Amy's Clever...

Amy's favorite phrase, which she repeats ALL DAY LONG EVERYDAY, is "I'm hungry." A couple days ago she used this phrase on me for the 100th time, and I finally said, "Amy, if you say you're hungry one more time, you're going to time out." She looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "um... I want some food." Clever Amy... very clever.

Cute Kids!

Here are some random pictures of the kids that I just thought were so cute.

Matthew and Amy have become really good friends as he's gotten older. He is 5 months old now and quite proficient at rolling over, smiling, giggling, sitting up with help, grabbing things, etc. He also eats rice cereal now too. We can't believe how big he's getting, although he has stayed much slimer than Amy was at this age! Amy loves having him around and will often ask if I will let him play downstairs with her. I take him down and let him lay on the floor while she plays with her toys around him. It's so cute!

Amy wanted to fish one day, so I put together a makeshift rod and made little fish with paperclips to catch them.

Amy loves to play with Matthew. She perches by his walker a lot!

Matthew loves his walker and has gotten really good at flipping the toys around on it.

Yum! Rice cereal.

He looks so big here!

Best friends!

We were waiting to meet Mike for lunch one day, and he was going to be a little bit, so I let Amy run around in a grass patch in front of his office. She was having so much fun and I got these super cute pictures of her.

I realize this one is blurry, but it's my favorite!

Matthew's favorite movie is the Lion King Sing-Along Songs movie, especially the Lion King songs. However, he is very picky about which songs on the movie he likes. Sometimes he tolerates them all, but a lot of times he does this when The Little Mermaid comes on:

ABC... Amy's Turning 3!

My little girl turned 3 on Monday, November 2nd! Where does the time go? I swear she was just born! Wow. Well, we had a really great day! We spent the morning getting some birthday supplies, and made her birthday cake. She also ate all the halloween candy she could, since we implemented a no limit rule for her birthday. Then we met up with Mike for lunch at Red Robin. After an afternoon of running errands, including picking up her bike without her seeing it! I'm sneaky like that!

When Mike got home that night, we had a dinner of sweet and sour chicken (she loves rice, sauce, and pineapple!), then on to the birthday party! We opened all her presents, which included an animal set from Grandma and Grandpa Laudie, a birthday cake set and lacing set from Grandma and Grandpa Lewis, an electronic alphabet thing, a paint thing that hooks up to the computer, cereal, silly string, and her new bike. She was definitely spoiled!

We did a little singing, a little candle blowing, and a little cake eating to finish the night. Definitely a full day!

The night ended with a reinactment of "The Berenstein Bears: Too Much Birthday," meaning she burst into tears about not getting to keep playing but being so tired but wanting more cake. She was much happier the next day with all her new toys though. She's having a birthday party on Saturday with all her friends, so more pictures will come! Thanks for all the birthday wishes! Happy Birthday Baby!

I Love Coupons!

I had my best coupon shopping trip of my entire life last week! I bought over $100 worth of stuff for $5! Holy Cow! It was awesome! Thank you Kroger!

Daddy's Special Violin

Mike has been amazing about finding an orchestra to play in, no matter where we live. When we were considering moving to Ohio, we googled community orchestras and found the Miami Valley Symphony. What a find! They had their first concert of the season on the 24th-25th of October and it was FANTASTIC! Mike played so well and the group sounded great as a whole! Way to go Mike!

Boo to You!

It is Halloween time again! I LOVE Halloween! I love the decorations, the weather (at least in Ohio), the costumes, the candy, the fun! It's all so great! Here is what we were up to this Halloween...
Amy got a couple of Halloween packages in the mail! The first came from Grandma and Grandpa Lewis full of candies and toys and goodies! The funny thing about this was, we ended up with a few things that weren't supposed to be in our box and we were missing a few things that were... apparently the box opened up at the post office and they just shoved stuff back into whatever boxes were sitting there. Nonetheless, great prizes! A few days later we got another package from Grandma and Grandpa Laudie, full of socks and books and note pads! I have to say, I love that my mother-in-law sends me magnetic notepads. There is always one on my fridge and I definitely use them. I really don't know how I lived without them before!

Mike and I have a funny love for cornmazes. The reason? Who knows. Maybe it's because our last date with other people was at the same corn maze on the same night, just a couple weeks before Halloween (we started dating the next week). Whatever the reason, Mike found a cornmaze just a couple miles from our house (Adventure Acres) and planned a family trip to it.

It was definitely colder than we had expected... Matthew was a good sport, as we kept trying to wrap the blanket on his head. We started off just letting Amy lead us around. This ended up being a good idea, as she led us to the first 3 markers in a row! After we took over, we did get lost for a while, but eventually found our way out. All and all, fun was had by all and we will definitely do it again. The leaves are as big as our head!

Matthew did crash for a little bit

Peek-a-Boo!

