Author: McAdmin

I feel so glad that I finally cleaned up our “office room” closet. My friend Sarah, who is super organized, keeps everything in these nice, uniform bins. Her organization inspired me a little and I bought 3 bins at Wal-Mart. 🙂 I know, getting a little crazy, huh!!

I did some organizing during Charlotte’s nap. She usually only naps for one hour, and I used to feel so unproductive during that hour because I’d have to nap at the same time (due to my getting up with her during the night). Nowadays, she sometimes sleeps through the WHOLE night (I know, pretty awesome for a child who’s about to turn two. Ha!)… Or if she does wake up she only wakes once or twice. So I don’t have to take a nap very often, which is a relief because it’s a time when I can do things on my own. I’m SOOOO glad she sometimes sleeps through the night! Anyway…

It was time to get some things under control. The box below may not look organized, but oh, it is. I now have just this one box for all the kid craft items, so when they want to do anything artsy, we get out this box, and we make a big, creative mess of it all. (Thanks to my mom, it includes a fun assortment of Mrs. Grossman’s stickers that my kids love to use!)

A second box holds all our our paper, coloring books, and workbooks. It’s nice to have all of that in one place—it’s all so much easier to find!

Charlotte loves coloring, especially if I color with her. She constantly requests that I write a letter “A” on her paper. Maybe she wants to feel like a stellar student?? I’m glad she likes to color because then Chase will also color. He’s never been into coloring AT ALL. But when that’s what’s going on, he can’t help but join in the fun, if only for a minute or two. But he does enjoy doing a few pages in his workbooks, so there’s something for everyone in here.

I like seeing all the creations kids come up with on their own. Nothing super spectacular– Just cute! I especially love the little caterpillar family that Chase made (below).

I just realized that I didn’t take any pictures last week, as far as I know. I just didn’t even think of it. So this week, I will work on catching a few photos! In the mean time, here are a couple of random photos from a couple weeks ago.

Sometimes we have to force these two kids to eat some dinner! And this is what it tends to look like. By the time I’ve accomplished the task of making dinner while also refereeing Chase & Charlotte’s play, I’m pooped. Luckily, Pace eats really quickly, so he then takes over the task of getting them to eat something while I chuckle at the sight of it all.

What does a person do? Maybe I should have them skip their afternoon snack so they’ll be practically starving by dinner time. THEN maybe they’d appreciate it!!!

One might think, “Well, obviously they’re just not hungry, so don’t make them eat.” But we usually start on the bedtime routine afterwards, and if they haven’t eaten much, they both cry and put on this big show about how hungry they are. And if they don’t eat anything by the time they go to bed, they wake up all night crying and asking for food (=punishment for the parents). Hm.

So that’s why we avoid all that drama and just force them to eat some dinner at dinner time! I know, perfect parenting skills at work around here…

My kids have certainly had their fair share of fun this fall season! You’re probably all tired of hearing about what people are doing to celebrate autumn/Halloween. But too bad! haha

Uncle Casey helped Chase carve the pumpkin. Actually, Chase didn’t do much besides explain the concept he wanted, smack himself in the face with a slotted spoon, and then eat Oreos.

A couple weeks ago, we invited some friends to go to Pumpkinland in Orem with us. It’s a cute place where they have tons of things for kids to do (play areas, animals, gardens), and of course, you can buy pumpkins at the end. Definitely the best festive place for little ones. Pictured below is Chase with his BFF (just a couple of tough guys).

And Chase loved this goat (below). Somehow, it seemed as though the goat reciprocated his love.

(If you’re wondering what happened to Chase’s face, he had a few warts treated by a dermatologist. He’s gone through this several times, and it’s kind of painful for Chase, but this method doesn’t cause scarring which is important since the little warts tend to appear on his face. I’m hoping that this might be the last time he’ll have to have warts removed. Only time will tell!)

We took all the Activity Day girls to Cornbelly’s at Thanksgiving Point. SO much to do there, like a huge corn maze, a haunted creature you could walk through, pedal carts, big slides, hay ride, etc. It was our big (pricey) activity of the year, and it was so helpful that Gretchen came and took my kids around to do everything so I could just be with the awesome little girls from my group. I love my church calling! Hard to believe I’ve already been doing this for 2 years.

The above picture represents a kid’s dream come true… A large play house that you could color all over!!! Hopefully kids won’t see that as a green light for doing the same back at their real houses.

Have I mentioned that the traffic and construction here is ridiculous right now?? It took us an hour and 15 minutes to get back from Thanksgiving Point (should take 30 min or less). Poo.

All complaints aside…. The afternoon following our Cornbelly’s adventure, Gretchen so kindly took my kids to play at Hee Haw Farms in Pleasant Grove (yet another Halloween-themed place that has fun things to do). I wouldn’t exactly say my kids are spoiled, but………….. maybe they are.

This past week we’ve been *blah* sick. Hopefully Pace is the last one, and on the upswing! There’s not much to say about that, except that I have done absolutely nothing over the last several days! And we’re thankful for our normal, everyday life when we have good health.