Elf on the Shelf

We started a fun new tradition this year - Elf on the Shelf. We put in a special order and this super cute guy came to us from the North Pole... by way of Amazon.com.  Every morning when the kids woke up, they got to search for where our elf had hidden during the night.  Sometimes they found him on a shelf or perched high on top of furniture, but other times the girls found that he'd been a little michevous during the night.

One morning he was hanging from the ceiling fan and had made snow angels out of flour.

Another day they found him on top of the refrigerator having a marshmellow snowball fight with some other Christmas friends.

One night he had been busy making paper snowflakes.

The girls laughed their little heads off  (Bailey was even a little freaked out, to be honest) when they found that the elf had gotten into the clean laundry basket and decorated the tree with unmentionables.

 Another night he enjoyed a little entertainment.

This was another gut-buster. Funny little guy. :)

We made play-doh one evening and he helped himself after we all went to bed.

Our little elf had to return back to the North Pole to report to Santa on Christmas Eve day.  When we woke up on his last morning, we found his Nice and Naughty list.

It was a fun month having our visitor from the North Pole and the kids are really excited about looking for him again next year.

Finishing up Fall

 The week before Halloween, our cousins came for a visit and we made our annual visit to the Pumpkin Walk.

We love looking at the pumpkin scenes and the kids love the picture cutouts.

Ended the evening with Pumpkin face pizza.

Kids all ready for the ward Halloween party. (Bailey is in her cooler version of her butterfly costume.)

On Halloween day our cousins came back up for a day of fun and evening trick-or-treating. (My sister makes those amazing costumes!)

Rachel's school Halloween costume parade.

Making oreo spiders.

Getting ready for an evening of trick of treating.

Tooth!

Miss Rachel lost her very first tooth! It came out on 11-11-11.The two bottom front teeth were both loose - one being quite a bit looser than the other. She lost the less loose of the two first.

The really great part; the part that is fits our Rachel's personality to a tee is that she knocked it out. Truly, she was screwing around and jumping around the living room. When I was a kid my mom called it "rough housing."  :)  She was bouncing on the couch with the little nubby part of a balloon in her mouth. She told me later that she was biting that one part and batting the inflated part back and forth with her fists. I'm guessing that the nubby thing caught on her tooth and with one last, strong punch the balloon went flying and yanked her tooth out in the process. She ran into the bathroom to grab a tissue because she could feel something "weird." When she came back into the room she finally felt the little spot with her tongue. I saw it all happen in her very expressive facial expressions. She felt the hole and started to panic. Both of us, like slow-motion turned at the same time and saw a tiny white tooth lying on the couch cushion. I saw pure terror in her eyes, so I jumped up and hugged her cheering about how she lost her first tooth. It only took a second until she was happy about it, too.

Here she is with the offending balloon and her tooth.

She was SO excited to put it under her pillow, but she was also really hoping to take it to school and show her class. Apparently another child in her class had done that. When she realized that it meant prolonging the Tooth Fairy's visit a whole 3 days, she decided to go ahead and put it under her pillow and bag the whole school thing.

The next morning she was thrilled to find a little glitter trail on her bed and a shiny gold dollar under her pillow. Hooray for our girl and the cute window in her teeth!

A Little Bit of Fall

This time I'm not going to even ask you to imagine that it's still months prior. I'm just behind. So, here's an attempt to fill you in on the happenings of Fall.

After Rachel got a clean bill of health, we had her birthday party with her friends. A few of her buddies weren't able to come, but we had some awesome little friends come and had a super time. This year she chose to have a Luau birthday party. They started with an outdoor treasure hunt - which we squeezed in between little rain storms.

The kids found their treasure -- leis, hair flowers, and treats. They played Luau themed games (some of them were a little bit of a stretch, but really, it isn't too hard to impress 5 and 6 year olds...), and ate rainbow cupcakes.

It was a fun party. Rachel has some very sweet little friends and she loves to be with them. Happy 6th Birthday, Rachey!

Another exciting thing that happened right after turning the ripe old age of six, was staring dance lessons. Rach was a little nervous, but decided she loved it the first day.

