Four Months Old

 
 
Our little peanut turned four months old on Thursday, November 8.  She is an absolute pleasure to have in the family and we just can't get enough of our little Elaine.

To date she is:

-Talking all the time, she loves to squeal and make raspberry sounds.  You can find her making her voice change volumes.  It is so cute.
-She drools and loves to blow bubbles a lot now too.
-Elaine can roll.  She rolled for the first time, Saturday, November 10.  Pops was visiting too and even got to see it.  We witnessed it two times and were trying to get it on camera, but kept missing it.  It never gets old to see your baby learning to do something for the first time.  Before this, she could be found moving back and forth to the side position.  With this action Elaine can actually turn around completely in a circle without assistance.  After rolling though, Elaine does tend to get stuck on her tummy and needs help rolling back over.  She is getting stronger every day though.
-She continues to love her brother and sister.  They can always make her smile.  Her brother gets a big kick out of saying "Goo goo, gah gah" to her and thinks that is the secret to making her laugh.  However, really it is just her brother's smile that does it every time.
-Elaine is still a great eater and sleeper.  However, with the sleep she has regressed a little and gets up before the rest of the kids these days.  She was spoiling Mommy and Daddy before this so we really can't complain.
-She loves to just lay on her back, kick her legs and hang.  However, she is enjoying chewing on toy at this stage too along with her kicking.

We had Elaine's four month check up on November 19 and she weighed 13 lb. and 15.8 oz.  She is ranking in the 38% on size.  Here height was 2' 11''.  In this area she ranks 60%.  The doctor thought she was looking great and she did excellent when it came to her 3 shots and oral medicine.  She of course cried, but was very brave and stopped when we left the office.  Way to go Elaine!

Elaine is simply amazing and a complete blessing to watch grow and develop.  We love you little darling and Happy Four Months!

2012 Halloween Fun

We had a fantastic Halloween this year with our three kiddos.

The morning started off with a lot of joy. The kids were elated that Halloween day was actually here.  They had been counting the nights (Evan loves to count nights :) ).  This is how they looked Halloween morning.  Evan opted to wear his Woody costume from last year to Preschool, since they had already seen his Spider-man Costume and he would be wearing it that night too.  

Here is Evan at Preschool with some of his classmates and Mrs. Netty, and Ryder and Evie (the siblings).  Ryder was also dressed as Woody, which is hilarious, because at their Preschool Harvest Party both boys were dressed alike as Spider-man too.  Great minds think alike! :)

Evie and Elaine had on regular clothes with Halloween designs in the day time.

We made a Jack-O-Lateran Pizza from Papa Murphy's for dinner too.  It was so much fun, not to mention delicious!  The kids loved it.

After our yummy dinner it was Trick-or-Treating time.  

We had Spiderman, a.k.a. Evan!

Evie as Dora Enchanted Forest Princess.

 

Last, but certainly not least, our little Lainey-bug, a.k.a. Ladybug... 

With wings included. :)

Here are the kids in action at one of our favorite neighbor's houses, Miss. Nilda and her dog Sparkle. 

Miss. Nilda also took a picture of our family that night too.  Thanks Nilda!

After this we continued on our way.  The whole night, Evan kept proclaiming..."This is the BEST Halloween EVER!"  It was adorable.  Evie was having a blast too.  

The neighbors in our community get so into Halloween.  These are some of the extravagant houses we visited this year.  Here our neighbor is showing how this decoration works.

My babies holding hands as they walk to the next house...precious!

Our little darling Elaine riding in the stroller during part of the night.  Most of the time she preferred to be held, however, the stroller came in pretty handy when the big kids got tired out.  Evie was using it between houses and would then jump out to walk to the door to get her candy.  The stroller was also used to hold the buckets of candy when they started to become too heavy. :)

Lastly I leave you with our munchkins, and their final results of the evening in front of our house with their pumpkins.  One of their favorite treats was microwave popcorn! :)

Here is Evie eating her candy, having some popcorn and watching "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" as we awaited a few additional Trick-or-Treaters at our house.

After our movie, we checked outside to see how the crowds were going and it was raining.  God provided a perfect night for all.  It was as Evan declared..."The BEST Halloween EVER!"

Romance Weekend in South Lake Tahoe

Jim and I got the opportunity to escape for an overnight trip away from the big kids with our Church to Lake Tahoe on the weekend of October 19-20.  It was AWESOME!  We had a spectacular time and couldn't get enough of the beauty of God's creation at the resort where we stayed, Resort at Squaw Creek, Lake Tahoe and the area in general.

This is also where they film the Olympic Zone during the Winter Olympics.  Here are Elaine and I by the country flags.

