To Granny's House We Go

Scott went to Texas this week. The highlights of that trip for him was when they went to the Cattlemen's Restaurant in El Paso (which according to a rancher on the plane who was a self proclaimed national steak expert) serves the best steak in the country. Scott also gets spoiled by the onsite manager who loves to buy them lunch and buy my kids Mexican suckers.

Nothing much else happened during the week. I got to go volunteer in Corbin's class on Friday and that was fun. I'm hoping to be able to go in for a bit every Friday. When Corbin came home from school he said to me, "I can't believe you were my teacher." It was funny and cute.

I decided to go to my parents house this weekend. My friend from high school who lives in Virginia was visiting her parents this weekend and I haven't seen her for years. She just had her first baby. I also wanted to go to Arco one last time before the baby comes. I got Trisha and her kids and Kelsey and Justin to come also. It's more fun when more families come. I especially love it when Trisha can come because I don't ever get to see her and our kids have a great time playing together.

My parents are temple workers on Friday nights and I thought for sure they would get a sub so I didn't even ask if they would be there. I was surprised to come home to an empty house with a note. It's pretty hard and annoying to trade temple shifts with people. They were able to sneak away a little early and got home at 10:00 that night. My mom still had some dinner in the oven waiting for us. Trisha arrived 30 minutes after we did and we just talked all night while our kids played. Kelsey and Justin arrived around 8:00. When my parents got home we talked to them for a few more hours and went to bed.

On Saturday we pretty much hung around all day. I went to my friends house for about an hour and caught up with her. The highlight of the day was when we went on a hayride to feed the cows. My mom drives the tractor while my dad pulls the hay bales off the wagon to feed to the cows. Watching my mom drive the tractor is a kick. She has never had to help out on the farm before but since all the sons have finally left the nest my mom is the new help. Hilarious!

That night we watched the Relief Society Broadcast and then we watched The Others. Scott and I were the only ones that had seen that movie. I couldn't believe that. I'm not sure if anyone liked it but I think it's a great scary movie. After that Kelsey, Justin, and Scott and I watched World War Z. I slept through most of it so I didn't really watch it, I was complaining to Scott that the movie didn't make sense and he said I had no grounds to say a movie I slept through didn't make sense. He has a point. I was tired man!

Today we went to church then had my most favorite meal and packed up and headed home. All of our kids slept almost the whole way home. It was heavenly!

Scott's 2 lb T-Bone

We stopped at Mountain Home on the way to Arco and got lunch. Happy kids. 

Little Piper

We even went to Wendy's drive through and got Frosty's. We went all out!

I love my mom's yard in the fall with the flowers blooming and snow on the mountains. 

Wagon ride to feed the cows.

My mom driving the tractor. Classic!

Comfy. 

Chess Club

After a long two years without getting our carpets cleaned we finally broke down and cleaned the carpets in our whole house. Our carpets were rock bottom! Having basically white carpet is truly not practical for anyone but especially not anyone with little kids. The people we bought the house from  (incredibly clean, retired couple) wore house slippers. I am way too lazy to change my shoes every time I go in and out and to have a special pair of shoes just to wear in the house. I can't see trying to make my kids wear indoor shoes either. Well it showed! Our carpets look much better now.

The primary program was today. Corbin stood right up and said his part great. The Bishop even said to me, "Corbin was a rock star!" That's right. I think it's because of the huge improvement over  last year when he cried and I had to say his part for him. Huge improvement indeed! He was slightly naughty and irreverent up front. I wanted to go up there and sit with him. I blame the leaders though. They assigned him to sit right next to his very rowdy friend. Duh! There was a quiet girl on the end. Put her in the middle people! Oh well. I kept giving him dirty looks and he would cool it. Ha.

Summerwind Elementary School has a chess club. I encouraged Corbin to join and he did. Luckily his friend from his class is in it too. I just like the idea of him learning how to play a really slow, strategic game. I think this will be a nice change of pace from video games. I can't believe I signed him up for chess club. Nerd! Ha. I married a nerd, they are pretty cool. It is every Friday after school for an hour until the end of December. I hope it's a good experience for him. It was cute to watch him. Love him!

