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.