Playing dress up

I feel like we've been celebrating Halloween for the last week or so already, which has been mostly really fun. I love to get dressed up! The best part about the last two days though and getting dressed up has been our "cold front". The high was 72 today! We got to wear long sleeves and I even had hot chocolate! This is quite a novelty this time of year here!!!

So today as part of our church weekly park day, we had the kids dress up and we ate treats! I am pretty sure that Carson had at least five cookies and ten peices of candy this morning, and where was I? Eating right along with him:) It just so happened that most of the boys dressed up as superheroes (there were about five or six more that showed up later.... after the pic) How cute were they? Carson was practicing his flight takeoff, like a good superhero should.....

Brynnli was just hanging out and missing her nap as usual, poor kid gets dragged everywhere, but what a good sport! About five minutes later she was passed out.

Last night we tagged along to our friends the Wernlis trunk or treat, and Carson was having a blast getting and eating all the candy.

Brynnli sat in the trunk with Rick and helped hand out the candy. It was soo cold! She looked soo cute!

Here's our little superhero and fairy princess together in the trunk.... both exhausted!

Last weekend our friends had a mystery dinner party at their house. It was super fun! We all were assigned a character beforehand and came dressed in character to discover who the murderer was. Rick is right behind me, just in case you don't recognize him, what with the pasty white skin and huge overbite! My favorite part was the red fishnet stockings!

Last week also, for my Bunko group, we dressed up. Kim and I thought It'd be fun to dressup as pirates together, and it was really fun. We even got ready together before which totally reminded me of Halloween at BYU. Everyone loved our costumes, and we got to rebel for an evening with fake drawn on tattoos and two earrings in one ear (for me). Watch out!

Carson of course watched us getting ready and was jealous, so he started putting on our leftovers and running around saying he was a pirate too. I think he thought if he got dressed up too that he could come to mommy's "party". Cute guy. But, he did get to stay home with Rick and watch pirates in Peter Pan and part of Pirates of the Caribbean (highly edited parts I am assured).





This isn't a dressup pic, but I had to include it as it is tradition in our family to go pick out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch and to take a picture, regardless of how unphotogenic it turns out. Will we ever get a cute one of them together?

High School Reunion

I'm sorry my post titles are so lame and unoriginal, but let's be honest, I don't have time to come up with good ones. So Saturday night was Rick's ten year high school reunion! There is no way that we (well not me, I am MUCH younger) are old enough to be doing reunions at all, yet here we were getting ready and going to one. I had quite the time finding a modest fancyish dress for the occasion, south Florida is not the modest fashion capital of the world by any means. Carson has been a little clingy lately, actually both our kids have.... very unfortunate. Here's Rick with some of his old friends (for some reason I ended up in the picture too...)

We went to the beach earlier Saturday with some of Rick's closest friends and their wives, sign.others etc., which was really fun. It was fun to meet some of the people Rick talks about and to experience a reunion other than the cliche ones I"ve seen on television. It was actually a little less cheesy than I was expecting, but still very entertaining. There was still the little groups all divided up and lots of drinking, which was interesting for Rick and I, who spent a great deal of time at the food table (I know you are all suprised!) Rick's favorite comment of the night was his friend who told him that he had changed the least out of anyone. Rick was very excited about that (meaning tha the hadn't blimped out or anything:) It was really fun to go, and to get to dress up and hangout together! Thanks to the Tolberts for babysitting!!

Pre-Halloween

Carson and Brynnli got to get all dressed up this weekend for their friend Cayden's first birthday party. They looked so cute!

Carson was superman.... (he was less excited about the cape than I'd hoped... hello you can use it to fly?)

And Brynnli was a flower.....
I had a crazy week so their costumes were kind of rushed, but they still looked cute:)
Here is the round of kids turning one this year (and early next year for Brynnli, apparently all our friends were a few months ahead of us with the second kid thing)
It was a fun time!

The Zoo

It was a nice day today so we decided to go to the zoo. It was so fun! Carson loved feeding the pelicans and birds....Carson and Brynnli had a blast playing on the fake animals and in the splash area.... Despite our numerous bribes, Carson refused to look at the camera for more than .5 seconds, therefore, he is not looking in any of the pictures. Brynnli was so excited to get out of the Bjorn and play!!!

The best moment of the day was when we were walking through the zoo and it smelled really bad, Carson plugged his nose and said "probaly the animals had gas!" The worst was when we walked the whole zoo to get to the giraffe feeding exhibit (which we did last time and Carson hasn't stopped talking about) and the dang giraffes were too lazy to come over and eat.
Notice the monkey swinging behind Rick, the chimps are my favorite exhibit, they are more closely related to humans genetically than to any other monkey it said. They seem so human, we had so much fun watching them!

Per usual, I couldn't help but add this extra pic in of Brynnli from Sunday(Carson was napping or I'd have taken a pic of him too), she's such a sweetie!

Oh sleep, where have you gone?

It all began about three weeks ago when Brynnli decided she was going to start crawling. This meant that she kept waking herself up all night wandering blindly around her crib "practicing". Right around the same time, Carson decided he no longer was excited about napping or going to bed at night. We were not excited about letting either of them "cry it out" because they would wake the other up. We tried everything with Carson, threatening no movies, putting his favorite toys in the garbage, positive reinforcement, we even put him out in the garage one night. Brynnli had started to get a little better, finally crying to sleep until this week when I found her like this in her crib..... now everytime she wakes up she stands up in there. Lowering the crib helped a little.
Carson was so cute and ran in saying "hi mincess (princess)" and Brynnli is a big girl!! She was so cute and proud of herself!
Needless to say, her sleep has gotten worse again, and Carson's is still less than amazing. The other night I spent two hours putting both kids to bed. I am close to going on strike.... eight months it has been since I slept ALL night!! However, in the morning when they wakeup (at 6:30) they are sooo cute and I can't imagine life without them!
I couldn't help but take a picture of my cute family after dinner the other night when both kids ended up in Rick's lap. Brynnli apparently has inherited her mom's blinking problem when having her picture taken. This was the fourth try, her eyes closed in all of them (no she is not asleep...)

Her'es the little rascal in her early days of crawling....

On a side note, after my long month of all too often counting the minutes until my kids are asleep at night, I got great meaning out of conference this weekend (for church) when our President Monson (our prophet) gave a talk on having Joy in the journey and making the most of today. He helped remind me that someday not too long from now all the "fingerprints, toys and laundry will disappear and you will miss them profoundly." What a great uplift this talk was and definately needed!! http://www.lds.org/move/index.html?type=conference&event=178&lang=english