More Halloween

 The young women in our ward did a Halloween carnival fundraiser the Tuesday before Halloween. Can I just mention that I joked that Meili probably just shouldn't take her costume off the week of Halloween, because we had so many events for her to wear it. The week before Halloween I did an activity with my Activity Day girls where she wore her costume, story time at the library the week before Halloween, then Sunday was the party with Josh's family, Tuesday was the activity with the young women, dance on Wednesday, her preschool party on Thursday, and of course Halloween on Friday, then my mom had her Halloween party on Saturday. I was definitely fine with her getting more use out of her costume!

 Notice Grant's wings that make him a "flying monkey?"

 This is a trap that Meili made (which happens regularly in our house.) I just loved all the different elements. Her boots, my little pony, ribbon, the Halloween decoration she made, bubbles, Cinderella glass slipper, basketball hoop, gift box, gift bag, and of course our "Wicked" Halloween decoration. I'm sure in her mind, she new exactly how it would work together to trap something.

The Monday before Halloween, we carved our pumpkins. I think this was the smoothest we've ever been at this particular event. I was worried because we were starting a little late, everything is a little harder with Grant in the equation etc. But we were done in an hour flat, and I thought they turned out pretty good. Meili was definitely the artistic director as she refused to touch the pumpkins period, but picked out the designs for both pumpkins and was very excited about our progress all along the way. Grant was perfectly satisfied in his high chair playing with toys and eating a sucker (thank goodness!) I thought Josh and I were going to have to take turns holding him. 

 Josh carved Mickey Mouse, and the one I carved is not as easily recognizable because Meili wanted Twilight Sparkle (my little pony.) But I was actually impressed with my work.

I can't say enough how much I love this time of year. Halloween has never been my favorite and I don't know if it's just having kids in general or the fact that Meili's birthday is Halloween, but now pretty much mid-September hits and I know we're just going to have fun fun fun until the end of the year (or now, for us, until January 13th!). I love the leaves on the ground, I love soup, hot chocolate, and cider, I love college football, I love all the traditions, I love snow falling and playing the snow, and of course, I LOVE THE HOLIDAYS in general! 

Birthdays

We had a party with Josh's family on the 26th to celebrate Marlyse, Meili, Chris, and Kyle's birthdays. Of course we wanted the kids to dress up.

 Brayden as Olaf

 Meili has been obsessed with the soundtrack to Wicked this year. So she said that she wanted to dress up as Glinda. They don't make costumes for 4 year olds to look like that, but they do make the good witch from Wizard of Oz costumes. So I showed Meili the movie Wizard of Oz so she could see who she was really going to be. (I've also tried to tell her the story of Wicked as we listen to the songs, and it's a little complicated for a 3 year old.)

 Jase is dressed as the dog from Blue's Clues. (Is the dog's name "Blue?" I've never seen it.)

 Kyle

 Carson in his camo

 William

 Andrea as a butterfly

 Meili decorated her own birthday cake. I bit off more than I could chew this particular weekend, so her decorating it was a win win win! She loved decorating it, (all she cared about was the horses on it anyway), I had one less thing to worry about, and it looked so cute with her having done it herself, that everyone loved it more than if I had done it anyway.

In keeping with the Wizard of Oz theme, Grant was a flying monkey, I got all the stuff to be the wicked witch (Elphaba) but never really had a good opportunity to dress up, and I told Josh that he should be the Wizard or a scarecrow. Instead he decided to opt for wearing Aggie warmups and saying that he was walking on the football team to be the next quarterback. (It's sad that it may just about come to that.)

October Traditions

Even though we consider not going every year, my sisters, mom, and I went to see the witches at Gardner Village again this year. Initially we had some sticker shock because they started charging for activities that had never been available before, but after walking around for a little bit, we realized that really we had more than we could do in the amount of time that we had anyway.

 I like all the witches and decor, but really, every year I tell my mom that we just need another excuse to get together and I don't really care what that excuse that is.

 Meili just put this little ensemble together one day. She looks like such a diva! (In the best possible way that that word can be used)

 She wanted a picture with all of the pumpkins, but she is struggling so much with taking good pictures lately. I'm trying all the different ways I can think of to get a normal smile out of her.

One of my favorite Cache Valley, Halloween traditions is the pumpkin walk. Grant struggled the first time through, but luckily my friend Alisha showed up when we were finishing, so we had an excuse to go through again, and Grant was much better.

 The Duck Dynasty entry. Si's quote says, "Some people say I'm a dreamer. Others say, "Fall asleep again and you're fired." I love it!

 Of course Meili was super excited about the Wicked display!

 On the way, I asked Josh to bet me that there would be a Frozen display. For some reason he didn't want to bet against that!

 This is where Josh would tell me that I need to learn how to use photoshop that he got for me YEARS ago. Because Josh looks so good in this picture...

 ...but Grant is better in this one. How to decide?

 Alisha and her son Isaac with Meili.

