November

For a couple of years now we've done nightly prayers- it started off with "Now I lay me down to sleep" and then we added on the Lord's Prayer, and then a couple of months ago we began having each girl choose a person/family to pray for each night. It changes all the time- usually it's for Ellie and Lindsay or Aubree and Isabelle (our neighbors) and often grandmas and grandpas are in there and SOMETIMES even Ryan or I get included. We've insisted that they pray for people- they were wanting to say prayers for cookies and stuffed animals, etc. Then all of the sudden Anna-Kate started with her new prayer...which puzzles me. She's said this every night for about a week now.
"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen. Dear Lord, please watch over all the people who go in the sprinklers. Help them to be safe and happy and healthy and safe and help the people who go in the sprinklers to have fun and be safe and to go inside. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen."


Maegan's got another loose tooth! I'm trying to capture the tooth-pulling on camera but this one is proving to be more difficult- I think it has to do with her new adult tooth being bigger and kind of in the way of getting a good grip on the loose tooth.

Molly has become very cuddly lately and talking a-mile-a-minute in her own language. She was obviously saying Maegan today, as she pointed to a picture, but it was something like "EHeh." She loves to snuggle with stuffed animals and to be outside- she throws a major tantrum every time I make her come back in.

The girls are all excited for Christmas. We've had a lot of fun making Advent calendars for friends and family, Elf on the Shelf came back and many of Maegan and Anna-Kate's artistic creations are being wrapped up and put under the tree. Maegan's turned into quite the artist- I'm attached some of her pictures below. They are so detailed and creative, it's amazing. On Christmas day we head to Florida, which we are all so excited for!

Maegan's doing well in school and is even starting to read! It's been really cool watching her move through these pre-reading stages. First she was sounding out each letter for every word, and then she was able to use picture cues to figure out words (in a slow way though.) Then she moved onto being able to sound out bigger/harder words by thinking about the first part of the word and now she's truly reading many words by sight. She's also able to correct herself- for example she can read "baby" as "buh" "a" "buh" "yuh" and then without too much thought say "baby." She's also using picture clues pretty quickly now, where it doesn't slow down her reading too much. It's all very cool to see in person. It's truly been a "switch flipped on" for her, which I think is the neatest thing.

Maegan's artwork:
Her kites (this is MOST of them, but there's at least 15 that didn't make it into this shot. She was obsessed with kite making for a couple of weeks.


This is her wanting something from the fridge, and of course I'm the meanie saying no.


Her friends


Her interpretation of a bee, lots of materials here.


Her as a bat, on Halloween.


This is electricity- she's fascinated by the electrical boxes and all of the warnings posted on them.






Maegan has a crush (A CRUSH!!!) on Ryan's friend, Kirk. Whenever Kirk comes over he spends all of his time playing with our kids, and they adore him. So this is a picture of Maegan, Kirk and Anna-Kate having a "clothes party" in Molly's closet. Clothes party means that when something doesn't fit Molly I just throw it into her closet, and it's been accumulating there for awhile. So they th row the clothes in the air and yell "CLOTHES PARTY!!!"


This is one of my favorites- she noticed the steam coming from the dishwasher and ran over and came back with this creation- she's roasting a marshmallow! And please notice her "lip thing," as I call it. When her lips are chapped she does this funny thing with her mouth and of course since I've pointed it out and told her it looks goofy, she does it a lot.


One night Ryan walked in from work and Maegan instantly pounced on him, insisting that right then and there they must make a pirate ship. It was so funny because I'd been with her all day and there had been no mention of pirates or ships, so she must have been saving that just for him. It was all very complicated because she wanted it to hang from the ceiling and she wanted a rope she could slide down. She was sure packing tape was strong enough to hold her in her "ship" taped to the ceiling and it took lots and lots of patience to convince her that it would not work. So she's now settled for hanging a ribbon from her ceiling fan to her floor that she holds onto as she jumps off her bed and pretends to slide down it.

Our pirates:








Arg!



My girls at the Festival of Trees parade (brr!)


Molly, loving on Rudolph:


Showing which stocking is theirs:

Halloween

The girls had a great Halloween! Enjoy the pictures!


Molly had trouble walking in her costume, she seemed to feel top heavy.


Who knew elephants can ride bikes?




Maegan and Anna-Kate with our neighbors, Aubree and Isabelle, who are quickly becoming their best friends:


Maegan's class:


Some pictures from last weekend, at my parent's house:


Jesse is 2 now!






Maegan in front of the blackberry bushes we love so much:

Pumpkin Patch fun

We took our trip to the pumpkin patch on Sunday! Here are some pictures:

As usual, trying to capture all 3 girls in a picture is a huge task.






Checking out the 3 Little Pigs (that's Drew on the right:)




They rode this barrel train(and Drew did not enjoy himself!)


Molly doesn't understand why her sisters think the pumpkin patch is so much fun?


And a few from Friday night, playing dress up as usual:

We've had a couple of big events since I last wrote- Maegan has one less baby tooth and Molly now spends most of her time upright- she's walking!

Maegan's tooth came loose a couple of weeks ago, we discovered while brushing her teeth. I think I was nearly as excited as she was! It took about 2 weeks for it to wiggle loose enough to pull, and just before we left for school last week we discovered that it was ready to come out. She gave a couple of tugs but I didn't think she'd be able to pull it hard enough but she did, and she is now very proud of her shiny new adult tooth that's quickly taking the open spot! The other bottom middle tooth is now loose too, but I think it will be at least a few weeks before we see any more tooth action. She got a nice note from the tooth fairy, a pack of bubblegum (of which she ate 5 pieces all on the first day and MOLLY ate one! She was really enjoying it before I so rudely ripped it from her mouth, which she did not appreciate,) and $1.

Yep, it's loose!


Right after she pulled it!


We had to put it in a baggie and send it to school, she's the 2nd kid in her class to lose a tooth.


With her loot from the Tooth Fairy:


Molly had an awesome birthday- she thoroughly enjoyed her cake and ice cream and seemed to enjoy all of the extra attention.

Her first birthday present- an awesome clapper that Maegan picked out at the dollar store. By awesome I mean super loud.


She really liked this camera Anna-Kate and I picked out for her.


Her favorite part of the whole deal:






Anna-Kate got to celebrate fall by dressing as a scarecrow for school yesterday! I was a little nervous because Anna-Kate is definitely a princess- most days she refuses to wear anything but pink, and often throws a fit when I make her wear jeans. But, I guess being a scarecrow is cool because she was fine with her whole outfit, and I think she even liked her flannel shirt!