Pumpkin Day

Yesterday was full of pumpkins at our house!

First, Rylee and I did an art project:

J is for Jack-o-lantern(she thought it was funny that the black paper triangles stuck to the glue stick)

Then, the girls and I met Katie and Ava at Thanksgiving Point for their fall festival. The girls had a blast!
They spent a lot of time at the princess section. They LOVED Cinderella's pumpkin carriage! They sat in it...

...behind it...

(this would have been SUCH a cute picture if Rylee were looking at the camera!)

...dressed up and then sat in it again...

...and then sat on the horse "pulling" it.While the big girls did this, I snapped these pictures of our smallest little pumpkin.

Then we went on a hay ride. Ava and Rylee watched with anticipation as the previous hay ride unloaded...

Here they are getting comfyAnd here's the whole gang

It was QUITE the bumpy ride - we all fell off our seats at one point!

Then the big girls spent a long time playing on this big structure that had all kinds of ladders and slides. I think climbing up the rope ladder was their favorite.

By this point, Cailyn was pretty tuckered out.

I wound up taking the girls home and then going back later to actually get pumpkins from the pumpkin patch to bring home - that is NOT a job to do with more kids than adults!

You hear that?

This is Rylee's current favorite thing to ask - whether she hears a helicopter, the microwave beeping, a bird outside, some paper crumple, whatever, she asks "you hear that?"
Right now I am sitting upstairs doing some work and Quinn and Rylee are playing downstairs. The ice maker in our freezer just dropped some ice into the container and, of course,
Rylee said "You hear that?"
Quinn answered "Yeah, what was it?"
Rylee replied "Tinkerbell's Fart!"

That girl sure does make me laugh.

Playing Catch Up

OK, I'm finally sitting down to catch up and post a bunch of pictures from the last several weeks...

We've had quite a few visitors lately. Grandma Joanne and Grandpa Bob (I decided it was easier to tell Rylee to call them that than it would be to confuse her with another Grandma and Grandpa Mac) came out about 3 weeks ago for a high school reunion and stayed with us for one night. Rylee had lots of fun playing with them.They got in Wednesday and stayed until Thursday around noon. Then Grandma and Grandpa Mac flew in Thursday night, and then Quinn flew in from Seattle Friday morning. Rylee was very excited about seeing everyone, but especially her daddy! She hadn't seen him since we were in Seattle a month before. Here are the girls with Quinn at Mi Ranchito where we all ate lunch after picking Quinn up from the airport (Ava was also very excited to see Quinn - she hadn't seen him in 2 months!)
We had a nice weekend mostly just enjoying each other's company around the house. The girls had fun playing with their silly daddy.

This is our family picture on Monday morning, right before we drove Quinn back up to the airport. At this point we thought it would be quite a while before we would see each other again.

Rylee was very sad when we left Quinn at the airport. She cried and kept saying "I HAVE to go to the airport with daddy!"
However, within a few days, circumstances changed and we decided that moving wasn't our best option after all, so Quinn left Thursday evening and drove all night and was home again by Friday morning. Yay! (That's when I posted the video of Rylee singing "I'm so glad when daddy comes home"...)
Anyway, Tuesday after Quinn flew to Seattle, Brett and Allison left with the Bundersons to go to their cabin for the week. Then on Friday (the same day Quinn got back from Seattle with his car) our family and the Bergs drove up to meet them at the cabin where we stayed until Saturday. Then we came back home and Brett and Allison were with us until Tuesday morning. Here are come cute pictures from that week:

At the park:

(I love this one...)

Cousins at the cabin in matching jammies:

This is a face carved into a stump that we saw on our hike by the cabin on Saturday. We also saw a moose, but we weren't close enough to get a good picture of it. At least, not with my little camera.

