Easton Eve

It's E's Last Day to be 4! We've got a lot of pictures to post today.

Like, from the other night...Autumn has only recently discovered her toes. This is the second time I saw her grabbing them and I sent Easton running for my camera. He took this one:


And I snapped this:


Then he took off down the hall and took this one:


Then Dalton took over the camera, came back, and snapped this one:


We're a picture-taking bunch over here!

Here's a few more that I took yesterday when I was taking pics of the boys in their hats:




LOVE LOVE LOVE her hat!


Dalton being the baby yesterday:


And those crazy boys decided to play outside yesterday morning. It was 13 degrees. I sent Dalton upstairs to put on some pants and he came down in shorts. I told him he'd be very cold. He said, "Okay, I'll be cold" and went out anyway...I knew he wouldn't last long, that's why I didn't make him change...he wasn't gonna get hypothermia in his less than 5 minutes out there, people. It's just a comfort thing. And sure enough, less than 5 mintues later he came in saying, "I'm all done. My knees are cold" :)


I mostly laid around yesterday. The boys were sooooooo awesome while I was recuperating from my illness two nights ago. Today I'm much much better. Just don't have much milk for Autumn. The puking, nausea and subsequent dehyrdation and poor nutrition have taken their toll and the poor girl is just thirsting for more. :( Jason had to heat up a bottle for us last night because there was just nothing left and she was still hungry. I've been having her nurse extra and I'm sucking down the water to get it back up to normal.

This morning we had a big day...it was Easton's day to "walk around the sun" at school. It is very special and Jason had meetings so the other two and I had to all get ready and hang out in the classroom for a few minutes to observe. I was putting Autumn in the Moby wrap and E's teachers were like, "Oh that's neat! How'd you figure that out?" and I'm thinking how I sure wouldn't have thought of how to wrap that gigantic piece of fabric on my own, but had they not seen something like that in all their years? Hmmmm. Missing out.

Both Autumn and Dalton were awesome while we waited near the door and the kids did their morning circle time routines. Like writing down the date. Many of them read outloud as she wrote "Today is Friday..." and when she got to Friday they all started panting "fff fff fff fff" like letting air out of a tire in little bursts. Good ol' phonics. :) Same with when she wrote "January"...they're all "juh juh juh"ing away. I couldn't hold in my giggles for those. It was too cute. Little pre-readers. I have a video of E's actual walk around the sun but that's for us. Then they sing him happy birthday and he blows out the candle:


I'm bummed it's so blurry. :(

He sat back in the circle and they asked him if he was going to have a big bash (we're inviting a lot of, but not his whole class). He talked about his cake. He was so excited we were there:


After that was over, we blew him kisses and snuck out the door to run some errands. It's cold again today. Single digits earlier. A strawberry drink that was sitting in my car was frozen solid:


So Autumn (and the boys) are wearing sweaters today. And Autumn has her adorable hat again:






How perfectly do these cute little socks go with it all?


She's so cool. I really like how she's blossoming lately. She does stuff now. Like she kicks purposefully at her little bouncy seat:


And she's fancy enough to use her foot to bring the dangly parts to her hands:


Getting bigger!

So is Dalton. As I mentioned, he got new shoes the other day. Today was his first day to wear them and he put 'em on by himself. He puts on his boots by himself a lot. And Crocs, of course. But he rarely wears real shoes that he puts on by himself...not sure why. Probably because he wears boots and Crocs so much except for church (and even then sometimes!) but for church we're often hurrying and put the shoes on him ourselves. But anyway, he did them himself today:




So proud!


See the whole Toy Story gang on there?


Perfect shoes for little Diddles.

We went to pick up Eastie-Bug from school after awhile. He hung out with Autumn while I stalked the internet waiting for some baby gender ultrasound results from a friend:



Aren't they precious together? She adores him so.

Okay, Easton is patiently waiting to play some computer games and I've got some chores I could be doing so until next time...

Happy Easton Eve!

The Princess and the Frog

And my princes modeling their new knit hats:




I don't have much post in me today. I was woken up in the middle of the night with a tummy bug. A short lived one but Jason got up with the kids and stayed home for a bit this morning before making sure I was back on my feet okay and heading into work.

