For our family, the first two weeks of October are one continual birthday celebration! This year (just in our immediate family) we had Logan and Emmett’s birthdays, lunch with daddy at Red Robin, a combined birthday party for them, Madeline stating on solids, a visit from Grandma Sharon, a train ride and a couple of different pumpkin patch trips (with a cider pressing in there somewhere too.).  Everyone took the craziness in stride and it has been an October to remember!

Logan’s birthday

Logan and Emmett’s birthday party

Madeline starts eating solids!

Emmett’s birthday

Pumpkin patches with Grandma Sharon

And the train ride on Mt.Rainier Scenic Railroad

Yeesh! What a wild and crazy October! And there is more to come! We also had family pictures taken, which I will share when they become available. And then, don’t forget all the halloween excitement that is yet to come! Wow, what a month!

Better late than never but, I tell you, we have had a WILD couple of weeks! Here is Emmett’s birthday interview. Enjoy

How old are you? 3 years old!

What makes you happy? Playing with Becca and Natalie and my friends!

What is your favorite animal? um…a COW!

What is your favorite thing to eat? Logan…no, chickens…no, toast!

What is your favorite thing to do? make tracks for my train

What is your favorite TV show? Wild Kratts

What are you really good at? cleaning up my toys

What is your favorite movie? Chicken Run

What is your favorite color? Red

What is your favorite song? Popcorn Popping

Who is your best friend? Logan

What do you and your Mom do together? tickle!

What do you and your Dad do together? Daddy gives me piggy-back rides and horsey rides

What is your favorite sport? basketball

Where is your favorite place to go? the park

What is your favorite book? 5 little ducks say quack quack quack

What do you want to be when you grow up? a fighter-fighter (that’s firefighter in Emmett speak)

Emmett is such an awesome kid! He makes us laugh all the time and I can’t believe that he is getting so big!

Today is Logan’s 5th birthday! I want to try to keep better track of where each of my kids are and what they are like on their birthdays by having them answer a few questions every year. We will see how long that lasts.

How old are you? 5 years old!

What makes you happy? Playing at grandma’s house

What is your favorite animal? A pig. That’s a farm animal.

What is your favorite thing to eat? I love to eat spaghetti for dinner.

What is your favorite thing to do? Jumping on the trampoline at Grandma’s house.

What is your favorite TV show? The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That

What are you really good at? I am good at reading.

What is your favorite movie? Chicken Run

What is your favorite color? Blue and Red and Black

What is your favorite song? Popcorn Popping and Follow the Prophet

Who is your best friend? Emmett and Payton

What do you and your Mom do together? pick fruits and vegetables that are ready to eat. (I swear that is what he really said!)

What do you and your Dad do together? Play Chutes and Ladders

What is your favorite sport? playing football, at grandma’s house, in the front yard.

Where is your favorite place to go? Kids Castle

What is your favorite book? Green Eggs and Ham

What do you want to be when you grow up? A dragon killer, a missionary, and a pom pom maker.

I sure love this boy! He is the coolest kid I know.

(I found the birthday questionnaire at www.leeloublogs.blogspot.com)

So we went BACK to Island Park for a week with Eric’s family this time. Can you tell how much we like going there? We did some wake boarding, tubing, roasting marshmallows in the fire, visiting the fish (and birds) at Big Springs, having a lovely time with family, and eating way too much delicious food.

Most of our summer has been spent either traveling or lazing around the house. Personally, I am still a little scared to go out in public alone with a newborn and two crazy boys. So we had a really low key summer. Here are some of our random moments. Mostly pictures of Madeline and her first smiles.

Madeline and her “skinny” jeans

Madeline loving her Bumbo chair

Miss Madeline modeling her swimming suits

We made a QUICK trip back from our Waite reunion so that we could be back to church on Sunday for Madeline’s blessing. What a great day with all our family and friends! Unfortunately, we were all tired and a little frazzled so we didn’t get any super pictures of miss Madeline in her dress. And the kids were climbing on trees. It was a crazy and memorable day!

So we were in charge of our Waite family reunion this time around. We were mean and made everyone DRIVE from AZ or CA up here to the Northwest. We took everyone to one of our favorite spots to vacation–Island Park, ID! We had a blast going into Yellowstone (no bears–sorry Katie), visiting Eric’s grandma at the lake, playing with cousins (12 kids, with two sets of two year old twin boys. It was definitely an adventure!), and just having a great time spending time together. Thanks Waites for making the trip!

I took Logan and Emmett to our ward fathers and sons camp out Friday night. It was a fun adventure. We started by following directions that led us to a snow covered road at the summit of White Pass. I’m pretty sure the poor Civic, which can barely make it out of the driveway when there is an inch of snow, wasn’t going to make it down this road. Turns out we were supposed to turn about 20 miles earlier. We finally found our way and got to the campsite. We had sloppy joes for dinner and s’mores for dessert.

In the morning we ventured down to the zip line that a ward member brought up. I wasn’t really planning to let the kids try it, but Logan did it without my permission (typical Logan…) and once Emmett saw Logan do it he wanted to do it too. He won the argument and we got it on video.

Logan on Zip Line

Emmett on Zip Line

After some pestering by my mother, I am finally getting around to posting some “real” pictures of Miss Madeline. She will 4 weeks old this week. I can’t believe it. It seems like time goes SO SLOW just before a  baby is born and then after the birth, time races to catch up. I always feel like a lose a month or so.

