Let the Festivities Begin

Our Thanksgiving was great. We stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Taylor the first night and spent most of Thanksgiving with them. Both kids loved playing with Grandpa Taylor and his trains. Ethan put his toy Woody on the train and had him riding around the track. He was nervous to have Woody go through the tunnel at first, but after seeing Woody safe on the other side he thought it was great.

After Thanksgiving dinner, we made gingerbread cookies with Grandma (as it is a tradition) and got to try out her new train cookie cutters. Ethan put most of the hearts on by himself. The kids really liked to decorate Buzz and Woody gingerbread men using the standard gingerbread man shape. Ethan was pretty good at squeezing the frosting out of the bag. We didn't get any pictures of Buzz or Woody because they were devoured too quickly. Thanksgiving evening we went to Grandma and Grandpa Morrey's house for Thanksgiving dinner 2. Ethan and Brooklyn both loved playing with the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head from Toy Story, as well as the Spud Lightyear, Woody, and Jessie Potato Head pack.

At one point, Kyle was left tending the kids and decided it would be fun to jump on the city bus and go for a ride. We rode out to Smithfield, grabbed a treat at McDonald's, and caught the bus back home. Both kids had a fun time riding the bus, despite the near-record cold temperature.

We didn't do any early Black Friday shopping, but we did go see Tangled with all of the Morreys (while Grandma and Grandpa Taylor watched the kiddos). We all really loved the movie--definitely one to buy.

On Saturday, we went with the Taylors and saw Harry Potter, which we also really enjoyed.

Brooklyn is playing dress-up with Ethan a lot lately. They especially love Toy Story.

We usually try to put up our Christmas Tree after we get home from Thanksgiving. This year we were a week late getting it up, but now that it's up it's beginning to feel a lot more like Christmas. Ethan and Brooklyn had fun "helping" put the ornaments on the tree. Thank goodness for plastic ornaments.

The other day Ethan was very sad (we don't remember why). To express how sad he was, he ran into the office and drew this picture on the white board. He says it's a picture of him crying.

Ethan has been getting his (and Brooklyn's) Christmas lists together. Today he announced that he was going to ask Santa for a Toy Story 3 Ken with Ken's Dreamhouse. He says Brooklyn wants a Toy Story 3 Barbie.

And now it's time for another deep thought from Ethan Morrey:

"I have lots of toys. The only thing I need is lots more toys."

Changing Seasons

In anticipation of the storm rolling in this last weekend, we raked up all of our leaves and got our yard ready for winter. Ethan had a blast playing in the pile of leaves. He was such a great help using his own little rake and spreading the pile of leaves out after Mom had gathered them all.
It was a good thing we got the yard ready, because this morning we woke up with nearly a foot of fresh snow covering the ground. After church, Kyle and the kids headed out to have some fun. Seeing Brooklyn in her snowsuit reminded us of the movie "A Christmas Story" - we don't know if she could put her arms down.

By the time we got out to play, the snow had formed a thick layer of ice after sitting out all day. This made it hard to roll out the snow balls for a snow man. We were able to build this little guy though.

Ethan likes to watch a fairly new PBS cartoon called "The Cat in the Hat Knows a lot about That." When he saw the snow coming down, he got really excited to build a snow Cat in the Hat, just like they do in one of the episodes. Brooklyn just wanted to eat the nose.

Ethan had fun making snow angels.

Brooklyn is cute. We can't believe how fast she's growing up. She more like a little girl and less like a baby every day. She had her two-year-old doctor's appointment this week. She came in at 24.8 lbs (25th percentile) and 34 inches (75th percentile). One of the milestones for kids her age is if they can speak at least 20 words. She probably knows more than 200. This girl never ceases to amaze us with the things coming out of her mouth.

We also took the kids to the dentist for their 6 month checkup. Ethan was so excited to go to the dentist. We heard him saying things like, "I'm so excited to go to the dentist," and "Do I have cavities?" He got X-rays for the first time, and has no cavities. The dentist says both kids have very good teeth, but he can already tell that they're both most likely going to need braces when they get older since their teeth are packed so tightly. Better start saving now...

We celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary on Thursday. It was a fun day. We ate lots of chocolate fondue. Mmm, boy!

The other day, Ethan wanted to get out the costumes we got on clearance after Halloween this year. He liked the soldier because it was like the toy soldiers on Toy Story. He loved talking on the phone and drinking from the canteen. He still uses the canteen to get a drink when he's thirsty.

Without any prompting, he knew that pirates say "ARRRR" and "Shiver me timbers."

