Happy Halloween

In picture... Cara so excited to start trick or treating that she can't sit still.

 Ryann knows that she will be allowed to eat more candy the more she pleases her parents. 

 2 cute pictures of her? awesome. That's my girl. 

 Cara not even holding still to eat her candy. And boy did she eat it. 

Tomorrow I will do a more play by play of how our Halloween went. 

For now I need to rest up because I am on call the next 4 or 5 days...

Face Paint: After

This is what happens when the parents walk away from the face paint and the kids go at it again. Thankfully I only had 1 child go crazy with the paint... we are still scrubbing it off, 3 baths later.

 She is just in heaven. 

Face Paint: Before

At the party we had face paint this year. I didn't know it was going to be such a hit.  The girls loved their butterflies.

 This year was also a lot of fun because #1, it was in the shade and #2 the girls were finally old enough to clean out their own "pumpkin guts!"

Long Day

It was such a blast. Seriously we are exhausted and had so much fun. I have about 100 pictures to go through, but for now I will just post this...

Hiking Again

Now that it is cooling down we are spending more time hiking. Rich has actually been hiking almost every day since starting his new job working from home. 

Here is Ryann showing off her new horse shirt. 

Cara being goofy.

I told Ryann to make a silly face and she said, "ah, don't look at me!" and did this little pose. 

My sweethearts. 

Pumpkin Patch

Obviously in my house we are all over this Halloween business. Usually we spend a whole day to take a trip to the pumpkin patch... well, since things have been somewhat crazy around here we only made it to a small roadside one so far. 

 The girls didn't seem to notice that it wasn't a very good one, or even awesome. They liked the straw/hay throne, the skeleton, and picking out whatever pumpkin they wanted. 

 We spent a total of $3. 

My wallet is so happy that the girls don't think "bigger is better."

Trunk or Treating

YMCA style!

 Every year our local YMCA does trunk or treating. So the girls grabbed their pumpkins and costumes and off we went.

Cara could hardly contain her excitement.

PLEASE HURRY MOM! Lets go now or I am gonna DIE! (says Cara)

 Then we meet up with some wonderful friends. 

 We find a spooky skeleton. 

 The girls leave happy and with a sugar high.

And dad is happy to leave so he can watch the Giants win again!

Fall Break Book

Ryann spent some time this week in school writing her first book. It was her fall break book. 

One page said, "I sf u bfflu" which translates to "I saved a butterfly" (remember the ants really saved it, but Ryann was the one who told them to save it?)

 Another page said, "I go to the mofi" which translates to "I go to the movies" and it is a picture of Ryann and her dad (with facial hair) sitting on the chairs with their popcorn and drinks watching a movie. 

 The next one I am sure says I went on a walk. 

 "I go to swmn", which is a picture of us swimming at the Baker's house. I think the person on the side of the pool must be Lisa Baker. :)

 "I go to the prk" or I go to the park.

Basically Ryann needs to work on her vowels, she is getting good at her sight words, but the whole sounding out words thing is pretty tough still. We are getting there and we are spending a lot more time reading with her, so hopefully she gets it all soon.

She is also working on punctuation... so I am not sure if those are all commas or question marks?

It is really amazing to me how this mind works. I sure love her.

Nordstroms

I am a big fan of Nordstroms. I know it is all expensive, but I seriously think their service is AMAZING! 

This past weekend I had the girls with me and I needed to get some new makeup. There are a lot of places to go, but I needed something that someone could show me how to use and hopefully somewhere the girls would be okay. 

I got to Nordstroms right as it opened. I went back to my favorite makeup counter (STILA) and it happened to be the farthest away from people. It was close to the edge of the store and I seriously thought I hit the jackpot. The girl at the counter was probably going crazy with how wild (not that wild, but wild enough for a public place) my girls were but she did not show it one bit. She was sweet to them, talked to them, and laughed when they were being cute. I bribed and pleaded and kept them entertained and actually they were really well behaved for most of the time, but towards the end they were getting a little antsy.

(FYI, they never ran away, stole anything, knocked anything over, fought or tried on makeup. They seriously were super good for 3 and 5 year old girls in a makeup store!!)

So the sweet girl offered them a couple make up brushes to play with. Then she told them to look at the perfume and any one they wanted she would give them their own sample of so they could smell pretty.

They were amazing after that. 

Ryann picked Katy Perry.

Cara picked Justin Bieber. They were so excited and love putting on their perfume every morning. 

I left 45 minutes later with my makeup all done up, happy girls, and new makeup in hand. Seriously I couldn't have asked for a better experience with both of my girls with me. 

I couldn't have done it without Stephanie and the Stila counter in Chandler. 

Dead Butterfly

This morning I took the girls on a walk to get them out of the house so daddy could sleep some more. We were walking and when we crossed the street Ryann saw a dead butterfly in the middle of the road. 

Now this girl LOVES butterflies. 

She was so distraught that the butterfly was going to be run over by a car. I tried to tell her that it didn't matter because the butterfly was already dead, but she insisted that we needed to bring it back to our house for a proper burial. In a jar. Basically she wanted to keep the dead butterfly in a jar so she could look at it. Gross. 

