christmas this year, we decided not to put up our Christmas tree.  It was a tough choice, and we definitely feel a little bah-humbug-ish ... to feel better about ourselves, we took advantage of a big Michael's sale and ordered mini trees for the kids' rooms (we couldn't really go without any tree at all!). The trees were delivered during FHE last Monday and we couldn't contain ourselves, we just had to add 'putting up our trees' to our FHE agenda (pretending as if we ever have a true agenda for FHE).  It was really fun:)

Grandpa Jack and Grandma Lexie came to visit last weekend!  We haven't each other in quite awhile and so, despite their busy schedules, they made the trip up here to be with us.  It was wonderful! We played lots, went bowling, ate at Dave's, the boys watched football (thank you Apple TV for the Utah game) ... you know, the usual.  They also got to listen to me speak in sacrament meeting (I was SO nervous to speak, especially in front of them, but ended up being really grateful that they were willing to stay later than usual to hear me).  It was a lot of fun having them here and it made us super excited to see them in December!

We finally got a picture of these girls in the matching shirts Grandma Lexie gave them when Madison was born.  Madison obviously wasn't too excited about the picture and Maliya was doing her best to keep Madison quiet:)

We had an impromptu photo shoot with these 4 right before church.  I needed to get a picture of just my parents and the silly kiddos wouldn't have it. They kept wanting to take turns being in the pictures.  Goofballs.

Phone pictures ...

How cute are these trick-or-treaters?

{Thanks to Jenni for these pictures}

I love that I have so many pictures of these two, just like this.

Um, adorable. Doesn't this just brighten your mood?

{Madison has a new babble that is completely adorable.  

She kind of sucks on her bottom lip as she 'talks'. I'm so in love with it.}

This was taken at the Fruita Truck-n-treat, BEFORE the truck horns scared the kids 

(hence the happy faces).

Madison. Maliya. Cole.

Gosh I love these three.  Cutest little people around.

Ward party costume show

This morning Maliya woke up and ate breakfast before Cole got up.  After she ate, as she was getting down from her chair, she heard Cole upstairs getting dressed.  She got excited and ran to the bottom of the stairs. She then yelled up to Cole "Guh-mor-nee! Cole, you wake up?" Cole yelled back "Yes Maliya, I woke up" to which she excitedly responded "You did?!?"  This girl cracks us up.

Every so often I find beauties like these on my phone

They always make my day

It's either 'I love you'

or Spiderman.

 I really loved this one because Cole NEVER smiles when he takes selfies. 

A couple of Cole funnies:
1. Every night before bed, we gather as a family to say one thing (per person) we're grateful for and then to say a family prayer.  Whenever it's Cole's turn to pray, he includes all of the things we were grateful for that night in his prayer.  Last night I said I was grateful for him, so as he was praying he said 'and thank you for me'.  Then, right after he finished praying, he looked at Nick and said 'I bet I just made Jesus laugh because I said 'thank you for me!''

2. Cole is really into telling me (and Hayley and Jenni and his primary teacher) that I'm beautiful. He gets the sweetest look on his face when he does it and it's just adorable. I can always tell that he's so proud of himself for making me feel special.  I often thank him and then tell him that he's handsome.  Last night, after 'making Jesus laugh', he said 'Oh, I want to tell Heavenly Father that he's handsome!' (Remember, this was right after he finished his prayer.) He then bowed his head, folded his arms, and in a very serious, completely monotone voice, said {super fast} 'Dear Heavenly Father, you're handsome, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.'

3. On Halloween, Cole's class had a costume party.  His cute teacher, Miss Cheyenna, dressed up as a witch, complete with a wig and hat.  As we were eating dinner that night, Cole asked me if I knew how Miss Cheyenna had made her hair change colors that day (her wig was black with a gray streak).  I said 'Did she wear a wig?' and Cole responded with 'No, she dyed it'.  I then said 'Oh, that's cool'.  He got really serious and said 'That's not cool, mom. That's sad.  Her hair died today.' Nick and I laughed tears:)

She's adored by her siblings. Can you tell?

 

 

We try to squeeze in fun things every now and then, like picnic lunches ...

 

and {vey bright!} picnic dinners ...

 

and riding bikes (Maliya's latest obsession - sadly it's suddenly really cold) ...

 

and making candy haunted houses and playing with moon dough ...

 

just to keep things interesting.

