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)

Marshmallow Hair Gel

Yesterday we took the kids on a picnic at the local park. We grilled some steaks and kabobs on the charcoal grill, and topped it off with some s'mores. We thought it would be fun to get those REALLY big marshmallows to roast, but we found out that giving kids marshmallows the half the size of their face isn't a good idea. Some of the roasted marshmallow goo found its way to Brooklyn's hair and glued one of her eyes shut. Needless to say, we'll be sticking to regular sized marshmallows in the future.

We went to Home Depot's monthly kid workshop, where Ethan and Brooklyn built football holders/mini tables. Brooklyn decided to eat her dinner on one tonight. Ethan was really excited to get a football to put on his stand (5 cents from a yard sale!)

Brooklyn has been really enjoying our garden this year. We have yet to find anything that she hasn't liked to take a bite out of.

Ethan and Brooklyn been loving to watch Curious George lately. It's just about their favorite thing on the planet. Ethan's favorite episode is the Donut episode. He pretty well has the entire episode memorized. We'll often find him scribbling on little pieces of paper writing, "1 dozen donuts please."

We walked in one day and found him scribbling on a piece of paper. When asked what he was doind, he replied, " I'm crunching numbers," emulating The Man in the Yellow Hat (Curious George's owner, in case you aren't familar with the show/book).

Brooklyn has been obsessed with closing doors lately. After she closed a door yesterday, Ethan commented, "Brooklyn is good at closing doors." When Jen asked, "What are you good at, Ethan?" he responded, "I'm good at lots of things."

This is the Place

On Saturday, Kyle's work held their annual summer party at This is the Place Heritage Park. We had a lot of fun going around the old west village. Ethan and Brooklyn had a lot of fun playing with this "authentic" old west water fountain. Ethan was sweet to help Brooklyn get a drink.

Jen especially looked forward to what was advertised as an "authentic old-fashioned shave." Kyle even decided to forego shaving for a week prior to get the full effect. We were dissapointed to see that the barber didn't even have a sharp blade on his razor. It was all for show.

One of the kids' favorite things to do was ride around the park on the trains. There were three of them continuously shuttling visitors around the park.

Brooklyn loved the petting zoo. She chased after the baby animals and loved to pet them and say "Lamby, lamby." Ethan was a bit timid and didn't want to touch any of the animals.

Ethan was excited to ride the ponies. He has a big grin plastered on his face the whole time. When asked if he had fun when the ride was over, he said, "Yes, and I didn't even get sacred!" He's always been a bit timid around Grandpa Morrey's horses. Maybe this has cured him.

Brooklyn, on the other hand, was very concerned about getting on the horse. She cluched onto Kyle's arm the whole time, and she did not want to let go. Kyle did break away for a second when the ride was over to snap this picture and was lucky enough to get the shot just before she started crying.

The kids also loved the miniature train that went around the pond.

Ethan didn't want stop playing on this replica (1/6 scale) of the Brooklyn.

Over all, this was the favorite company party we've been to. It helps that our kids are finally old enough to do the activities. When we were leaving Ethan said to us that he really thought we should come again.

Today at church Kyle and I spoke in Sacrament Meeting. We invited Grandma and Grandpa Taylor to watch the kids while we spoke. We also had quite the arsenal of snacks for the kids to keep them happy since they have been known to flip out if one of us has had to go up to say a prayer in the past. They did very well. Grandma also invited her parents to come and we had them all over tonight for dinner. We had a good time and the kid loved playing with them.