First sleepover!

One evening we were together with the Heninger clan, and Scott invited Jacob, Jonah and Rebekah over for a sleepover. Of course this was completely his own idea and we had never discussed it. Then during the following week he typed out an official invitation (unfortunately I don't have a copy of it) and mailed it off. I believe the invite said somthing about coming over at 5:30 on Friday and playing lots of Boom Blox (a Wii game). Now in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Are 10 and 8-year-old boys really going to want to have a slumber party with a 5-year-old?" But I talked with Laurie and she said they would LOVE it. Really? When the boys are together and are allowed to play Wii, they seem to have an absolute blast, so I figured it was worth a shot...

We picked up the Jacob, Jonah and Rebekah and went through the In-and-Out drive thru for dinner. Then after eating, the boys were just giddy playing Wii and Rebekah and Charlotte were completely entertained coloring and playing with Trevor. Then after some pumpkin pie, they all put pajamas on, got ready for bed, and went to sleep in Scott and Charlotte's room. It was a piece of cake! Maybe we should have the Heninger clan over more often! How about this Friday night?





I'm not quite sure how Charlotte ended up in the hall...

Trevor is 6 months old!

Happy 6 month birthday, Trevor! (Don't tell him it was 3 weeks ago...) I just LOVE this stage because he is so fun and responsive AND he is not yet mobile!

In the past month, Trevor has learned all sorts of new tricks! First of all, at about 5 1/2 months I started giving him cereal and real baby food. It is something I usually like to delay as long as possible, but it really seemed like he was needing a little more than just milk... So hello baby food, goodbye innocent non-stinky diapers! He caught on pretty quickly and so far is a great eater.


Also, about 3 weeks ago, he started sitting on his own. I love that I can just set him down on the floor next to a basket of toys that are great for chewing, and he will entertain himself for a while!


And finally -- drum roll please -- he just got his first tooth! He was miserable a couple nights ago, and sure enough, that tiny tooth poked through on the bottom the next day. I'm sure there are more soon to follow...

A day in the life of a 3-year-old fashionista

You wouldn't believe the amount of laundry I do... Most of it is thanks to a 3-year-old fashion queen who changes outfits MANY times each day. Here is an example of one day last week. We started with a cute outfit, including fancy princess hair with bows. That outfit made it through preschool, but once were back at home, it was dress up time!


She went through the bottom drawer of the dresser and discovered the clothes passed down from Rebekah (which we LOVE, by the way). So she chose this cute Halloween shirt and demin skirt ensemble:


But then wearing the Halloween shirt reminded her of her Halloween dress, which is Charlotte's equivalent of Scott's Lightning McQueen shirt from last year. So she put the dress on, backwards of course, and danced around in that for a while. By the way, the dress is adorable, and I will post a picture of it when she is wearing it the right way (Thanks, Steph!)


I think I missed a few outfit changes around mid-afternoon, and by dinner she was back in the Halloween dress. I asked her to change out of the dress so she wouldn't spill on it during dinner, so she gladly skipped upstairs and came down in this all-white selection:


Then it was bed time and she chose her purple kitty pjs to wear (sorry, no photo). We said goodnight, turned off the lights, and Drew and I went downstairs to clean up. 15 minutes later, she was crying and Drew went up to find out what was up.

"My jammies aren't pink!"

Drew calmly changed her into her pink dancing fairy pjs while I started working on the laundry...

Perfect park weather

Man, I LOVE fall! Today we went to the park and just enjoyed playing outside in the gorgeous weather. Scott and Charlotte were especially excited to pose for the camera today, for some reason. I took advantage of the moment to suggest that it would be nice if they would be this cooperative taking pictures when we go to the pumpkin patch...

Already?

Today in at school Scott's class went to a 3rd grade class where they each were matched up with a 'big buddy' to do a project. Scott told me that he saw this girl named Kate that he really wanted to be partners with because she had pretty hair (yes, I know already he will be a hair man).

But he was a little disappointed when instead he was matched up with Joey. He's already chasing after older women...