We also had a day of fun the Saturday before Halloween.  That morning we went to the Fruita Truck 'n Treat. Main Street was jam packed with different kinds of trucks (fire trucks, semi's, ambulances, etc) and zillions of cute, costumed kids.  Cole was Spiderman (after his homemade rootbeer costume died on the way to the activity - luckily we'd brought his Spiderman jacket), Maliya was a monkey, and Madison was a hotdog. They had fun 'trick or treating' ... for a few minutes, that is.  Then some of the trucks began honking their horns and our kids flipped out.  Maliya practically jumped into Madison's carseat/stroller and we quickly moved as far away from the horns as possible.  Cole complained until he spotted a bounce house. That luckily worked quite nicely as a distraction, and afterward, we were able to enjoy a little more trick or treating.

After the activity and a quick lunch, we put Maliya to bed, put a movie on for Cole, and Nick, Alex and I went to work on a cake.  Three years ago we made a fondant turkey cake on Thanksgiving day, just for fun.  It was a ton of work but we had a lot of fun and decided to make it a tradition.  That didn't happen, but this year we decided to try another cake.  We worked for about 3 or so hours and this is what we ended up with ...

Not too bad.  Not super awesome, but hey, we're beginners. 

The day before we made the cake, I realized that the ward party was Saturday night.  I decided to try and make the cake taste good, so that if it actually ended up looking okay, we could take it to the party. I didn't want to show it off or anything, it was just disappointing when we made our turkey cake and then just threw it away, after admiring it for a day or so, and I didn't want that to happen again. 

While making the cake, I was worried about how it was going to turn out.  It was quite cracked and lumpy and dusty looking.  However, we managed to touch it up pretty nicely and we did end up taking it to the party.  I was kind of embarrassed ... but everyone was SO nice and completely raved over our cake.  I'm sure they were just being kind, but they sure did make us feel good.  So many people told us how cute it was and how impressed they were (fibs, I'm sure) and how good the cake tasted. It was fun.  Mostly I'm glad that the flavor turned out ok, because even if they weren't actually impressed by the looks, at least they could enjoy the taste.  (The cake was three layers of Halloween funfetti cake. I swirled creamy pb and chopped Reeses into the batter, dirty frosted all of the cakes with chocolate frosting, put more chocolate frosting between two of the layers, and used homemade pb buttercream with more chopped up reeses between the other layers. It was rich but pretty tasty.)

As soon as we finished the cake we headed to the party - an annual chili cook-off and costume parade.  We brought chili, not with the intent to win, just to feed people. And ... drumroll please ... we didn't win.  Low expectations means no disappointment, so that worked out ok:)  We really enjoyed the party - we love our ward for real, not just saying that - and went home pooped but happy. It was a long but great day.


On Sunday we topped off our Halloween Uncle-A activities by carving pumpkins because really, how could we not? I say we but mostly it was the boys.  Nick cleaned and carved his/Cole's, Alex cleaned Maliya's teeny one, and I carved a small star in Maliya's. 

 

The rest of the week went by pretty quickly, so come Friday Cole and I decided we'd better sneak in a couple of crafts while we still could. We made ghosts that afternoon and then fun glue/watercolor pictures the next. (Cole's was a star next to a spiderweb.)

 

 

 

Is he not just so completely loveable?

 

 

Halloween was a blast. Long night, yes, but fun.  First we drove the neighborhood with the Jacksons.  I thought that would go fast, but it ended up taking about an hour.  We stopped at probably 10-12 houses and the kids got a motherload of candy.  (Our neighborhood gets about 5 trick-or-treaters a year, but everyone still buys a lot of candy, meaning our kids get huge handfuls at every house.) The kids were so excited and overly energetic (Maliya would squeal just because she was THAT pumped), which made it really fun.

 

After making the rounds, Cole, Maliya, and I headed to our old neighborhood to see our friends Rich and Marge and to hit up a few more houses.  We chatted with our friends for about 10 minutes and then actually spent the next 45 minutes trying to find neighborhoods that were actually lit up. Seriously, every street we found was so dark! We ended up stopping 3 different times and only got a few houses each time.  It was a lot of work for little reward! (Luckily the massive amount of candy from our neighborhood balanced things out.) Despite being cold and tired, Cole and Maliya had a blast and kept asking for 'one more house!'  We stayed out until about 8:30 and then called it a night.

 

When we finally made it home to Nick and Madison (who hadn't come with us because Madison had an MRI that morning and was recovering from the drugs ... she was super groggy all day and only happy when held or when sleeping), we let the kids sort and count and admire (and of course EAT) their candy.  They were so funny - Maliya just kept popping starbursts into her mouth, on the sly, and Cole kept eating one and then saying 'oh, that wasn't really the one I wanted ... just one more ...'  As I said, it was a really fun night. Seriously. I loved it:)

 

Maliya's excitement kills me!

 

 

And to top things off, a ridiculously adorable picture of my ridiculously adorable kids.