Two Much

We had a very busy weekend. Brooklyn turned two on Friday. Jen's uncle got married this weekend too. His reception was the same day as her birthday and we were occupied for most of Saturday with the actual wedding. We managed to squeeze in a little birthday party on Saturday evening. Brooklyn had a beautiful princess castle cake. Jen was pretty stressed getting the cake finished in time between all the other things we had going on, but it worked out almost as planned. She planned on making lots of tiny fondant flowers for the cake, but realized after she started making a few that the cornstarch she was using to prevent the fondant from being too sticky wasn't cornstarch as she thought, but baking soda. Yuck. Oh, well, fortunately the heart shaped sprinkles we had on hand worked fine and saved lots of time.

She was actually excited to open her presents this year and with a little help from an overly eager brother, she managed to find out what was inside.

We got her a dolly that looks just like her and a princess book. Sadly, she hasn't gotten too attached to them yet. She got a princess dress from her Grandma and Grandpa Morrey, which we're sure she'll eventually love, but at the time she seemed to have the most fun sitting in the box it was wrapped in. She instantly loved and still loves the big soft puppy that her aunt and uncle got for her.

While at the wedding reception on Friday, Brooklyn must have caught on to the romantic spirit. We don't know who this little boy was, but she kept following him around to give him hugs.

We are so glad out kids love each other so much! They were really good throughout all the wedding events.

We took Brooklyn to pick out a toy at Wal-Mart for her birthday. She sure had fun playing with all of the toys she could reach. We don't normally let them out of the cart so freely, but they sure loved it.

Ethan has been his funny little self lately. We bought Toy Story 3 when it came out a few weeks back and he refuses to watch it. He told us that he is allergic to movies. After a few days, he changed is mind and said he's only allergic to movies that he doesn't like - including the Toy Story movies. He loves the toys and wants them for Christmas, but won't watch the movies.

Flames

Wednesday afternoon, Jen got a very loud and persistent knock on the door, accompanied by a fireman barging in yelling for us all to get out. He told us that our neighbor's house was on fire and that we needed to quickly evacuate. After waking Brooklyn up from her nap, she herded the kids outside to find the following scene:

The afternoon was spent outside watching the action and at a neighbor's house playing with their toys. Fortunately, the weather was good since we didn't really have time to grab any jackets and Jen didn't grab her shoes. No one was hurt in the fire and the cause as far as we know is yet to be determined.

We celebrated Jen's 29th birthday this week. We celebrated on Tuesday, then went on a date Friday night (out to dinner and to an arcade--which was a blast). The kids were excited for Rachel to come over to play (babysit). She is one of their very favorite people on the planet.

This is what Ethan would look like if we never cut his hair. He had fun wearing Mommy's Halloween wig. He makes such a cute little girl, no?

Wal-Mart had their Halloween stuff 90% off yesterday. We grabbed a bunch of costumes for ~$1.00 that we thought the kids could use for dress-up. Today Ethan wanted to be an astronaut. He put his suit on, jumped in an empty box, counted "3,2,1, blastoff" and took a quick trip to the moon. Thankfully, he was home for dinner. He thought it would be fun if next year for Halloween, he could be an astronaut, Brooklyn could be his spaceship, and mom and dad could be the moon and the sun. If only we could find those sun and moon costumes from those Jimmy Dean commercials, we would really rock.

For the last few months Ethan has had no interest in watching any movies, though he likes PBS cartoons. We just bought Toy Story 3, which we he saw and loved in the theater. Ethan refused to be in the room where it was playing. He even went as far as say, "I am allergic to movies!!"

Brooklyn hasn't seen the movie before and doesn't have quite the attention span for a movie yet so we showed her just the opening sequence of the movie with the train. She know and loves the characters because Ethan has many of the toys. It was so funny seeing her react. She would say, "Oh no!" at the right parts and get excited whenever she recognized a character. When she saw Bullseye she exclaimed, "Getty-up Bullseye!" How did she grow up so fast?

Super Why Halloween

Wow. We didn't know how well he actually knew who Super Why was brought to you by until we did this video and looked up what was actually said. He had it nearly word for word. The only part he missed is at the very beginning where it says "Super Why was funded by" instead of "brought to you by." We've noticed that he has quite a gift for memorizing things. He can basically quote the first ten minutes of various episodes of different cartoons from memory, including sound effects.

As you may have guessed, our family were the PBS's Super Why and the Super Readers for Halloween this year. Ethan has been planning this for about 12 months. He was Super Why, Jen was Wonder Red, Kyle was Alpha Pig, and Brooklyn was Princess Presto (Caucasian edition).

We had a few close calls that almost ruined all of our plans. The first near-catastrophe happened two days before the big day. Ethan got a small owie on his finger. He was approached Jen genuinley concerned that, "Super Why doesn't have an owie on his finger." Luckily, the owie healed in time.