I'm better now and no one else seems ill. Let's hope it stays that way. We've got some partying to do this weekend!

I really don't have much to say today. Easton had school, he's not as excited about it again after the long Christmas break. He tells me "I like outside school, not the inside part". But he always is happy when he's actually on the way in and when I pick him up. It's just when it's time to change out of his cozy jammies in the morning, I think, that really makes him say he doesn't like school. He's always got such fun stuff to tell me. They're doing a year long study of space (a dream come true for Mr. E!) and today he was telling me all about Mars and no oxygen and an asteriod making mountains and on and on. And he was also telling me about a lesson they were all learning about germs and the importance of hand washing and such. All the kids passed something around with "fake germs" on it. Easton tells me he wouldn't touch it. He flat out refused his turn in the circle of passing. When I asked why he said he thought they might be real germs! I think it's so cute. We're cautious, of course, but I don't feel like we're TOTAL germophobes or anything. I especially feel like we don't pass that phobia on to the kids but maybe I'm wrong? Poor guy...thinking they're trying to contaminate him at school. :) At the same time, I just love that he's standing up for what he believes in or not giving in to what makes him uncomfortable. He said, "All my friends passed it but not me". Way to go...I bet if they all jumped off bridges, though, he would. He would think that was fun. He keeps telling me about when he's going to go skydiving. Oy.

While E was in school the other two and I were out for a morning of errands. You see, a certain someone has a birthday on Saturday. I bought a few things before Christmas...with his birthday so close to Christmas I sort of "over buy" and then we decide what to hang on to for his birthday. So most things I already have. But I'm still trying to find the only thing he's asking for. Ugh.

Instead I found Dalton some new shoes. I took him to a shoe store to get his foot sized. He flipped out about it. Like he thought he was going to get a shot or something. He ran with one boot on, one boot off over to the door of the store to try to get out. Rascal! Then the lady gave him a sticker afterwards and I was like, "Oh great, you threw a fit and get a sticker?" and she was like, "well, we don't want him to be afraid of this in the future" and I'm thinking, "it's not like this is the doctor or the dentist...it's Payless, lady...I'll just try shoes on his actual foot next time." Sheesh! Even so, she'd told me he was a 7 1/2 or 8 but the 6 1/2 fit him perfectly. So much for getting his foot measured in the first place. We bought 7's so he had a little room to grow. I know most of you don't care a lick about any of these details but remember, I blog for the sake of being able to look back at this in the future and I'll like to know how big his foot was. And that he was terrified of the foot measurer and tried to run outside in the snow with one boot rather than face the lady with the foot measuring device (do those things even have a real name?).

Anyway, after we picked up Easton we headed to McDonald's with one of the gift cards my mom just sent them (Thanks, Gramoo!). The boys shared a chicken nuggets Happy Meal and got to play. It has been so cold here lately. I know it's Colorado and all, but really, it's sunny here most of the time. Sunny enough to melt the snow that falls. Sunny enough that we rarely wear big coats unless we'll be outside for a long time. However, we've uncharacteristically had snow on the ground for so long now. We can't even go out to set up our new trampoline because the backyard is covered in snow. And it's not even fun snow to play in at this point it's been out there so long that it's crusty, icy snow. Our driveway and the walk way to our house is covered in ice. Dalton has fallen twice. Easton once. April's car slid down our driveway when they were here! We had to let our New Year's Day dinner friends out through the garage so they wouldn't kill themselves. Too icy! And more snow is coming down now. And it's cold today. So anyway, that was my way of saying it was nice to let the boys play at McDonald's awhile. They both ate so well and played so well and stopped so well when it was time to go.

Now we're home and having quiet time. I dug up a few pictures to share, including some from my phone...

Dalton at the movie theater before Princess and the Frog:


Adding masks to their p.j.'s for our doughnut drive-through yesterday:


Autumn just wore a smile with her jim jams:


Party favor shopping yesterday:


Getting sleepy at McDonald's:


And Easton trying to pose back to back with Dalton who was more interested in the Alvin and the Chipmunks toy from their Happy Meal:


Now you're all caught up and I should go unpack my shopping bags. Toodles!

