November and a little December

It is crazy to me that it is already December.  I think time passes by a lot faster with two kids.  Well we've had lots of fun together and are excited for the rest of our December festivities.

And now for some pictures :)

This is Mikey first real time in snow.  He didn't really know what to think about it.  And he looked like the little boy from Christmas Story with his puffy coat on :)

Noelle was so excited for the snow

My parent's neighbors built a Rapunzel tower.  How cool!

Noelle went to the dentist a little while ago and was so brave.  This was her third visit but the first time she let them do everything: xray, clean teeth, etc.  This is the best children's dentist office ever.  Well they unfortunately found 3 cavities.  This day she was getting them filled and she did so good.  She is holding one of her favorite little doggies, Ruff.  I got a little teary eyed taking this picture.  She was a little out of it afterward.

Noelle was sick and sleeping and Mikey decided to give her kisses.

One of Noelle's favorite things to do is play dress up.  Mikey likes it too, but we don't have any boy dress ups yet and dad does not like that. 

Noelle likes to dig in the snow as much as she likes to dig in the sand

Mikey in the snow again.  He liked it a little better this time.

At the mall one day.  The tv was a great distraction while I tried to hurry and shop around.

Noelle is always begging to take a ride on these toys at the mall.  This day I gave in.  She looks so cute!

My happy Mikey

My not so happy Mikey when he got sick after Thanksgiving.  He is always running around and when he was sick he would just lay down and cuddle.  He really like Noelle's little Lambie (doc mcstuffins) toy for a little cuddling :).  Around Thanksgiving time we all got sick.  Then just recently Noelle, Mikey and I got a little (awful) stomach bug.  Hopefully it's done going around cause it was so not fun.  Mikey was sure concerned when I was sick though and would keep kissing, hugging and cuddling with me as if to make sure I was okay.  And Noelle has included the phrase "Please help (fill in any of our names) feel better" in her prayers.  I sure have some sweet kids.

My ornament wreath I made.  Made with dollar store ornaments and a wire hanger. Pretty proud of it.

a craft that I made.  I like this one a lot too.

Freddy the elf joined our Christmas celebrating this year.  But in his letter it said that the more you hug him the more his magic grows.  Which is perfect because Noelle is such a hugger.  We asked Noelle what we should name him and in about 2 seconds Noelle yelled out the name "Freddy!"  She loves this little elf and is excited every morning to see what he's been up to.  It's also helped a little in her behavior knowing that Freddy reports to Santa each night.

One of our favorite things we caught Freddy doing.  Looks like he does belong to this family if he wanted to watch Harry Potter.  Noelle got a kick out of it!

We went to the festival of trees here in Salt Lake and had so much fun. Noelle asked the balloon guy to make Rudolph for her.  He hadn't made him in over a year so he had to think really hard how to do it.  But he did great and Rudolph is bigger than she is.  I was really surprised that she had come up with this all on her own.  It was either between Rudolph or a unicorn.  Rudolph won.  I think she wanted a unicorn because she has asked for a unicorn dream lite for Christmas.  On a side note, she has not dropped this dream lite idea.  Hopefully Santa delivers!

This past Friday we were really looking forward to visiting some friends. However the kids hadn't felt well all week and I just didn't have a good feeling to go visit them.  We were really bummed but we went to my mom's house instead.  We decorated sugar cones with green frosting and candy decorations to make trees.  It was way fun and Noelle totally got in to it.  This is her tree!

My tree

Mikey's tree.  Grandma helped him a little but he was actually a little bit interested.  But it didn't last very long.

My cute kiddos in their cute hats aunt Nina made for them. I just love this picture so much! They sure love each other and I am always catching them playing together and laughing a lot.  I love love love these two!