The second close call happened Saturday Morning. Jen made Ethan's costume from scratch, and she put the Super Why logo on his shirt the night before. She used an iron-on aplique that is printed on special paper for the book on Super Why's shirt. When Ethan saw it, he burst in to tears, exclaiming, "That's the wrong book!" He knows that the real Super Why's book doesn't say "Super Why" on it - it's just the book. We figured it would be better to use the one we did so more people would recognize who he was. He was so upset he almost gave up on being Super Why and wanted to be Mr. Incredible instead. WOW. After about fifteen minutes, Kyle convinced him that it would be OK (for those familiar with the cartoon, Ethan agreed that the letters would be the "Super Letters" that give the "Super Story Answer").

All day, he kept changing between Super Why and Whyatt, his alter-ego. In the process, his mask got very stretched out.

Both kids had a good time Trick-or-Treating, although both kids took a little while to get the hang of it. At the first few doors, Ethan refused to say "Trick or treat." Jen told him to pretend he was saying it to her instead. On the next few stops, he looked at Jen, said "trick or treat," then looked at the people answering the door.

Brooklyn didn't really get the idea of getting lots of candy. Once she got her first piece, she wanted to eat it and wasn't intested in getting any more. She eventually caught on, and wanted to have a taste of each new piece of candy. She handed us many half-eaten suckers.

After we had been out for half an hour, Ethan asked, "Can we stop going to houses to get treats?" He was tired and wanted to go home.

This year the kids had their own pumpkins. Kyle made Brooklyn's (on the right), since she didn't have much interest in helping. Ethan (on the left) helped clean it out - he used a spoon and extracted four seeds, and he drew the face with a marker. The face he drew was much too small to actually carve, so Kyle had to make it bigger, but this is pretty close to what he drew.

Friday we took the kids to Wheeler Farm in Murray. We all had a lot of fun. Brooklyn walked through the pumpkin patch trying to pick up pumpkins. She squatted down, grabbed ahold, and tried to pick one up. When she couldn't do it, she exclaimed, "heavy."

The corn maze was pretty pathethic. It was more like a weed maze. They only made us pay for Ethan's admittance, but we still felt like we got ripped off. Jen's exact words were, "I want my giggle back." (referencing Thumb Wars)
Before we went to the farm, Ethan drew a map so we wouldn't get lost in the maze. He kept checking it throughout.

Brooklyn was obssed with picking up rocks and giving them to the animals.

She had fun petting this goat and wished she could touch all of the animals.

The ducks weren't too happy when she tried to pet them. The expression on her face here is priceless. Click on the picture to see it bigger.

I do it!

Brooklyn sure has been growing up quickly. She's at the stage where she has to do everything by herself. Sometimes it's nice, like when she needs to get in bed and we ask her, "Do you want to get in bed by yourself, or should Daddy/Mommy do it?" She always responds, "I do it!" and runs to her bed and jumps in. Unfortunately, she doesn't go to sleep right away. We'll often hear her an hour after putting her down chatting to her toys or playing with her nighttime music crib toy thingy (can't think of a better name).

She seems like she's getting ready to get potty trained soon. She loves to take off her diaper, put it in the garbage (even if it's totally dry), sit on her potty for a few seconds, grab a square of toilet paper, wipe, throw the tissue away in the garbage, and be done. When we tell her to "push out the pee-pee," she goes "Ugghhh" and makes a funny straining face. Maybe one day she'll actually...you know.

Sometimes we'll quiz her on shapes and colors. She knows the words for colors and shapes, but not necessarily which ones correspond to what they are.

Lately, we have noticed that she loves to count the stairs as she walks down them. Usually she gets the number in the right order up to about six, sometimes eight.


She loves to see the moon. Anytime we see the moon while we're driving, she'll get very excited and keep repeating "Moon! Moon! Moon!" It's cute, but gets old after twenty minutes or more.

Fall Family Photos

You can check out some of our family pictures at our SIL's website here.

We are so happy with them and will post a few soon.

Ten Ten Ten

Happy 10/10/10 everyone.

Lately Ethan has insisted on being the Man in the Yellow Hat and Brooklyn has been Curious George. This weekend we finally pulled out Ethan's old monkey costume for Brooklyn to wear and got some pictures of these two little friends.

Today at church Ethan drew (yet another) picture of Super Why. He made sure to count out loud to make sure Super Why had five fingers on each hand. Then he drew the thumbs. The blue wings are the cape. He had to ask how to spell Super Why, but wrote all of the letters himself. He wrote the word "super" just fine, but ran out of room on the Hymn book he was using as a table, so he rotated the paper 180 degrees and wrote the "why" upside down. We were impressed how well he can write upside down.

Kyle just received a call on Jen's cell phone from a neighbor tonight. The caller told Kyle that he didn't have Kyle's current phone number but the only the one we changed two years ago. When he called the old phone number, an Oriental gentleman answered and said something like, "a lot of people call for this 'Kyle'. I do not know him."

We had a photo shoot with our sister-in-law, Heather, yesterday. Here's a sneak peak from the photo shoot. This is the only picture we've got so far, but stay tuned for much more...