I am the compassionate service leader in my ward (not my favorite calling). Well we now have sister missionaries assigned to our ward full time. This means they need dinner every night. The ward mission leader felt like it was too much for him to do so they assigned it to me. Thanks! So now I have to find a meal for the sister missionaries everyday from now until forever. Ha. The worst part is it's supposed to be a missionary fellow shipping time so I have to call inactives I've never met. The ward mission leader wants me to call them and ask them to feed the missionaries every month. For real! I called all of them today and got a hold of one. I think I made phone calls for an hour and arranged 3 meals. Get excited! I may have to play the baby card here pretty soon. Ha!

On Tuesday I took Corbin and Gabby to Monster's University. I really like that movie. I also like that there is a movie theater in Boise that sells movie tickets for $1 on Tuesdays. Anyway on the way there Corbin was talking to Gabby about her thumb sucking and how it was annoying and this and that. He said, "Gabby when you grow up you better not suck your thumb or people will make fun of you." Gabby: "Oh, I'll go somewhere else." So funny and so clever. She is very clever I must say. Although I was hoping Corbin would be able to talk her out of her little habit. She is has also been saying "Are you kidding me?" lately and it is super funny when she says that. Scott wasn't feeling well and he was sleeping in our room during dinner. The kids were asking about daddy and when he was going to be home. I told them he was home. Gabby said "Daddy's home? Are you kidding me?" You have to hear the tone and expression to truly appreciate it but it was funny. The other day Piper came running down the hall with her arms stretched and said to me, "mom, I can't find it anywhere." That was probably the best sentence I've heard from her yet. Good job Pipes. Kids are super cute and tons of work. The end.

Library craft time.

Piper loves to sit and flip through books. It's super cute.

Oh Corbin, like father like son.

Chess Club

Embarrassing Before!

Definitely improved after.

Canning

I am liking Corbin being in school. I like having a deadline in the morning to get up and get things done. I really like having a few hours with just the girls. It is a lot more calm generally around here without Corbin. Having one less body helps and girls and just different than boys too. At least for me my girls can sit and play quietly for a long time. Corbin, not so much unless he's playing a video game.

On Tuesday's I've been taking the girls to toddler and tots story time at the library closest to us. On Wednesday's I have started taking the girls to a library in Meridian for preschool story time. This one has a fun craft they can do at the end of story time. This library has a great kid section. The whole basement is for the kids. We've been twice and both times we've gone we've been there for about two hours. We drop off Corbin to go to school and we go to the library and then we leave the library in time to go and pick Corbin up from school. After the story and craft the girls happily play in the kid play room forever. They do the puzzles, play with the blocks and stuffed animals, and they have me read them more stories. It's fun. The worst part is getting Piper to leave. Gabby has had to step it up and be an extra big girl and be extra obedient and cooperative and Piper is having to learn to not have a freak out tantrum about every little thing, especially about leaving the library. It's a process. Ha!

Scott works for InRoads PSR and they are trying to get business in Emmett, ID. I have been wanting to go check out Emmett for quite sometime so the girls and I went with him Friday morning  because he had to drop off some bagels to a family medical office to try to butter, I mean bagel them up. It is a pretty little town. I get torn about whether or not I want to live in the country or live in the city. There are a lot of things I love about both. We are still underwater in our house so it's not a decision we need to make right now. It's just something I think about.

On our drive to Emmett I saw a sign for a neighborhood garage sale in the morning. I was so excited. I haven't seen any of those in the fall time, although it's brilliant. I got my friend to go with me and we went and checked it out early Saturday morning. There wasn't much. I bought a stack of nice kid puzzles on a stacker for $3 though. That was a bargain and a half! My friend bought some pillows to recover and decorate for Halloween. On our way home we decided to go get breakfast at Kneaders. We got their unlimited french toast breakfast which was amazing. By the way one serving was more than enough! They were two monstrously delicious pieces of french toast per plate. So good!

I spent some of Friday and most of Saturday canning pears and a few peaches. That is such a big job! Pears are a pain in the neck! I did 42 quarts of pears. I think that's my record for those. It takes forever to peel every pear, peaches are so great to blanch and peel in seconds. We didn't get very many peaches this year because the church farms were short handed on peaches and the only way to get peaches would be to pick for the cannery and then you could pick for yourself. I'm not exactly up to picking peaches for an hour 8 months pregnant, so we opted to order a few boxes of peaches from a guy in our ward. They were not nearly the bargain as the church farms though so we'll see how many quarts we get out of them.