On Sunday we had a family gathering for all who could attend at the cemetary where Grandpa Clawson is burried. Because of various circumstances, it took a year and a half but we finally got his headstone in place.One of the setbacks ws finding out after the headstone was made that it was too small to meet the cemetary guidelines. So Steve Despain made this beautiful border. I actually am glad that he had to do this, because it turned out beautiful and looks very much like Grandpa.

Rylee thought it was beautiful, too.

On Monday, while Quinn and Josh were working, the rest of us went up Provo Canyon. First to a park...

(notice Cailyn is wearing 2 shoes here)

Then to Sundance, where we rode the chairlift.

I was nervous about Rylee squirming, but she was very excited about the ride so we decided that the best set up would be to have her alone with Grandma and Grandpa, while Katie and I took the other girls on another chair.On the ride up, Cailyn kicked off one of her sandals. Luckily, this was the second to last warm day of the year, so I guess it was good timing.(Crap, I had a picture of Katie and Ava that I thought I uploaded, but instead I uploaded this one of me and Cailyn twice. I can delete pictures, but when I upload them they automatically go to the beginning of the post and I can't move them around, so I'm just going to forget about it.)

On the way back down, Rylee wanted to ride with me, so it was the two of us, Cailyn and Grandpa.

Rylee kept saying "Don't throw me off, k? It make me sad." Funny kid. She had a great time, but the last 5 or 10 minutes, she did get pretty squirmy and was definitely happy to get off. Her little personality is not one that likes to sit still for extended periods of time.

We finished off the afternoon with treats; the girls chose lollipops.

And here's the whole gang. (Notice, Cailyn has only one shoe.)

So that's the story of our family visiting.

In other news, Cailyn has finally figured out how to do a pretty good army crawl, and is much happier because of it. A week or so ago, I set her down in the family room, and next thing I knew she was sitting in the pantry, getting into a box of peaches!

Luckily, it's not too much of an adjustment since we've already done all the childproof locks, etc. for Rylee. Oh, and her first toot finally broke through, right around the same time she started scooting. I guess I'll have to take a picture sometime.

Rylee's latest art project is...

I is for Ice Cream

She says and does funny things every day. Yesterday, she walked into my room holding her little monkey. She informed me that Cookie Monster was sitting in time out because he had bonked the monkey's head. She was comforting the monkey. Then, she went over to the stairs, where Cookie Monster was sitting and talked with him. She said "Cookie Monster, you be nice. You stay there a while."

Today she went to her friend, Zara's birthday party. It was a dress up party, so she wore her Tinkerbell dress. When I got there to pick her up, they were doing a pinata. Afterwards, they had all the kids sit together to take a picture. The rest of the kids smiled and posed for the picture, but Rylee was too busy opening and eating her candy to care. She was most excited about the bubble gum - probably because I never let her have any since she has swallowed it every time I've let her try to chew gum. I decided to just let her enjoy her treasures, so she swallowed probably between 5 and 10 pieces of gum this afternoon. Oh well!

Thanks, Grandmas!

Our girls are lucky to frequently get fun and cute things from their grandmas. Here's what they got this week:

Grandma Karen sent some money for Rylee to go get some boots. (Since it's been cold lately, Rylee also would like to get some slippers with the money, but we haven't found any yet. Considering that she takes her clothes, socks and jammies off several times a day and then whines "It's so cold!" I'm thinking it's probably not that urgent anyway!) Anyway, here she is modeling her boots.

Grandma Mac got this cute little giraffe hoodie for Cailyn. (Luckily, she doesn't know how to undress herself yet, so I think it will keep her nice and snuggly.)

Thank you Grandmas!

Speaking of grandmas, that reminds me of a cute little thing Rylee said today. She loves her grandparents and talks about them frequently. Today, we walked down the street with our neighbors to wait for Abby to get off the bus from kindergarten. While we were standing there, our other neighbors opened their garage and pulled out. Sally (our neighbor, Abby's mom) told the kids "Stay on the sidewalk, Grant and Carolyn are coming." Rylee got excited and said "That's Grandma Karen coming?!"