Mikey 15 months

Mikey is 15 months.  And I know I say this every post but really where has the time gone?  What a fun, sweet destructor I have :).  Mikey turned 15 months the same time Noelle turned 4 so I decided to take them to the same doctors appointment.  I had a friend warn me against this but I decided not to do Noelle's kindergarten shots because she's not going to kindergarten until 2014.  But when we got there the nurse asked again if we wanted to do her shots and I agreed because luckily my mom was there.  I wouldn't have otherwise.  Noelle was brave and didn't cry at all.  Although later that day she certainly made a fuss about it.  Mikey had a rough time though.  His appointment was on a Tuesday.  Sunday (oct. 28th) Mikey cut his forehead on the foot of our rocking chair.  Monday Mikey fell really hard on a metal bar at a park and got a big bump in between his eyes.  And on Tuesday the poor guy had to get his blood drawn and get his shots also.  The blood drawn is because we're doing this immunization study.  He wasn't too happy after it all happened.    So really thank heavens my mom was there.  The whole week was hard on him.  He enjoyed Halloween but was really tired and I think a little overheated by his heavy lion costume.  His bump between his eyes was nothing more than that,  I was very surprised.  He hit it so hard.  Now it's just a nice bruise.  He's back to his normal self now, he's just getting back into his good sleeping schedule.  He sure is big and tall boy.

27.5 lbs - 85% (first time he is out of the 90s)
35 inches - 97%
Head - 97%

He is getting to be such a big boy.
Mikey...
-Loves to run everywhere
-Makes a really cute "ruf" sound when we say "dog" or show him one.  He also says a cute "hohoho" for Santa which sounds an awful lot like his dog sound.
-Loves to give hugs and kisses to stuffed animals, just like Noelle did.
-Also loves to hug and kiss his sister
-Follows Noelle everywhere, also still destroys everything she plays with. That's something we're working on because Noelle does not appreciate it.
-Hates to be in a stroller or held when we are outside
-Is such an outside boy and will really cry when someone goes outside without him
-Throws balls everywhere
-Is really starting to love to play with cars
-Still loves eating but is getting pickier
-Says "dis" (this), "dat" (that), "mama", "no" (Noelle), "dah" (dog), "ba" (ball), "si" (outside)
-Loves to put on his socks and shoes and also loves to take them off in the car
-Is still interested in the garbage and throws things away on his own
-Is still a little bashful at times.
-Is very patient but is starting to defend himself against sister attacks
-Likes to offer things he's eating or playing with to other babies or kids
-Is really really hard to handle at church.
-Is very healthy.  Besides one week this summer I can't tell you another time when he has been sick with anything.
-Is an excellent sleeper and I can't remember the last time he woke up earlier than 7.
-Has the cutest belly :)

I just love Mikey too much to explain.  He is the happiest baby ever and can always be seen with a smile on his face even when he is so tired.  He sure teaches me a lot about happiness.  He keeps me on my toes constantly but I wouldn't want it any other way.  I'm so grateful to have him in our family and he such a good little brother.  I just love my sweetheart.

see what i mean by bashful

loves outside, no matter the weather

fell asleep at dinner one night

right after he hit his head, between the eyes

the bump got pretty big

happy boy

loves his cars, this one makes lovely loud sounds

October and Halloween 2012

October seemed to be a busy month for us.  Michael had to work every Saturday for like 6 weeks and he had school on top of that.  That made it extra long for me I think and Noelle's birthday.  When will I ever learn?  But we also had a lot of fun!  And many pictures were taken. 

Noelle has been loving doing crafts lately.  She loves being outside even more but it can't always happen and again no car so... That makes for me finding some fun things for us to do inside.  So here are some of those pictures, other stuff and of course our Halloween.

Mikey attempting to paint his pumpkin.  He was doing really good actually until he kept putting the paint brush in his mouth.  I think I scared him every time I told him no because...

this is what happened next :(.  Sad huh?  He has such a good sad face.  So we were done with that.

Then I let him play with pudding instead.  And he loved it and needed no help from me.