Pobrecita

On our weekly doughnut run this morning we were greeted by a different person. I asked if he was on vacation from school or something because we usually saw another person. He said, "Oh you mean Nancy?" And I was all "Yeah, that was the name on the receipts" and he said that she just got let go! After 6 years! She's been waiting on us nearly every week since we started going there when I was pregnant with Dalton.

She was the one that called her amigas over to the drive through window with her when she'd learned I just had a girl after two boys.

Now we have Justin and he seems perfectly pleasant...maybe even more friendly than Nancy. I just feel so sad for someone that can't even keep the job at Krispy Kreme after 6 years. Tough economy.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

My First Post of Twenty-Ten

Except I don't say "twenty ten". Sure I said "nineteen ___" but I've been saying "two thousand ___" for 10 years now and I'm not about to switch it up for anything other than a silly blog title for today. :)

So really, it's my first post of two thousand ten. That's how Easton says it too. At school. He's been very excited for it to become 2010.

We've had a great year so far. We kicked off things with our baby girl growing up even more and she's learning how to sit independently. When I took those "fun with the equinox" broom pictures, I also got Autumn to sit for a few but she'd only last long enough to take the picture. Now she sits long enough to take lots of pictures in a row and even movies. She's doing great!




See that cute little ruffle butt? :)


Anyway, New Years Day we had some friends over for dinner. They're our small group leaders too...the same friend that came to my rescue so I could go to Easton's Christmas party. We were long over due to have them over...we've been to their house countless times for group, plus dinners, plus they brought us a meal after Autumn arrived. We're just really bad at hosting. I never know what to make. We don't even have enough chairs! But we made it work and it was a fun evening and we'd like to do it again! We brought the kids little picnic table in from outside and their kids and our kids sat there in "Easton's living room".

The kids were really late getting to bed but handled it okay the next day. At least I think they did...Jason let me sleep in a bit! Yay!

But later, Easton and Daddy had big one-on-one plans to head to the Museum of Nature and Science to see the space exhibit and to visit the plantarium as well. I took pictures of them before they left....first they were unsure what pose the other was going for:


Then they went with their serious faces:


And Easton's freaky forced smile:


The rest of us here at home all took naps. Yay! And Jason and Easton had good spacey fun:












And fun with the infrared, heat sensing camera:


The museum also has dinosaurs and such but Easton was apparently having none of it. Too scary, I guess. He's been very sensitive to such things lately.

Here's the kids that night laying on each other's tummies like they saw in the New Year's Max & Ruby (with the cookies):


We put them all to bed...but apparently Autumn thought she was just having a nap and she was wide awake awhile later just talking to herself and such. Jason felt bad and went to get her up for a bit:

(Notice the 10:05 on the clock?)

And Blitz having a nap in her bouncy seat:


Church was Sunday. That went okay too. Afterwards, Dalton and I got ready for some one-on-one time ourselves and headed to see The Princess and the Frog.

I really liked the movie, just not for my kids at these ages. I was glad Easton stayed home because it wouldn't have gone over his head like much of the "darkness" did for Dalton. Plus Dalton was a little sleepy and wasn't even looking at the screen the entire time. But it's set in Louisiana so that part was kinda fun. It was cute. I love Disney movies, but still...it was dark. Not just "bad guys" but it's voodoo.

We went to Walmart just the two of us afterwards. It was a quick trip for some dinner fixin's. He fell asleep on the way home and stayed asleep on the couch till Jason accidentally tripped over the Bat Cave laying on the floor and woke him. D was not a happy camper for awhile after that. Aye yi yi!

But later he and Easton actually played in the basement together for awhile.

We have this whole finished basement with a "playroom" that just doesn't get used a ton yet. We haven't taken the time and energy to really make it nice and inviting. And that train table takes up a lot of room and they don't even play with it. Anyone wanna buy a train table?

Anyway...

Silly boys at dinner that night:




And Daddy and his girl:


Today it was back to the routines of Easton being in school and such. Autumn woke to nurse at a funky time in the early morning then wasn't hungry when she was done sleeping this morning. So she took a short nap on the couch in between getting hungry again:


And I took a picture of myself in my scarf. When I wore it the first time, Dalton told me "I like your winter" hee hee!


Now we're expecting Lauren at any minute so I should go. Toodles!