finally carved pumpkins!

I got the girls all cute halloween shirts. This one says "daddy's little monster", so I had to get it, even though it isn't very girly. so I clipped a bow on her hat. hanging out with Kiersten. This is the day Kiersten started getting a runny nose, and Evie started coughing. We have all been sick the rest of the week, except for Ben and Kara.

Kara cleaning out her pumpkin brains. it took her a really long time.

I was so sick last night, so Ben did most of the carving. I did help a little with Kara's pumpkin though. This is the first time we have used templates for the faces. The girls picked which ones they wanted to do.

Kiersten's creation. silly girl, she just wanted hers to look happy.

and Kara loved her spooky one.

glowing on the porch for all the neighborhood to enjoy.

Kara got to wear her costume to school today for their halloween party. She really wanted her hair curled, but I woke up late and didn't have much time, so I didn't do that great a job. It will probably be flat by the time she gets home. But she was super cute and super excited this morning.

Evie finlly fits into Ben's FAVORITE baby outfit!!! hooray!

10/27/10

I have a lot of pictures today, so this might be a little long. First, a few months ago, Ben challenged Kara to stop having accidents at night. He said if she could go 30 days without an accident, he would buy her a nintendo DS. Her first attempt lasted 7 days, then she had one accident, so we started over, and she went 8 days before having another accident. We encouraged her to try again, and she was at 27 days. She was devastated saturday morning to tell me she had an accident that night. She begged me not to tell Daddy, so I had a talk with her about honesty and how imprtant it is to tell the truth. So when Ben woke up, she sadly told him about the accident. He felt bad because he had let her stay up late watching him play nintendo, and she fell asleep on the couch. He put her in her bed without waking her to go to the bathroom. So he told her he was very proud of her for going this long, and only having the 3 accidents. So he let her have the DS anyway. I was kinda glad because it reinforced my telling her that good things happen when you tell the truth. Kiersten's hair is long enough to curl now. I never curled Kara's at this age, because it was naturally curly. Kiersten and I had a lot of fun doing her hair that morning.

scary vampire.

and now a few cute Evie pictures. I love this jacket. All 3 girls haveworn it, and it is starting to look a little tattered.

one of my favorite Evie pics ever.

Kara holds Evie any time I will let her. A few times she has picked her up without permission, but she usually remembers to ask me.

she still hates being inthe carseat. I'm sad she is about to outgrow this hat she got from Nancy.

yesterday Kara asked if we could have an ice cream party after dinner. I thought it was a good idea, so we bought a bunch of candies and ice cream toppings. When Ben got home from work, she gave him this invitation. It's a little hard to understand, as she still spells phonetically. it says, "dad please come to my party. it is a ice cream party. Karalee Miller, I love you Dad."

getting the ice cream party all set up. The girls were eating candy the whole time, before they even saw any ice cream.

Ben's tasty treat

my bowl. I barely put in any candy, and I still could barely finish. I guess that's what happens when you don't eat candy very often. We all had a hard time finishing.

Kiersten actually ate most of her candy, and all of her ice cream. She definitely has a sweet tooth. Whenever I ask what she wants for dinner or lunch, she always says, "candy!" of course, I don't usually let her have any. She definitely took advantage of this special occasion. She kept eating the candy out of her bowl, and then replacing it with more.

Although this was Kara's idea, I think she ate the least sweets. She said she was done, and there was still some ice cream left, and almost all the candy she had taken was still left, so it was a bit of a waste. For next time, I know it would be better to use plain ice cream without nuts or chocolate in it. And also, I know we don't need chocolate syrup and caramel with all that other sugar.

poor Evie didn't get any.

some silly faces to end with.

wiggle worm

Evie is such a little traveler lately. Now that she can roll onto her belly, she doesn't spend as much time scooting around on her back. Her bald spot in the back is starting to fill back in. But now she is trying to figure out how to get around on her belly. Ben thinks she'll be crawling soon. I think she doesn't quite get it, and it will be another couple months before she does. But she is definitely trying to figure it out. Here is a short video.

haunted house

The girls got to decorate a haunted gingerbread house. I let them decorate the ghost cookies and just eat them, rather than attatching them to the house. Here is Karalee's ghost cookie. Kiersten decorated this tombstone. I kept telling her not to eat the candy and icing, but as you can see, she did anyway.

Kara was so proud of this side of the house. She keeps reminding us about the spider she put there.

It's hard for me to not be a perfectionist and do it myself, but I really tried to let the girls do most of the decorating, and not worry about if it was perfect. They don't always do it how I would, but I probably wouldn't be decorating a haunted house at all, if not for them. Here is how it turned out. I did take over the front door and part of the roof, but they put on all the candy.

here we are with black tongues after eating the leftover candy. Kiersten kept going into the bathroom to stare at hers in the mirror.

chomper

can you tell what this is a picture of? you might guess that is Kara's arm, and Kiersten has bitten her, but you'd be wrong. This is Kiersten's arm. My 4 year old, non violent Kara bit Kiersten this morning! it really was shocking because Kara doesn't usually bite. I actually can't even think of one time she has bitten someone, even when she was little. And she is not violent. Kiersten is definitely our litle bully. She hits, kicks, and pushes Kara all the time. Kara usually doesn't retaliate physically, but she cries and tattles. So I was surprised when Kiersten came to me crying and showed me her arm saying Kara bit her. My first thought was, "kara wouldn't bite her sister". and I even had a split second of thinking it was the cat, or maybe Kiersten had bitten herself to get Kara in trouble. but those were obviously ridiculous possibilities, so I had to believe that Kara had bitten Kiersten. I called her into the room, and she admitted she did it. I asked her why, and she said that Kiersten was trying to wake her up to come play, but she wanted to stay asleep. So not only did she bite her, but over something silly and innocent. She lets Kiersten get away with much worse than that on a daily basis, so why she decided to bite her this time is a mystery. I really hope this was just a one time thing and not a new trend for her. I think of biting as something 1 or 2 year olds do, but not something kids start doing as old as 4 years.