I made this pin the eye ball on the monster poster for Piper's birthday and then forgot to do it. Oops. We did it last week instead.

Gabby leaves a trail of mess everywhere she goes. She loves getting out everything and playing with everything. She is a messy busy bee. I guess that just gives her lots of opportunities to learn to clean up. Notice Piper above, she is so happy to be watching a show on her pillow pet. Heaven.

I was making flash cards for Corbin and the girls were playing with them. Gabby would hold up a number and Piper would yell, "number!" (Cute little fairies).

So many hours!

Gabby crashed in her mess and I crashed for a few minutes while the pears were taking their steam bath.

Piper had a Birthday

On labor day Monday it was Piper's birthday. (So far I have all holiday babies, Christmas, Valentines, and Labor day). My due date for this baby is a few days after Halloween so who knows maybe a Halloween baby too. Anyway a few weeks before Piper's birthday we were looking through our cake book and trying to come up with party ideas. One of the cakes was a monster cake. Perfect! We call Piper, the Piper monster all the time. There were tons of cute ideas on Pinterest so I crafted for the first time since I've been pregnant. I could tell I wasn't my usual self however because by the time Piper's birthday was here I wasn't done yet and was already burned out. I found some short cuts and got most of it done. When I was trying to think of what special breakfast to make (and I was already tired and burned out) I thought sugar cereal. Brilliant! That is a super special treat around here and it was a huge hit and so easy. Scott ended up taking Corbin with him to go check out and buy a swing set off of somebody on Craigslist. He brought it home and built it straight away (my city slicker husband has turned out to be so handy)! That took a bit of time so we only ended up having time to go to dinner and have cake and presents. We were also going to go to PoJos but we will have to do that another day.

The kids have loved having their swing set. Why didn't we get one sooner? Our yard is small and we initially thought we would only live in this house for five years but now it's looking like 10 or forever. Ha. Well folks time to bust out some toy things.

Corbin still doesn't talk much about school but I think he likes it. I can already see a huge improvement from his work after just 2 weeks! I have been doing home preschool stuff with him for years and I am telling you his coloring, cutting, writing, everything has improved. It kind of makes me feel like a failure but happy at the same time. I think with school we often focus on the negative like bad peer pressure. But peer pressure can also be really good. I think that having Corbin go to school and do his work with kids his age and for someone other than his mom has made a huge difference. Sweet! He is also doing extra work with me at home to earn stickers and prizes.

I am going to start doing Preschool with the girls this week. With Corbin in school now my goal every morning is to be up dressed and ready, fix and feed breakfast and have all the kids ready before we walk Corbin to school. We also started scripture study and family prayer. We have been putting that one off until Corbin started school. No more excuses now! They are busy mornings and thankfully Corbin's school doesn't start until 9:05. Of course all of this is going to go down the drain as soon as said baby is born. Oh well!

It was Stake Conference this weekend and one of the Young Women babysat for free so we could go to the adult session. That was kind of her. The session was about the refugees from Africa in our ward who have all recently been baptized. They made a video all about it. There was some pretty amazing things and lots of little miracles. As far as Stake Conference today we survived another Stake Conference with young children. Yay.

Piper is 2. Some things about Piper. She has a really funny quirky personality. She is great at picking up on a mood and trying to be a part of something. She has been fake laughing forever. She still does. If Corbin and Gabby are laughing she will throw her head back and do a fake laugh. So funny. She did that as a baby. She is a hot head. She is totally unreasonable and will freak out and scream at the slightest dissatisfaction. She gets confused when to say thank you and when to say you're welcome. If I do something for her like open the door she says, "you're welcome, mommy." It kills me. She loves to say, "mommy, watch" and then do something silly like blowing a raspberry. She will do this over and over. "Mommy, watch." She totally loves to watch TV. She will park herself down with her pillow pet and blanket and be in heaven. I try to limit the TV and I will come into the room and she has turned the TV on by herself. I have to leave the remotes up. She is definitely in a parrot stage and likes to say everything. We have her say a scripture verse and say prayers with us. She is a cutie and we love her to death!

Do you like the two streamers in the back. Ha. Like I said I was burned out I couldn't put up anymore. Plus hanging those streamers is painful and dangerous at my stage in pregnancy. I was going to make balloon monsters and hang those up but that sure wasn't happening. 