How many days until Halloween?

My original plan for this post was to write about the seeds we have planted in hopes of enjoying lettuce and broccoli and celery in winter. But I know the first thing you are thinking looking at this picture is, "What the heck is Scott wearing?" So here's the explanation...

4 years ago, this was Scott at Halloween. His cruel mom and dad dressing him up in this ridiculous monkey costume was the absolute worst thing that he had ever experienced in his 21 months of life. It was pure torture:

Much has changed... Now we are a month and a half away from Halloween and Scott has already chosen his costume and wears it almost every day. Actually, he found the costume in a catalog last month, but I made him wait until September before we ordered it. And we had to count down the days before it arrived in the mail.


Can you tell how pumped he is? Any of his friends out there want to dress up as Luigi? Maybe Uncle Jeff?

Crash landings

I stole this post title from my sister-in-law Sara... Since school started for Charlotte and Scott, they have fallen asleep in some pretty random places and times. Here are a few:

Kindergarten follow-up

Scott has now completed 9 days of kindergarten. I know, because he tells me every day what number day he is on... So far, he LOVES it! I don't get many details about what he does in class (clearly a trait inherited from Drew), but what I do hear is all positive. He has a cute friend in class named Conner, and they have already had a couple of play-dates together. I'm encouraging this friendship because Conner's mom is awesome!

Right after I picked him up from the first day of school, I took him to get a doughnut, hoping he might tell me a little more about his day. So here are some photos and the first-day report:

Scott's in Kindergarten!

It's 10:40am, Scott is in kindergarten, Charlotte is in preschool and Trevor is asleep. What do I do with myself??? WOW - so many emotions today...

I guess I'll begin with this... 30 years ago, this was me getting on the bus going to my first day of kindergarten and waving goodbye to my mom.

And now it's my turn to send my oldest off to kindergarten... I understand how my mom probably felt as she took that picture. We arrived at school and Scott hopped out of the car with his sweet Lightning McQueen backpack. Since Scott's classroom is a little further back behind the school gates, his teacher meets the kids out front, lines everyone up, then they walk back to their class together - without parents. Scott was quiet but not hesitant at all about getting in line with the other kids. I didn't think I would be emotional at all, but when Mrs. Cain started walking away with the kids and I just watched Scott and his backpack heading off to school, at that moment I was glad I had my sunglasses on.




We came home, then I took Charlotte off to preschool. She looked lovely today in her Hawaii dress on backwards (technically a nightgown, but don't tell her) and a princess necklace. I did talk her out of the green 'crown' (headband), pink dress-up high heels and black sequin purse. After dropping her off, I can home to a VERY quiet house and just had this cute face to look at:


Then Trevor went down for a nap and it was REALLY quiet! And at that point there were no more tears...

Another Syphi graduation

With the 10 Syphi siblings, just about every month there seems to be a big event: weddings, graduations, new babies, baptisms... This year we are heavy on graduations: Ted (PhD, CalTech), Matthew (BS, BYU), Shannon (MBA, U of Phoenix), and Taylor (MBA, BYU). It isn't that we love Ted, Matthew or Shannon any less, but we decided to load the family into the Pilot and head out to Utah to celebrate Taylor's big accomplishment.

We picked up Charlotte from preschool on Thursday and drove the rest of the day until we arrived at Gary and Emily's late that night. All I can say is THANK GOODNESS for DVD players in the car. Seriously, how did parents travel with small children and stay sane? Friday morning we just hung out with Emily while Scott and cousin Josh had a fabulous time inventing fun games involving throwing plastic Easter eggs and painting the fence yellow. That afternoon we headed down to Provo for the graduation and family party. We had a wonderful time seeing 7 of the 10 Syphi kids, as well as Drew's dad. And as a side bonus, we got to see the Biggs family, too! We just happen to be at the same park on Saturday night as the Biggs clan was all there to celebrate Amy's graduation. Small world, huh? Well, in Provo, it's really not that small.