September also included a trip to the Park/Zoo with our cub scouts. They are a wild, squirrely bunch, but they're great! My kids love it when they get to join in on the fun.

A little bit of resting...

Making some belated birthday beignets

A little more resting

Homecoming Parade for USU! Go AGGIES!

Chillin' and waiting for the parade. Love the Homecoming parade!

Face painting with some cute friends

A trip to our favorite pumpkin patch to pick our Halloween pumpkins.

Painting and carving our jack-o-lanterns.

Rachel's Birthday!

Let's rewind for just a second and pretend it's still September. Since it's now September (again), it's Miss Rachel's birthday month! Hooray for birthdays!

 Rachel got to share her family birthday celebration with her beloved cousins. The only thing better than 1 birthday is 3 birthdays! My sister made the awesome Angry Birds cake and we had a blast celebrating those cute kiddos.  (I love "blowing out the candles" pictures. Cute little puckery lips crack me up. Check out Bailey's little kisser. Heh heh.)

We also met up with Nana for a birthday lunch. Rachel is her father's daughter and loves a buffet, so we met at Golden Corral. We had a fantastic lunch and had a great time with Nana.

So this totally killed me! There was a table of some sweet ladies totally playing cards! You'll note little Bailey's partial head in the bottom corner -- I was pretending to take a pic of her, but wanted a shot of the weekly card game. They were darling and lovely lunchmates, but I just couldn't get over it. So funny! A few of them even brought their own tushie cushions. Completely classy ladies playing cards, sipping their ice water, and nibbling desserts. Love it!

Rachel's "real" birthday was Monday. Saturday evening she started to get sick. It was crazy because she acted just fine one minute, then crawled up onto my lap the next and started to feel warm. She went downhill super fast and had a raging fever by the middle of the night. When, in the wee hours of the morning, her fever hit over 103 degrees, we freaked out a bit. None of my kids had ever had such a high fever. So, instead of church, we spent the day in the ER. The docs were alarmed that her temperature was so high and we had a tough time getting it down. Poor little gal.

The hospital staff was wonderful. They set her all up with movies and treated her like a princess.  She was very sweet and cooperative, but felt miserable. Once they got her fever down, they did a bunch of tests. Long story short: it ended up being really bad strep throat.

The day of Rachel's birthday she was doing a little better, but she was still one sick little gal. She was absolutely devastated that she couldn't go to school and felt too sick to do much. Seriously. Devastated. We're talking 'weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth...'

We really tried to still make the day special for her. A lot of sweet family members called and that cheered her up considerably. Our big outing of the day was a trip to the convenience store to get an Icee.

The day before while we were in the hospital, one of the nurses had asked Rachel what kind of birthday cake she was going to have. While rattling off different flavors of cake, she mentioned an ice cream cake. Rachel's eyes nearly popped out of her head. I don't think she'd ever really grasped the concept of a true ice cream cake. She got it into her little noggin that an ice cream cake would be so very dreamy, and that  was all she wanted for her big day. Normally we wouldn't go out and buy a big ol' ice cream cake, but this little girl has her daddy wrapped around her finger and after being with her in the ER the day before, he went out and brought home this little beauty. 

Aqua Sand. One of those gifts that I kind of knew I might come to regret. So fun, but so messy.

Miss Rachel spent the first 3 days of her birthday week sick. By the end of the week she was, thankfully, able to go school and celebrate her birthday with her Kindergarten class.

We felt badly that Rachel was so sick on her big day, but are so glad that her birthday celebration turned out to be so fantastic! She had so many phone calls, cards, and visits from family and friends, and we had a fun birthday party with her friends the next weekend.

We sure love this girl! We waited an awfully long time for her to join our little family and are so grateful she finally made it. She is a strong little girl with intensity just built in. Rachel has a super sense of humor and is a ton of fun to be with. She's become quite a good reader and a wonderful student. Her teacher told me at parent teacher conferences that she was the only child in her class to get a perfect grade in behavior. We are so proud of our girl and are so grateful she's ours! We love you, Rachel! - A bushel and a peck!