Week Catch-Up

Today, Sunday 11/13: Tyler gave his first talk in primary!! He did a great job :). The topic was how being reverent during the sacrament can help him to remember Jesus Christ. He did a trial run before church on Grandma Andersen, Uncle Tim, and Aunt Sarah, on google chat.
This morning I started the day off right by waking up early (as in like 6:15, which is early for a Sunday) to make a pumpkin pie. :) It was nice to just be baking and listening to beautiful music. My early-bird, Tyler, joined me after not too long. He's always the first child to wake up, and he colored pictures for me and kept me company. I gave him some extra pie dough dipped in cinnamon and sugar, just like my mom used to give me when she made pies. I love passing on simple traditions. We had choir practice again before church. I forgot to mention that Kenny and I are doing ward choir just through Christmas, because that's the best time to sing. But I feel like it's too big of a commitment for the kids to do year-round. But we do love it.

Saturday 11/12: It was a beautiful, sunny day. We figured it would probably be the last nice day we'll have this year, so we took advantage of it and headed down to Cleveland together. We stopped at the Westside Marketplace, which I guess is really well-known around here. Lots of delicious smelling and looking produce, along with meats, cheeses, and bakery items. Then we drove down to this little dock thing by the Cleveland Browns Stadium and walked around. Here's us in front of Lake Erie.

After a quick lunch we headed to the Rainforest (and indoor) part of the zoo. It was free for us since we've been to the zoo a couple times and more than covered our fee for the membership, so that's nice. The kids had a great time looking at all the variety of animals they have there.

Other things we got done this weekend that have been on my to-do list for a while: Clean the fridge inside and out, organize the kids closets--out with summer clothes or whatever they've grown out of, and clean the stovetop burners. Yuck. Also put new windshield wipers on the van, replaced our license plates with Ohio ones, and organized the garage so we now fit both cars in, so Kenny won't have to scrape ice in the mornings.

Friday 11/11: Happy Veteran's Day! I taught Joy school over here, and also had the kids on Wednesday. Kenny and I went on a date that night! :) The kids loved playing at the Palmers and we had a good time walking around Crocker Park, and eating at 5 Guys (our first time ever). Can you say heart attack?

Thursday 11/10: For the last month or so we've been going to this homeschool group (which is more just like a playgroup for us since we don't have any school-age children). But it's held at the Westlake Rec. Center and it's so much fun for the kids! They run around the gym and play with all the balls and toys for an hour, then we go swim in the pool for another hour or so and they have such a blast. My friend Loni from my ward told me about it and Tyler is really good friends with her son, William. They paly so well together. We bring lunches and eat there with them afterwards, then come home and the girls are ready for naps! :) It's a nice place to get a lot of energy out, and not at the expense of my house or me cleaning anything up!

Also that night was the "Warm up to Christmas" Relief Society Dinner. It was a delicious dinner, and for the program part, I sang a song with a group of girls called "What Shall We Give". It's a beautiful Christmas song and it's so fun to sing again!

Saturday 11/5: It was our ward temple day which means free babysitters there!! So we drove down to Columbus and dropped the kids off at the church next door with abajillion other children and one wonderful couple. We didn't get on the list for the endowment session since it filled up so fast, so we did sealings. We haven't done sealings since probably our first year of marriage, and it was wonderful. The sealer, Elder Tobler was amazing! He used to be the temple president here and he was just really good at stopping often and teaching. He talked about the specific words that they say, the meaning behind them, and his feelings. It was a really great experience.

Afterwards we went over to COSI which is this really awesome science place in Columbus. We plan to go back every time we have to go to the temple, as kind of a reward for the kids. Plus it's a really fun and educational place. Here we are below in the 3D big-screen showing of African Adventure. It was hilarious to watch Tyler with those 3D glasses on, he really thought it was cool.

In the kid-playing zone upstairs. Madi is pretty dang close to walking. She does great pushing things, stands by herself for quite a while and can lower herself down slowly. She's almost got the standing with no help, too. It won't be long my friends.

Okay so this is getting super duper long but here's one more picture. It was taken on November 1st in that forest place near our house. Fall is quickly turning into winter, but we sure have enjoyed this last month or two.

Halloween

We finally got around to carving pumpkins on Saturday, October 29th. I learned something wonderful about pumpkin cleaning...it goes A LOT faster when they are COLD! It is SO much cleaner!! I am sure there are lots of people laughing that I didn't know that before. But seriously, it was the fastest pumpkin cleaning/carving we've ever had, and it was the most pumpkins we've ever had, so that's saying something.
Brynlee's pumpkin on the left with the "scary face" (that's what she requested). Mine is the polka-dotted pumpkin.

Kenny's is first up on the left, Madison's is the spider in the middle (we obviously decided for her) and Tyler chose circle eyes, triangle nose and rectangle mouth. So that's exactly what he got, and he was very pleased with it :)

Monday was Halloween (and Sarah's birthday!). We went to a fun dinner at the Bielozer's before trick-or treating. They are friends from the ward and in our neighborhood. There were several other neighbors there and everyone brought a big pot of soup. We had yummy bread bowls too and hot dogs for the kids. It was delicious! Then we came home to get ready for trick-or-treating. Tyler was a knight, Madi was an alligator (or crocodile...I have no idea) and Brynlee was a butterfly. Madi hated having the head piece on, so this was as good of a picture as we got haha. Her costume lasted like a whole 10 minutes, but that's okay. I should have waited till Kenny was home to take them. I took Ty and Bryn out to collect candy and Kenny stayed here with Mads to pass it out. The kids didn't last very long (thanks to the cold weather and thin costumes), so we were home after like 20 or 25 minutes haha. Then they warmed up and Kenny took Tyler out again for round 2. It was a fun Halloween, but the faster we get rid of all this candy, the better!

Sleepy Heads

Brynlee is in a rough transition stage with a lot of things right now. For example, napping. When she does nap, she won't fall asleep until like 10 or 10:30. So I cut out her naps a few months ago and tried putting her to bed earlier, between 7 and 7:30, instead of 8:00. But now, if we've had a really busy day or she plays extra hard outside, she's exhausted. This is often what happens while I'm busy making dinner. She just lays down on the floor and is zonked out. This girl can sleep almost anywhere.
I couldn't help but be reminded of her daddy, who was (...is) the same way. I love this picture of him, asleep on the floor at about the same age. :) So sweet.