We stayed with Taylor and Sarah Friday and Saturday and Scott once again loved playing with his cousins Ethan, Christian and Michael. He announced to us that he didn't want to leave on Sunday, but wanted to stay for 4 more days. 5 would be too many. Thanks, Sarah and Taylor for letting us crash at your place!

So to all of our non-Syphi friends in Utah, we are really sorry we weren't able to stop an make any visits along our way! We decided sometime we just need to take a week and visit all our cool friends that live 2 states away...

Charlotte's first day of preschool

What an exciting day! Before I give my account of Charlotte's first day of preschool, here is the report directly from her:

She of course looked adorable. She decided to wear her blue dress with her butterfly flip-flops. They didn't quite match, but that was something I wasn't willing to fight. At least she let me do her hair the way I wanted. The trick to get her to let me do her hair is to ask her which princess she wants to look like each day. Today was 'Snow White hair with 2 Belle rings', and I interpret that as pigtails. Thanks to Aunt Kelly for that stroke of parenting genius.

Grandma came for the big even since she couldn't stand not to be there... So Daddy, Mommy, Grandma, Scott and Trevor all accompanied her to Miss Cathy's. She was just a bit shy when I took her inside, but I was able to leave without any tears (from either of us) or complaints.

She came home with her cute gumball "candelar", or calendar if you need translation. Although if you ask her, the stickers are just dots, not gumballs. I'm pretty excited that I will be picking up Charlotte from preschool each day, since I have high hopes that she will actually tell me about what they do in class, rather than Scott's pitiful accounts. Usually all he would tell me was what they had for snack and if they found any of those silly little colored balls in the back yard. So here are few more photos from the big day:

What's your favorite commercial?

I'm feeling like posting a little something about me... So how about a little discussion of favorite commercials?

My absolute FAVORITE was one that came on during the NCAA basketball tournament this year. You have to know a little something about college basketball to get how totally hilarious this commercial is... I remember watching it for the first time, and with each coach that appears I thought, "Seriously? How did they get him to do this?" I especially like to watch Coach K in the background when he starts rockin' out:



There was a similar one that included some pretty big sports names. It gets my second place vote because I hate Kobe, and nothing could be funnier than Bobby Knight throwing the drums:



So what is your favorite commercial?

More Trevor material

I feel very guilty that I have not taken a ton of pictures or video of Trevor so far... But the good news is the photos and videos that I do have are pretty darn adorable. And his new big trick is rolling over. So for those of you asking for more Trevor material, here it is!

Counting the days...

Charlotte is just a little excited to start preschool at "Ms. Caffy's" (or Cathy's if you can pronounce 'th') this Thursday. I'm pretty excited, too!

And she is also totally ready for story time. A couple of days ago, I found her reading a story to her ice cream cones. Can you tell that her grandmother was an elementary school librarian?

Mad carnival skills

Every once in a while I will throw in the acronym "LOP" into conversation, and some of you have absolutely no idea to what I am referring. But I know to others of you reading this post, the mention of LOP brings back sweet summer memories of riding bikes to the main beach, swim team, and of course, the big 4th of July rager. LOP is how the locals affectionately refer to Lake of the Pines, the community where I grew up and my parents still live. I'll have to do another post some other time about all my memories of LOP, including the time when someone switched the "I" and "E" on the gigantic sign at the entrance of the lake...

So more about the annual 4th of July festivities... LOP is a a very patriotic place. Every year there is a huge event, including a fly-by (maybe an old plane and possibly a commercial airliner flying over on the way to SMF), golf-cart parade, craft fair, countless old ladies in "I heart the USA" bedazzled t-shirts and vests, snow cones, water-ski demonstrations, and of course, fireworks. Another big highlight is the carnival. We went last year and Scott could hardly wait to return this year for the games! And let me tell you, if there were such a thing as a career in playing carnival games, Scott could be very successful. I think he won just about every game he played, including that one where you have to roll a bowling ball hard enough so it goes over the first hump, but not too hard that it rolls back over it. I've never been able to do that one, and Scott was 2 for 2!