He loves to put stuff in his hair, the little stinker

Noelle really went to town painting her pumpkin.  She was obsessed with painting it black. 

halloween bird house that hung outside.  Again with the black :)

One of our favorite activities on our many walks is gathering the pretty leaves.  So then she made a cute fall tree with it.

I found this cute ghost story on pinterest about ghosts who ate different colored food and it turned them a different color.  Black wasn't a part of the story but she insisted.  Noelle colored all the ghosts for me and had me read her the story over and over again.

idea also from pinterest.  yummy pretzel and marshmallow bones.  Made with colorful marshmallows as you can see.  She really put together every little bones except for maybe 5 of them.  She loved this one!  We gave some to her friends.

 

 

And Noelle started a little tumbling class.  And she absolutely loves it.  She talks all about it and loves to practice at home.  She really really needed this!

 

 

 

We had a big pile of leaves right outside our apartment.  So naturally we had to play in it :)

Noelle loved it and would have stayed out there forever

We really wanted to go to an apple orchard and pick apples.  Time was tight with Michael working so many Saturdays so the day we could go all the close orchards weren't available to visit.  That same day my parents said they had a ton of apples on their trees to get rid of.  So we were pretty excited!  Michael was a good sport and picked every apple that he could reach.  Which was a lot because he is tall.  The red apples were more tart and the small green ones were very sweet and perfect for little hands!

This tree looks kind of like a charlie brown tree but it sure makes yummy, sweet apples.  Noelle had fun picking them

Mikey pretty much loves them.  But we have to watch him closely.  He'll take some pretty big bites.  I'm wanting to make applesauce from all the apples that we have.

Carving pumpkin day!  She didn't like all the "guts" and it took some convincing to reach her hand in there.  But I just have to say this was our first year using the cool pumpkin tools to scoop out the inside and carve and it was awesome!  It changed my whole outlook on carving pumpkins.  Growing up it was THE hardest thing to carve a pumpkin with the knives we had.  Forget about ever making an actual curve.  I am a believer now and we got ours at the dollar store.

concentrating to hard

Noelle's pumpkin (daddy helped quite a bit)

i carved this one.  With a pattern of course, but i added the stars.  Michael I think enjoyed scooping

And Mikey enjoyed a sucker while we carved.  This was the evening after he got shots and he was having a rough night.  Also the day before he had a big fall on a metal bar which made that lovely bump between his eyes.  He seemed happy enough with his sucker. 

apparently captivated by what was on at Grandma and Grandpa Fullmer's tv.

 On Halloween we headed over to my parents to trick or treat.  My mom had some very fun things planned for Noelle.  They made bandaids out of graham crackers, frosting and red food coloring.  And made witches hats out of chocolate cookies, frosting and chocolate kisses.  After trick-or-treating she did carmel apples.  These tasted so good to me this year.  We ate her famous cheese soup in bread bowls for dinner.  So yummy!  Trick-or-treating was a lot of fun.  Noelle loved it.  Mikey loved it too, but didn't care too much about going up to the doors.  He just wanted to walk around.  I think his costume overheated him a bit.  He's been so tired this week so you could tell he wanted to do more but his body was just not letting him.  He was still super cute and of course so was Noelle.  I thought she would want to go more.  But about halfway through our route she said she wanted to go back.  I asked her why and she said "So I can eat my candy."  This girl definitely has a sweet tooth.  Thanks mom and dad for letting us come over year after year.  We had a fun Halloween!

my little lion.  It was so hard to get pictures with the two of them.  So this is the best I got.  A lion seems to fit him so well :)

fairy princess.  She loved her costume and loved the face paint and pink hair mascara I used.

Not a great picture of the kids but it is of my sister.  You can't see her whole costume but she was Zelda and her "friend" Zach was Link.  They looked awesome!  My brothers loved playing zelda and Michael loved it to.  But all growing up I thought Zelda was a boy.  Shows how much I know.  Michael carved that pumpkin, bottom right, for tay and zach.  Apparently it's called a triforce and a zelda thing.