Anyway, I caved. We went back home and got an envelope to carry the butterfly back in. We walked back to the street and we realized that the ants had already started swarming the butterfly, trying to take it away.

Thankfully Moms think quick on their feet. I tell Ryann that the ants are working together to save the butterfly. They are going to carry it out of the street and back to somewhere safe.

Ryann accepts that, but then panics, realizing that they might not know where to take the butterfly or that they might not get it moved fast enough.  She stands on the corner and yells, "ANTSIES! Take the butterfly to a beautiful flower. AND HURRY! Look both ways for cars before you cross the street."

On the walk home from the butterfly she proceeds to find every ant she can to make sure it knew to go help the other ants take the butterfly to nice a flower. Here is a cute little video of her doing it. Sorry it is sideways.

Thankful, sort of.

There are a lot of things I am thankful for this week. 

Like for scissors. Which means Cara is learning how to use her fine motor skills, and also means she is learning how to cut open packages of fruit snacks, like LOTS of fruit snacks. 

I am thankful for my acupuncture session I went to today. Which means I am learning cool things about Eastern Medicine, balance, energy, and how the things we eat really effect our body, and it also means I have really bad acne that acupuncture is hopefully going to help because everything else I have tried in 5 months hasn't helped. 

I am thankful for layovers in the Phoenix airport. Seriously, if you are coming through Phoenix, for 1 hour or for 10... please call me!  Devyn and baby Hazel came today and we ate dinner with them and I got to snuggle Hazel, which also means that we paid ridiculous amounts of money for french fries that Cara wouldn't eat. What kind of kid won't eat french fries?

I am thankful for these silly faces. They light up my world. Especially when I come home from a birth at 2 in the morning and I see one of them snuggled up to their daddy in my spot in the bed, which also means I am going to get poked in the eye once or twice before I have to wake up in a couple hours.

I am thankful for my girls saying their prayers every day. I love that they pray for mommy to have a baby and for mommy's pimples to go away so she isn't ugly and she can be beautiful again. But seriously, the first time they said this I cried, now I try to not laugh out loud. These prayers are sweet, but I really need to teach them some social skills so that they don't go around to other people who have pimples and tell them they are ugly.

(i swear we don't just talk about my acne every day... we talk a lot about unicorns and horses and Cara's imaginary friends that she promises are real and not pretend.)

I am thankful when I was telling Cara all about the day she was born she got angry at me because Ryann wasn't there when she was born. I also am thankful that she chastised me for not letting anyone else hold her for the first hour that she was born. She said, "MOM! We need to take turns. You have to take turns. Why didn't you take turns??"

I am thankful for the amazing family pictures we had taken, but now I have the daunting task of picking which ones will go up in our house and which ones to order for Grandma and Christmas presents and all of that. 

I am thankful that my holiday plans are focused around my little brother and his plans for Christmas. REALLY? When did he get so important?  Oh wait, because he is Zach and everyone loves him and he is the shining star and I have missed him so much for the past 2 Christmases that if he told me he was going to Iceland for Christmas this year then I would be there...

I am thankful for all the babies being born, which helps with job security and to support my family, but also leads to lack of sleep which leads to emotional Brittani which leads to these blog posts where I jokingly complain the entire time I write, when in all reality I am sitting here crying because all I can think about is how much I miss my family but am so in love with my family here at home in Arizona. 

But really. I am blessed beyond belief at this time in my life. I wish I could be there and be more of a support to my family who needs me, but I know that they know I love them. And now I am off. to. bed. goodnight.

I can't handle it...

Seriously, I can't handle the fact that I have about 100 pictures sitting in my inbox getting ready to be sent off to Costco to be printed and then framed and hung in my house. 

I can't decide which ones are my favorite. I can't decide if I want them in color or black and white. I can't decide why Ryann wasn't more cooperative and gave more smiles instead of her "coy" look. Who told her that her cute mini smile is better than her big beautiful teeth smile?  Either way, I am addicted to looking at these pictures and I seriously can't decide what pictures to order.  Wait, you want to order??  I will send you the link to check out all the pictures if you want. 

Progression of a Bike Ride

First Cara pushes her trike up the hill. 

 Then she kicks off her flip flops because she thinks it makes it too hard to pedal. 

 She has focus and determination.

 Super cute. 

 Wooo Hooo!

Then she realizes mommy is taking pictures so she sticks out her tongue. 

 Silly face.

 Stink Face. 

 Cheesy Grin!

Class Shirt

Ryann got her class shirt this week. She wouldn't smile for the camera, but she sure likes her new shirt. We also LOVE her teacher. This week she was out for 2 days and our great friend Lisa substituted for her, which Ryann loved. 

We are so lucky to be in such a great school district and school. Way to go for Kindergarten!

Paint Blanket

Ryann came home covered in paint today. On her head, leg, arms, and her shirt. 

Rich asked her if she painted today, she said no.  Seriously? She told us that a paint blanket attacked her. Actually she went on to explain that she picked up a blanket with paint on it that wasn't dry. But the first part about the blanket attacking her cracked us up.

 Then this picture is of Cara when I took her to McDonalds. She got an ice cream cone and told me she loved me... AHHHH!

Cute stuff these girls are.