(See what I mean about struggling with pictures? Luckily she's cute no matter what!)

On a side note, Meili's scar by her eye looks pretty red here because she recently had an injection. Now I'm excited because it's looking so much better than it had. 

9

In terms of Grant, this month was a big month for our family. Grant just got big...

-He now has 4 teeth

-He's gotten better at crawling, can go for a bit on all fours but still prefers army crawling. But really, he's just ready to forget crawling altogether and move on to walking. He pulls himself up on EVERYTHING, and just wants to be standing.

-I believe that his first word is "Mama." He's said it for awhile, but I'm now at the point that I think he knows what it means.

-Just this last week he started going up the stairs. I know what everyone says: "When they start going up the stairs life gets so much harder," and "You really don't want them to walk because then they're just in to everything." I disagree. For the last couple months, Grant just cries when I leave him at the bottom of the stairs. So, yes, for the next month or so, the stairs make life scarier, but I'm so glad that now he can get where he wants to go and doesn't feel so helpless. And, yes, I could basically skip crawling. It grosses me out for them to be on the floor so much, and so frustrated that they can't do what they want. I'd take "getting in to stuff" over that any day. (I'll let you know in the next 6 months or so if I'm eating my words.) My bet at this point is that Grant will be walking by Christmas.

-And most exciting in my book is that on September 17th, Grant slept through the night for the first time EVER!!! That was A. Big. Deal. Before that point the longest he had ever slept was like 6 hours and that had only happened a handful of times. I have no idea what happened to put him over the edge. I would like to believe that it was something we did, but, let's face it, I have no control in my life. Around 6 months, I tried to do some type of "sleep training" for about 3 weeks straight: whether it was just giving him his binky when he started crying, just re-swaddling him, and eventually letting him cry it out for 4 or 5 nights straight. For those 3 weeks, I vowed that whatever I tried, that I just wouldn't feed him between the hours of 11 and 5. (6 hours for a 20 lb. 6-month old is absolutely feasible.) But eventually, life happened and it just got easier to go back to feeding him whenever he woke up. At about 7 months, I started to slowly wean him from breastfeeding. I just felt like he was getting distracted from eating and it was easier to chase him around with a bottle than chase him down with (the alternative.) But then, when he was finally solely being formula-fed, I was so bummed that it hadn't made a difference in him sleeping. Now I wonder if that did eventually help, or if he just finally got old enough to figure out sleeping. Anyway, we finally got to the point that Josh and I slept on the couches downstairs because I was sick of hearing his every move. So magically, on the 17th, he slept for 9 hours, and 11 hours a couple nights later. Since then, he's only waken up to eat before 6 probably 2 or 3 times. The only problem was that he was still in our room because he does sometimes still wake up in the middle of the night and cry for 2 or 3 minutes but he puts himself back to sleep. However, because of that I was still nervous about having him in the same room with Meili. However, as I said, we were sleeping downstairs, our lives weren't working anymore, and I was at my breaking point. So we had Grant try sleeping in his crib for 3 nights without Meili (he always sleeps in his crib for naps, but at night he was in a Pack-n-Play in our room) and Meili slept in our bed. So last week, it was time. Grant got his eviction notice from our room, I finally decided that Meili has always been such a good sleeper that I couldn't see Grant disrupting her that much, and we tried it out for a night. Ah.... we are never going back. It has been an awesome transition, and I can't say how much I love being able to go in my room at night, turn the light on, make as much noise as I want, read in bed if I want. Ah....

Enough of that. Here's pictures...

 I took Grant and Meili to visit Josh's niece at UVU for her birthday. A couple of us went to dinner together, and Liz loved the mess that my family made at Golden Corral. Yep, that's pretty much what it always looks like after dinner with the two kiddos.

 The picture isn't great but our stake did a night family fun run, and Meili and Grant both fell asleep in the stroller. I thought they were so cute all cuddled up together.

 I went to Black Island Farms cornmaze/pumpkin patch with Josh's brother and sister-in-law. Both Grant and Meili loved this big corn kernel sandbox.

 Hours later I was still finding corn in Grant's shorts.

 My nephew Winslow with my sister-in-law Kami, and Meili.

 We even got to go on a little hayride out to the pumpkin patch to pick our very own pumpkins.

 Brayden was all tuckered out.

 On Saturday, I took Meili to Willow Park's "Boo at the Zoo." Her costume is currently in the mail, so she dressed up as "miscellaneous princess," not to be confused with Elsa which was every single other girl her age at the zoo.

 There are a lot of these pictures, but I thought it was hilarious that I took 30 pictures of Meili and didn't get any really great ones. I sat Grant down on the haystacks and...

 "You want me to look at the camera and smile?"

" Look at the camera and smile again?"

" Look at the camera and smile even though my sister is choking me?"

 "How about look at the camera and smile?"

...And after about 5 minutes of that...

"That's a pretty necklace."