Halloween | Part One

My favorite place in Provo is quickly becoming The Riverwoods. It’s an outdoor mall that has so many great things going on year-round for families and especially little kids. It’s super clean and the stores are really nice and it’s hardly ever too crowded. We love spending time there!


They had trick-or-treating on Saturday night so we dressed up our little Goldilocks and Baby Bear and headed over to get some candy. Each of the shops and restaurants passed out candy to the little trick-or-treaters, I’d never done anything like that before - it was fun. This was our third Halloween activity of the week (by the way, first two- super lame, hence the no pictures thing…), so the girls knew all about the potential for candy. Kylie was all over it and Emily was right by her side begging for sweets too.
I know what you must be asking yourself now, “I wonder if she made those incredibly adorable costumes for the girls…” Oh yes, yes I did. And I was pretty darn proud of myself too! Oh and by the way, I didn’t use a pattern, Holler!!!
We loved all of the cutesy fall decorations. Honestly, I love Halloween but I really don’t like how dark and scary it can be, especially now that we have little girls. I like to stick to the smiling scarecrows and storybook costumes :) The girls like it better that way too.

Emily insisted on carrying every piece of candy in her tiny little hands. When we got to a new shop and her hands were already full she would try to give her candy to the girl passing it out just so she would have a free hand to grab a new one. We had to trick her into putting the candy in her bag or distract her so we could pry it from her hands.

The girls had so much fun and it was the perfect night and the perfect place for trick-or-treating!

 

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Baby Girl

Baby Girl is getting old. Not really, but it sure feels like it. She’s got a cute little personality and a big attitude to go with it. She is the sweetest little thing but can be sooooooooo loud at the same time! When she gets really excited she screams, and it’s not just a cute little yelp, it’s a full on, glass-shattering scream. She’s loud, did I mention that? but she still melts our hearts :)

 

She is the cuddliest baby girl. She still loves to be held (but not in a needy way) and she loves snuggling with Mommy and Daddy and even Kylie. Her favorite place to sit is on my lap. I love the way she turns around and scoots back into my lap before she sits down, that’s my favorite. Her favorite part of our bedtime routine is definitely brushing her teeth. She is great at miming brushing her teeth and gets really excited when we guess her charade correctly and follow her to the bathroom. Her favorite bedtime story is Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? When she is ready for bed she grabs her sippy cup, one baby under each arm and then heads into her room. I help her throw her babies into her crib, she gives me big hugs, points out my eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hair, gives me a kiss and then literally dives into her bed.  When she wakes up in the morning, her beautiful red hair looks like this and she’s starting to get a cowlick on the left side of her head where she smooshes her face into her pillow while she sleeps with her little bum up in the air.

 

She is incredibly selfless. It’s hard to say that about a 16 month old, but she really is. She is always sure to give Kylie her sippy cup, or fruit snacks, or tooth brush first. Every time I get a drink for the girls Emily follows me straight into the kitchen and insists that she be the one to deliver the cup to Kylie (before she even gets her own). There have even been a few times that I was not filling them up fast enough and she let me know it! Tonight she overlooked her own little toothbrush to find Kylie’s and take it to her before she started brushing her own teeth. Every time she does something like this it makes me happy. She’s a sweet little thing.

 

Speaking of little thing- she really is little. At her last check up she was in the 25th percentile for height and 40th for weight (as the nurse put it “she’s short, and just a little chunky” Haha!) It’s funny to see the stark difference in size between her and her big sister (who has never been less than the 90th percentile in both h&w) - sure, they are almost two years apart, but still, Emmie is just so tiny.

 

 

She loves to dance and twirl right alongside her big sis. She loves to play dress up. She sings along with our singing princess microphone and insists on performing for us on top of the coffee table-stage. She loves to sort anything and everything. She is very organized and has some slight OCD/perfectionist tendencies just like her mommy… She loves playing with baby dolls. Today she held her baby close, shhhh’ed her while patting her back, wrapped her in a tiny blanket, sat down and started rocking her and gave baby a little kiss on the forehead. Seriously, cutest thing ever.

 

She is the pickiest eater I have ever known in my life! If all else fails, I at least know she will eat bread and cheese… most of the time. When we do find something she likes, she will pretty much inhale it, but then the next time I make it she acts likes it’s the grossest thing she has ever seen(?)!!

