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.