Anyway, we are all doing great! Madeline is so sweet and adorable. I just can’t get enough of her. She loves to cuddle which is good and bad. I love to just sit on the couch and hold her but then I never seem to get anything else done. Oh well. It is a sacrifice I am willing to make. She is sleeping pretty good too. She usually wakes up once in the night and still spend much of the day asleep.

Logan and Emmett have been doing really well with the transition too. Logan is very “motherly” with Madeline and likes to try to sooth her if she cries. To be honest, Emmett has had a few jealous moments, but nothing huge so far. Mostly he just gets a little tired of me holding her and neglecting him so he will try to climb in my lap too. Who can blame the little guy?

Anyway, here are the pics!

Bath time

And a funny one of Emmett, taken by Logan.

With all the attention on Madeline lately, I wanted to change focus a little and write down some of the fun things that Logan and Emmett are doing right now.  They are both at really fun ages and are learning a growing so much! It is one of those things where I know I will forget all the funny things they do so I want to write it down before things get even busier around here. So this post is mostly for me and the grandmas.

Logan is4 1/2 years old and is the smartest kid in the world. In the last couple of weeks he has learned to read and I am not really sure how he did it. To be honest, I think he got it from PBS shows like “Word World” and getting tired of asking me what everything said. We have been working with him a on it off and on but then, one day he just decided that he wanted to learn how to do it, so he did. He loves going to preschool and is already looking forward to kindergarten (even though he will do one more year of preschool before he is old enough). Here are some bullet points of things he likes or does on a regular basis

• He has really gotten into pretending and making up his own games. Each game has some funny and very descriptive name. He’ll say, “Mom, we are playing the ‘Throw Bear Off the Bunk Bed’ game”
• We got him a clock in his room because he started getting up at 5 am after the daylight savings switch. So we told him that he needed to stay in his bed until the first number on his clock was a 7. Well, now he just wakes up sometime after 6, wakes Emmett up and they play in their room until 7. Then, usually at 7:01 he comes running into our room yelling “Mom! I saw the number on my clock and it was a 7!” It is the same thing every morning.
• He eats a ham and cheese sandwich every single day for lunch. When we run out of ham and he has to have turkey, he handles it pretty well, but he is always glad to get back to his ham and cheese routine.
• He always wants to know if the food he is eating has “good sugar or bad sugar” and what foods are carbohydrates and proteins.
• If you ask him what he wants for dinner, he will always say, “Hmm… I love spaghetti.”
• He loves doing puzzles and board games
• I love watching him figure things out. You can almost see his little mind working.
• He had a nickname for the baby, Bowie Fowie. He said Bowie is because girls were bows and he was on a rhyming kick that day so Fowie rhymed with Bowie.  He insisted until the day she was born that her name was going to be Bowie Fowie. He said, “Mommy, Daddy and Emmett can call her a different name, but i am going to name her Bowie Fowie.” Luckily, he has gotten past it and has learned to call her Madeline, but I still sometimes slip and call her Bowie Fowie without thinking.
• Logan gets so excited for any holiday. I love to tell him about it a week or so in advance because i love seeing  the anticipation build. it really doesn’t matter what the holiday is. He gets equally excited for Christmas or St. Patrick’s Day. It is so fun. He comes running into the room yelling “Happy Groundhog’s Day” likr there is nothing better than being able to celebrate groundhogs.

Emmett is 2 1/2 and is a sweetheart. He is really starting to talk more clearly now and says the funniest things. Usually he will just repeat anything that Logan says. He is very easy-going and usually pretty well-behaved.

• He loves cars and trains and fire trucks. When he is playing with his cars, he likes to line them all up side by side on a chair or couch and then move them all over to the other side until they are all lined up again. This activity will keep him entertained for a really long time!
• He pretty much knows all the letters and is still learning colors and shapes.
• He still loves his stuffed giraffe and sleeps with it every night. He wants to take it with us wherever we go but I usually make him leave it in the car
• He likes to sing. His favorite songs are “the Wheels on the Bus,” “the Wise Man and the Foolish Man,” and “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” but he will also sing along with whatever movie he is watching
• He likes to tell us “I love you” but it really comes out sounding like “I hate you” so we have been trying to get him to say “Love” more clearly with limited success
• When Eric is home in the mornings, Emmett likes to sit on his lap and eat breakfast with him.
• He is kind of a picky eater, but he loves cheese and crackers. Mostly cheese.  And he drinks milk like crazy
• He likes to climb up onto Logan’s bed (the top bunk) but is too scared to come down by himself so we usually have to go get him down
• If he is mad about something, all we really have to do to calm him down is ask him what he wants, restate it back to him and then tell him if or when he will get what he want. Like if he starts crying I’ll say, “Emmett, do you want to play with your truck?” He says “Yeah.” I say, “OK we are having lunch right now but you can play with your truck after lunch OK?” “OK.” And he is fine after that. It works every single time without fail. Easiest kid in the world.

They both play really well together and Emmett always wants to do whatever Logan is doing. They like to run around with their big trucks racing up and down the hallway. They really are best friends right now and I love it. If they are playing with other kids and someone picks on one of them, they are always quick to come to the others aid.  Sometimes these boys drive me nuts and make me want to lock myself in the bathroom and cry… but usually we have a good time and they make me very happy to be their mother.