It was a tradition in my family (as I'm sure it is in a lot of families) to carve pumpkins the FHE before Halloween, so that's what we did. Amy helped clean them out, then headed off to bed and left dad and mom to do the carving work. It was nice to have such good weather so that we didn't have to worry about our pumpkins getting gross. Mike's still shriveled a bit, but it didn't melt the way they did in AZ.

Eww!

The serious artist

I did the scary halloween face on the left. Mike did the graveyard on the right.

Now, the main feature: Costumes! I decided to make Matthew a frog for Halloween, since my family was constantly telling me that's what he looked like with his skinny frog legs and big frog eyes. I stole the main costume idea from Nikki - I made Matthew the frog prince and Amy the princess. I decided to be ambitious and make Amy's costume. It turned out really cute, but definitely needs some fixing up (I'm still learning! Next time mom comes to visit I'll have her help me!). Nevertheless, it held up well for the ward party and trick-or-treating, and it looked cute in the pictures, and that's what's important! Matthew's I found for $3, so I just bought his and added a crown.Mike and I were planning on going as Mario and Princess again this year, but my dress needed a new bodice made (it was held together by safety pins last time), and I just ran out of time between Amy's costume and planning the ward party, so I pulled out an old stand-by (Raggedy Ann). When we were first married, I was able to talk Mike into going as Raggedy Andy with me, but now that we're an old married couple, he doesn't love me quite as much as he used to, so he decided he would still go as Mario. Party Pooper. Oh well, it was still fun to dress up.

The wanna-be seamstress at work.

Look at those frog toes!

Mario and Princess

So, the most time-consuming party of my Halloween this year was planning the Ward Halloween Trunk-or-Treat and Chili Cook-off. I think it was a huge success! I got a lot of compliments and apparently there were more people at this event than had ever shown up at the ward parties before! We even had to set up 2 more tables during the party because we just didn't have enough seats! There were a couple things that I was really proud of. The first was my really cute photo backdrop. Unfortunately, it wasn't used by as many people as I had hoped, and I don't think everyone realized I had a camera and would be taking the pictures for them, but it was still super cute. I was also proud of myself for finally getting a hold of the Dayton Daily News and rounding up a couple end rolls of paper (for free!) to cover the tables with. This way I didn't have to spend money on tablecloths, and people could just color on the tables while they were visiting or waiting for the trick-or-treating.

The games turned out pretty well. I wish we had a bigger space to use because I had to kind of spread out the games around the edge of the room, but they still worked well. We had a cupcake walk, a sucker tree (the kids made ghosts out of the suckers), pin the nose on Jack, a bean bag toss, a ring toss on pumpkins, and pumpkin bowling (with pie pumpkins). Thanks so much to everyone who stepped in last minute to help run the games! You guys were great! And a huge thank you to those of you who stuck around to help clean up! Holy cow was that great!

Amy loves hymn books. She was entertaining herself before the party started.

The food table

The drink and game table (guess the number of pumpkin seeds, vote for the best jack-o-lantern, and halloween puzzles)

Pin the nose on Jack and Bean Bag toss... I'm such an artist! Or not.

Picture Backdrop

Sucker tree and craft area (pick a sucker off the tree, wrap a tissue around it, tie it with a string, and put eyes on it)

Coloring on the tablecloths

Happy Halloweeny family

Mike was a good sport and took care of Matthew the whole night while I ran around like crazy.Ring toss (left) and Bean bag toss (right)

Pumpkin Bowling

These brothers and sisters showed up early and Amy adopted them. She kept returning to their table all night long and sitting on their laps.

On Halloween (called Beggar's night out here), we spent the day getting ready for some Halloween fun. We started off with pancakes for breakfast, in the shape of pumpkins (I wasn't brave enough to try pumpkin-flavored pancakes... I wasn't sure Mike or Amy would eat them. Maybe next year). We went to Chipotle and got our "Boo"ritos (if you dress up like a burrito, or wear tinfoil anywhere on your body, you get a free burrito! We did the kids too (the manager came out and took a picture of Matthew because they thought it was so funny! We walked away with 4 free burritos!).

We went to the library for a little bit, picked up our Jack-o-Lantern pizza from Papa Murphy's, got some dry ice for our rootbeer, and then came home to get ready for Trick-or-Treating.


Amy liked waving her hand in the smoke.
Amy definitely made bank and had a blast going up to everyone. I was very proud that she said thank you after everyone gave her a piece of candy. That's my girl! I learned that Amy is terrified of Halloween masks though. When we had been at Wal-Mart a week before, Mike had put on a really scary mask and she FREAKED OUT. Well, when she was standing at a door trick-or-treating, a kid in a spiderman outfit came to the same door and she just looked back at me and started bawling. He totally terrified her. I told her it was just a kid being silly, but when she saw one of my primary kids dressed up like Spiderman later, she told me it was the "Scary Spider." After we were done trick-or-treating, we ate some pizza and rootbeer (and candy of course!) and sent the kids to bed. Mike and I watched Mr. Boogedy and Bride of Boogedy (gotta love it!) and raided some of Amy's candy! I think it was a really fun Halloween!