A Clever Title for a Bunch of Random Stuff

Last weekend we went up to Cache Valley for Ethan and Brooklyn's cousin Matthew's baby blessing. It was so good to get together with the family and so fun to finally see Matthew. Brooklyn loved to give Baby Matthew kisses and hugs and enthusiastically call him "Baby Julie" (Julie is another cousin).

The kids played a beautiful duet on Grandma Taylor's piano. On the way home, Brooklyn stayed awake the entire time regardless of the fact that it was after 10:00 when we got home. When we pulled into the driveway, she got sad and started crying, "No, Grandma Morrey. No Grandma Morrey." We guess she thought we were driving back to Grandma Morrey's house across the valley.

Grandma and Grandpa Taylor got back from a Disneyland vacation recently, and they got the kids some really cute gifts. Ethan loves his new authentic Woody hat. Brooklyn got a super cute Jessie costume.
We took some time out of our busy day on Saturday to take the kids to Home Depot for their monthly Kids Workshop. The theme for this month was fire safety. The kids had fun building their fire boats. Ethan was pretty excited that he was able to use his hammer to actually make the nail go into the wood. In previous months he tapped on the nail for minutes without making any visable progress. Half-way through the project, the fire engine from the Tooele Fire Department pulled up, and the kids got close-up look at a real fire engine. (As a funny side-note, Ethan is dressed up as The Man in the Yellow Hat from Curious George. He's got the yellow hat, yellow shirt, and tie on.)

After our fun at Home Depot, we got ready to stain our deck. To keep the kids busy while we worked, we rented the new Tinkerbell movie and popped the kids some popcorn. They laid back on the Love Sac and enjoyed the movie. Thanks TV for babysitting our kids.

Brooklyn's vocabulary has been expanding lately. She's been starting to put different ideas into phrases and has started using short sentences. For example, the other day after she was supposed to have a nap, Kyle asked her if she even slept. She replied, "sleep long time."

She loves her brother and emulates him in everything he does and says. She'll sing songs with him, copy what he says, run around with him, and get excited about all of the things that he loves (Lightning McQueen, Buzz Lightyear, Curious George, Super Why, etc.). The other day, Ethan was The Man in the Yellow Hat (but he likes to be called "The Man" for short) and Ethan insisted she was Curious George.

We've also started to teach her to say prayers. This is big, since she has always been rebellious about fold her arms when we pray. But now she'll fold her arms and copy some of the words we prompt her to say. It's fun to hear her cute little voice and see her grow up.

Lately, nearly every night Brooklyn starts crying about a half hour after we put the kids in bed. When we go in to check on her, she has taken off her pajamas and her baby doll's pajamas. She insists we put both her and her baby's jammies on before she goes back to bed. When she wakes up in the morning, she usually has stripped down to her diaper again. Such a silly girl.

About two weeks ago, we had some other families in the ward over at our house for family home evening to help pick the apples off of our trees. We gave most of them away, but kept a small box for ourselves. Later that night we found the entire box spilled across the kitchen floor with a small Brooklyn-sized bite in each apple.

Family Portrait

After a bit of coaxing, Jen finally got Ethan to draw a family portrait. Ethan refused to draw a picture of himself, but when Jen said he could be Super Why, he was happy to draw the picture. He had Brooklyn sit in one of the red chairs that Jen built.

After drawing the family portrait, he decided to draw our family as the Super Readers (Super Why and his super hero team). It's fun to see some of the details he remembers. For instance, Princess Presto (played by Brooklyn) has a Magical Spelling Wand and crown. Wonder Red (played by Jen) has braided hair and roller skates. Alpha Pig (Kyle) has a pig nose. And of course Super Why (Ethan) has brown hair, a mask, and a book on his shirt. We also all have shoe laces. It's funny that he missed some not-so-minor details like arms.

Kyle asked Ethan to draw a picture of him and Grandma at Disneyland (since Grandma Taylor was there this week). He thought about it and said, "I will draw a picture of me and Brooklyn and Grandma Taylor and Grandma Morrey at Disneyland. Notice how Mickey Mouse (in the upper left corner) has red pants and yellow shoes with ears on the top of his head.

Budding Artist

Ethan has been drawing a lot lately, and we've been very impressed with how good he's getting. The other day, Kyle was watching (aka sleeping through) an episode of Super Why with Ethan and Brooklyn. When the show was over, Ethan presented a "comic book" based on the episode he had just watched.


Today at church, Ethan decided to occupy himself by drawing Curious George. Notice the fine details (ears, hair, skin coloring, thumbs, etc).


When he was finished, he decided to draw Curious George with a banana. (look carefully, or you might not see it) Not bad for 3 1/2! (even if George looks a little like Pop-Eye the Sailor Man)