She is very talkative, but talkative in the way that only Mommy can understand her :) She also knows how to get exactly what she wants without having to say a single word. Here are some of the words she loves to say:

 

Mom  -  Dad  -  Up  -  Open  -  Out  -  Milk  -  More  -  Again  -  Hi  -  Choo Choo  -  Baby  -  Mine  -  Teeth  -  Uh Oh  -  Knock Knock  -  Bye  -  Yes  -  No  -  (ba)nana  -  Cheese  -  Bread  -  Jesus  -  (oh gosh, there’s so much more but I’m spacing right now… I’ll update later)

 

I just love that little Emmie Grace. All this talk about her makes me want to go wake her up and cuddle…. maybe just for a minute, afterall, she loves it just as much as I do :)

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She’s gone :(

My widdle seester left. We are sad. We miss her. But we had sooooo muuuuuuuch fuuuuunnnnnnn while she was here. Aside from all of the fun stuff I posted on here already, we also shopped and shopped and shopped (and a few hours of that was spent childless. That hasn’t happened since Kylie was born. Seriously, it was amazing), we went to Park City, she made me a beautiful blonde again, we had lots of girl talk, watched and danced to Tangled, had dance parties everywhere we went, played at the park, played duck duck goose again and again, and we laughed, lots. I’m still trying to figure out how to convince her to just move here… after all, the girlies need their Auntie…  

 

 

We carved our pumpkins (from our first trip to the pumpkin patch) on Sunday morning before Ti Ti left. We all did pumpkin faces that resembled our own faces. They turned out pretty cute and it’s fun to see our little pumpkin family sitting out on our porch waiting to greet us when we get home. Emily likes to take off the pumpkins’ hats and hide things inside of them. Kylie likes to tell her not to do that. We’ve been making numerous trips out to our front porch just to say hi and give them a friendly pat pat.

Jenn’s especially makes me laugh. It’s my favorite of all her silly faces and the one I request the

most.

I know I’ve been telling you every day since you left, but seriously, Toots, come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! We love you!

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Provo Beach Resort

We went and played at the Provo Beach Resort at The Riverwoods. It is pretty much my new favorite place in all of Provo, not because of the entertainment necessarily, but because they have Blue Bell ice cream!!! It is the only place in all of Utah that has it! If you know me well at all, you know that I have a slight addiction to ice cream, and after living in the south for three years and tasting the heaven that is Blue Bell, I just can’t enjoy the other brands. I’m a bit of an ice cream snob now. But Ike’s at PBR has it! Oh happy day!

Aside from the ice cream, Provo Beach Resort has a classic carrousel, arcade games, a surfing simulator, miniature croquet, bowling, mini bowling, and playgrounds for toddlers and big kids too. We spent most of our time in the toddler play area. It was the perfect size for the girls and we had it all to ourselves which was nice too.   
Emily LOVES slides. We cannot keep her off of them whenever we go to any playground.
The mini bowling was pretty cute. It reminded me of candlepin or duckpin bowling that they have out in New England. Both girls were excited to play again after how much fun we had the other night. And it was even better that the balls, pins and lanes were just their size.
I have a feeling we’ll be going back often when the weather turns cold and we can’t play outside anymore. It was lots of fun, and cheap too when you are only playing with the little kid stuff (and that’s always important for us poor college students :) ).

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Bowling After Bedtime

As a special treat, we took the girls out bowling after bedtime last night. We did alot of goofy dancing, picked some sweet aliases (Jenn-Whanda, Mike- Hans Julian, Me- Murtle the Turtle, Ky- Princess Kylie, and Emily just bowled on Kylie’s turn). We even managed to knock over a few pins (some more than others… ahem…) The final score isn't important, all that matters is that we had a ton of fun! (and that's what the losers always say...)

 

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More Fall Fun

We went to another pumpkin patch type place on Tuesday. It was really cute (but not quite free like the last patch we visited). It was so fun watching Kylie and Ti Ti run off and do their own thing together. They are the cutest little buddies.

They had some really great country music playing over the sound system so we had our own little dance parties while we wandered around. We may have gotten a few weird looks seeing as we were the only ones participating in our dance parties… but we were having fun. They were all just jealous of our sweet moves.    

Something about this picture cracks me up. I think it’s because Ky looks like such a big girl with her hipster sunglasses and cute little expression all while they were watching some stuffed farm animals put on a show (you know like the old Chuck E Cheese shows from back in the day – I know you know what I’m talking about).

The giant bounce pad looked like alot of fun and slightly terrifying at the same time. I couldn’t tell you if Kylie laughed or screamed more.

 

Emmie hung out on the more baby friendly swings while Kylie did her death jumps with Ti Ti.

We are big fans of corn pits now. I had never seen or even heard of them before this week, but they are pretty darn fun, even for us old folks. 

       More fun to come. So much more!

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