Here is a picture of our room 

and the beautiful view out the window...breathtaking!

Here are some pictures of the Lake that we got right before we left to come home on Saturday during a walk we took.

Here is our little stole-away, Elaine.   She was such a good girl on the trip.  It was fun to be able to spoil her a little bit as she got our undivided attention. :)

 
Jim and I brought home the kids these huge pine cones that we found on our walk during our trip.  The kids thought they were pretty cool.  However, they were kind of prickly and one little critter did travel home with us and decided to come out and say hi when we gave them to the kids.  The pine cones ended up going outside quickly after that, but not before we could get a quick picture.

A big thank you to Grandma and Grandpa who watched the big kids for us.  They had the best time and so did we!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  We love you! :)

Bishop's Pumpkin Farm

We all headed to Bishop's Pumpkin Farm on Thursday, October 25 with Evan's Preschool.  It was a blast and a beautiful day too.  Everyone else in the area thought so too, because it was crowded, but ultimately you could still pretty much do everything you wanted to do.  The hard part was matching the energy window with our block of time.  We didn't get to everything, but did get to try out some new activities this year that we hadn't done in the past.

We got to see the Pig Races, which was actually a cute little story about the Three Little Pigs.  The kids thought this was pretty entertaining.

Then we all headed over to the Hay Ride where we had a scheduled time the preschool was to ride.

Elaine had a good time on the Hay Ride too...my little pumpkin.

We opted to not pick out any pumpkins on the Hay Ride (since it was just Mommy with the three kiddos and we had some we had purchased at Dave's Pumpkin Patch), except the cute little one we already brought along. :)

 

Here are the kids on our journey back from the pumpkins.  Cameron wanted to hold Elaine.  Here he is with big brother holding her hand too.  Evie is there as well, but didn't want to get in the picture, you can just see her hair on the side.

Here are Mrs. Netty, Miles and Ewan with their pumpkins.

After the Hay Ride we then got to go on the Train.  This is always such a highlight.  Here is a picture of the kids in the tunnel.  They loved this part!

Evan and Evie had a very good time as usual at the Farm.  Here they are playing on the giant tires after lunch and on the slide.

Our last activity of the day was just with one of our preschool buds, Cameron and his Mommy Julie.  Everyone else had to head back home.  We decided to take the kids to Coyote Mountain where they got to pan for marbles.

They loved this and then go down some awesome slides.

At this point, Elaine was all tuckered out.  Here she is cuddling with Julie.

All in all it was another great day at Bishop's.  This place continues to amaze me and we love coming back every year.

I leave you with two final cute pics of my girls at the Farm.

Evan's Preschool Harvest Party

Evan's Preschool had their Harvest Party on Thursday, October 15.  Evan was looking super cool as Spider-man this year.  Just check out theses pictures below.

I love this picture of Evan checking out his muscles. :)

Here he is at Preschool with his buds Gavin and Charlie, a.k.a Captain Americas.  Superheros were pretty popular this year, especially among Evan's buds.  Evie got to get in on the fun too.

The kids had a super fun day of making orange Halloween masks, fall treat bags, and large Jack-O-Lateran's filled with newspaper.  They also got to eat a delicious lunch at school too.  Here is Mrs. Netty explaining the rules for the pinata.  All the parents and siblings got to return at 11:00 a.m. that day to see this activity.

Here are the kids lined up to exit out to the backyard.  Aren't they just adorable?  There were 3 Captain America's, one Minnie Mouse, one Rapunzel, one Ninja, one Batman, and 2 Spider-mans (one of the Preschooler's siblings also came as Spider-man, Ryder)

Here they are outside now patiently waiting to receive their decorated treat bags that they could use after the pinata is broken.

Here are the girls watching the festivities.  They look excited don't they. :)

 Evan got picked to go first and swing the stick.  Here he is in action.

The pinata was quite challenging to break, finally Mr. Chris had to help a little.

Candy and Goodies!!!

Evan and his buddy Cameron pictured back inside now awaiting the chance to eat cupcakes; the final treat of the day.

Cupcake eating actually moved outside.  Here are the kids munching away.  Most were now out of their costumes to avoid any frosting stains on their outfits for Halloween.  Unfortunately, I didn't think about this and didn't give Evan any clothes underneath his costume to wear.  Thus, we just had to be extra careful.

 From left to right in this picture we have Miles, Evie, Evan, Cameron, Aubrey and Olivia. 

Can you tell that Evan and Evie love cupckaes?!?!

 

Evan had the best time at his Harvest Party.  It was an awesome start to some fantastic Halloween  fun.  Thanks so much Mrs. Netty and all the parent helpers! :)