Monster cake. That cake was super moist and delicious. I think I ate most of it by myself. Yikes!

Family pic. I bought party hats from the Dollar Store and spray painted them and put monster faces on them. I did a lot of the crafts with Corbin and Gabby which was fun and kind of annoying. They were such back seat crafters.

Piper's shirt. Her shirt was for sure the hardest. Corbin and Gabby's I just cut and glued out of felt. Piper's I had to draw, redraw, cut out the paper, cut out the fabric, iron on all of the different fabrics. It took forever! The stupid iron on stuff doesn't work very well and I did not want to sew it so I had to bust out some hot glue in the end.

Gabby's shirt.

Corbin's shirt

Cute Piper. This girl has spunk!

Love her!

I made apple crisp. It was good! Scott was kind enough to drive the girls and I to the Caldwell church farms and we bought a bunch of pears and apples. Yummy! I love fruit from the church farms. So cheap and so delicious!

Our play set. It has been great!

School Days, School Days

Corbin started Kindergarten this week! I can't believe it. On Monday we got to drop off school supplies and meet the teacher. I immediately had a better impression of her than the teacher that was supposed to be the other Kindergarten teacher. I don't know what happened to that girl but I'm glad she is not Corbin's teacher. Corbin's teacher seems great. She has taught Kindergarten for 8 years. She has kids in Summerwind and has been wanting to teach over here and there was finally an opening for her. Tuesday morning Corbin and I walked to school and I stayed with him until school started. I was standing in line with him and I started crying. I can't help it, dropping off a Kindergartner is an emotional thing. As his teacher came over the kids started going in and I gave Corbin a hug and asked if he was okay and he went on in. I walked away and started crying again. Ha. Corbin never saw me cry which is good. I didn't want him to think that Kindergarten was bad or scary or something.

Corbin seems to have adjusted to school great. He is not over the moon excited about school at this point but he seems to like it. He is not good about talking to me about school. I try to talk to him about what they did and he says he doesn't know. He doesn't like to talk about it. I'm the same way! It's really annoying when your kids are like you. I didn't like people to ask me questions like "how was school" and want me to talk about it. If I talked about it, it was on my own terms. Corbin is like that as well. He tells me little snippets here and there. I will keep pestering him and see if he can't be better about having a conversation than I was. He likes to tell me what snack they have everyday and he thinks it's annoying that they don't have PE everyday. I agree snacks and PE have got to be the highlight of Kindergarten. We will see how it continues to go.

On Wednesday I went to lunch with a few of my friends for one of their birthdays. It was fun to get away and have lots of chat time, and good food. On Friday night we got a pizza and ate it at DeMeyer park. We played there for awhile and then stopped at our friend's snow shack on the way home. I have been promising Corbin all summer that I would let him get a snow cone so we finally went. On Saturday we got up and headed down to Ann Morrison park for Boise's annual Spirit of Boise celebration. They send up a bunch of hot air balloons. They do this every labor day weekend. I haven't figured out why they do it but I think it's cool. The rest of the day I did some shopping for Piper's birthday tomorrow and did some crafting for her birthday as well. We are excited to celebrate her birthday. Birthdays are exciting for the whole family. It's going to be a good time.

We were in the car and the radio was on and Scott turned it off. Gabby said, "I liked that song." Corbin then said to Gabby, "the question is, how are we going to listen to it?" So funny.

(Facebook repeat) I was fixing Gabby's hair and she said "boring." "Mom, boring means this is obnoxious to me."

Gabby wanted to bring in a bunch of leaves and put them in her bed. I told her she could not. She then wanted to bring in another part of a plant and I told her she could not. She said, "I can't bring this in either...uhhh that's frustrating to me."

Gabby would not leave me alone Saturday afternoon and I just wanted to be alone for a while. I told Gabby she needed to go away and she said, "can I please not go away." Ha. I finally got her to leave and after about 45 seconds she came back and said "can I come back now." Love my kids!

Love him! He is growing up. Wipe a tear!

Cute climber. He's just like his daddy.

There is nothing to do in our backyard...so they might as well play in the old garden box. Gross! We are looking into a buying a swing set this week!

So mischievous.

I really must remember the proper way to film a video on my phone. Scott was blowing up balloons and letting them go and the kids were loving it. An unexpected event happened with this one. Don't mind Gabby dressing herself in Piper's clothes. Lovely.