Kiersten has liked being the wronged one for a change. After Kara's time out, she came to apologize, and Kiersten kept saying, "louder, I can't hear you." and then when Kara offered her a hug, she said, "and you have to kiss my boo boo better". of course they left the room holding hands and laughing together like best friends again, because that's what anyone would do, right? what a way to start the morning.

Roly Poly

Evangeline has been rolling from her tummy to her back for several weeks, but on monday she started rolling back to front, which is much harder. She can also scoot around on her back or her tummy, and she gets pretty far. I can no longer leave her laying on my bed, or on the couch while I run to the bathroom, or to do something quickly. She has to go with me, or hang out on the floor. She just scoots until she runs into something that stops her, or until one of us picks her up to go back on her blanket.
Here is a photo play by play of the rolling action. Starting out on her back. her first move is the arched back for lift-off.

Then she uses her arm for momentum. next, she gets over onto her side.

and the last step is getting her arm unstuck from under her chubby little body.

success! The proud moment after the roll.

long weekend

Ben took a few days off this past week to spend at home with us. Mostly we just spent family time at home, but on friday, we decided to go to the NW Trek. We haven't been there since this spring, so we thought the girls would like to go. It was a nice, cool day, but not rainy, so that was ideal. tall trees

There are huge banana slugs all over at this time of year. We accidentally squashed this one with the stroller, but didn't tell Kara it was dying as she admired it.

Family picture, though you can't really see Evie.The girls were so excited that the otters and beavers were out swimming around, and not just sleeping in their dens.

The wolverines are always running around and hyper.

Kiersten enjoyed gathering leaves as we walked around.

Evie woke up toward the end of the day, while we were in the discovery center.

I was getting the girls ready this morning, and when I was fixing their breakfast, Kara said she would "babysit" Evie. So I put her in the swing to make it easier for Kara to watch her. (and to protect her). She is a very sweet girl, and always wants to help. Lately she is really into "chore lists". and asks me to write her a list nearly every day. Then she checks off all the chores as she gets them done. occasionally, Kiersten will ask for a chore list too, but she loses interest in actually doing the chores pretty quickly.

Kara's preschool class has a field trip to the mall today to ride elevators and escalators, in honor of it being "E" week. She is pretty excited, and we had to get a picture of her in the field trip uniform. Her teacher had asked me if she needed a bigger shirt, but her shirt from last year is still a little too big on her. I hope they have fun. She's pretty excited that they will be riding the city bus to get to the mall. I would have volunteered to chaperone, but i don't think they need me with my double stroller and 2 extra kids slowing them down.

painting pumpkins

We got these litte pumpkins at the store for the girls to paint. This is how Kiersten looked before she painted. This is how she looked after. I don't know why she felt the need to paint her own face too, but she did.

Kara was being a bit of a perfectionist. She wanted to paint very specific things, and was a little upset when it was harder than she expected.

Kara's pumpkins are to the left and Kiersten's are to the right. If you can't tell, I did the one in the middle. It's supposed to be a scarecrow, though I later realized it needed eyebrows. Oh well.

They each did 2 pumpkins in the amount of time that I did just one. I meant to save one for Ben to paint, but it turns out he didn't want to have to do one anyway, so it was okay that the girts each did 2.

posing with their finished masterpieces. I think we will still get large pumpkins to carve later in the month.

The next day after we did the pumpkin painting, there was a knock on the door after lunch. It was the sherrif and 2 other police officers. They said they were in pursuit of burglars who had just broken into a house down the street. They had been seen jumping over my next door neighbor's fence and running down the street. So they thought they had been through my backyard. I told them I hadn't heard anything, but they searched the backyard and found a bracelet that had been dropped. Apparently they were dropping what they had stolen all through the yards they ran through. It really bothers me that they were in my yard. If it happened the day before, I would have been out their with the kids when they came running through. Ben left work early so he could get Kara from school. i didn't feel comfortable leaving the house while they were still roaming around the neighborhood. But they were arrested and taken away not long after I talked to Ben. I've been feeling a little less comfortable with our safety the past few days. I didn't realize how easy it was to get into our backyard. But I'm glad those burglars got caught, and I hope they wont just get out in a few months to start breaking into houses again.

I don't often dress the girls to match with each other. It's just not my thing. So it sure surprised Ben yesterday, when they both came out of their room wearing the same outfit.
he had to get a picture of the matchiness.

I took them for a walk to the gas station to pick out treats for doing a good job of cleaning their room. The lady at the gas station took one look at them and exclaimed, "twins! I love twins! You're so lucky." ya I don't know too many sets of twins that would have this big of a height difference at such a young age, but that's okay. I think that may be one of the reasons I don't usually dress them alike.

my Evie was lookin cute, as usual.

The girls playing together with their leapsters in their room. I like it best when they get along like this.