October

A few days after Sophie's Birthday Party, Matt went on a business trip to England and Australia for 2 weeks. I took advantage of the time to get a firm routine and start a parenting system called "Accountable Kids". The girls took to it well but I had to have all my ducks in a row and coax them through it every day. I would get the kids down early and then spend the evenings organizing and cleaning the house. I must say it's the most organized the house had been in a while.

Matt got home just in time for the ward Halloween party. It was so good to have him back. He brought lots of fun gifts back including a little Wambat which goes everywhere with Ellie. Sophie wanted to be Pocahontas and Ellie wanted to be the "Island Princess". I found Sophie's costume for 3 bucks at Savers but it was way too short so I supplemented with a skirt I made--I bought Indian type fabric. I couldn't get the sewing machine to work so I ended up sewing it by hand at the last minute.

Halloween night was so fun. We stayed in our neighborhood this year which was nice. The girls had so much fun and Mathew slept through the whole thing. It's amazing how much candy they got. Our neighbors sat outside to hand out candy for themselves and us to that was nice.

Sophie's bday

Yesterday was Sophie's Birthday. It started out with breakfast in bed. She opened Grandma/granddaddy Nuttall's and Kristy/James' presents. Then of course, marking her height on the wall was very important.

Matt was able to take a half day off of work and came to the class to have cupcakes and sing Happy Birthday. The teacher pulled me aside and told us that Sophie is an angel in class (I was very proud).

Then Matt went and picked up two kids from their schools so they could come to the party since their parents work. I took a girl home with us to take her to the party and we went to "Pump it up". I was a little late since it was a mad rush from the school. There were a lot more kids than I'd thought--a lot of extra siblings came so there were 31 people. Everyone had a great time. Matt had Mathew the whole time so I got to talk to the parents.

The cake got destroyed on the ride over but oh well overall it was fun. I decided we will have one party a year--alternating Ellie, Sophie and Mathew. On other years, we will just have 1 or 2 friends over to celebrate. We brought 4 kids home with us until their parents could pick them up so the party really didn't end til about 7:30. Then Sophie (and Ellie) opened the presents. We were all so tired afterwards and crashed.

Here are some pics...

Double click on this picture to see the slide show

Sophie's 6th Bday

Quick Trip to Eagar

Matt is going to be out of town for a while so Friday afternoon we decided to drop everything and take a quick trip to Eagar. October is our favorite time of the year there. It was super windy one of the days but we had a great time enjoying the colors and the pumpkins.

2007.10 Eagar trip

Weeks seem to be flying. It's finally cooled down so I'm starting to walk Sophie and Ellie to school. Mathew is obsessed with screaming...that's all he does. I'm really trying to wean him. I've tried before but failed I'm hoping it works this time.

We've found 2 scorpions in the last 4 days. Saturday, I almost stepped on one with my bare foot in the garage and then today we found a dead one at the bottom of the pool. We have black widows outside too that we keep finding. Oh well.

Mathew's first words

I took Mathew to the doctor's office on Wednesday and he is 95 percentile for his head size, 50th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight. The doctor told me I need to feed him more. He told me I needed to talk to him more to get him to start saying things so I've started to work on it more. Although it's been months since he's been imitating--for example, putting phones to his ear and saying "DAAaa" which basically means hello but he hasn't properly articulated any words. Well now he'll point to his eye and say "aaahhh" and point to the lights and say "aaaaahhhh". If I ask him to point to one of those things he does. Do those count as first words? He is constantly imitating what we do. He insists on eating what we are eating and will scream his lungs out if we dont give him his food on a plate and with utensils. He also plays with dolls and pretends to feed them with bottles--smacking his lips while he feeds them. He is probably better at picking up toys than Ellie. He'll go around and put toys in bins.

puff

There's a man that's been going to Sophie's school to talk about composers once a week--he also plays different instruments. Sophie has been fascinated with it and comes home describing in great detail everything he played and how it sounded. The first time she heard the violin she acting like she was overwhelmed with how beautiful it was. She is so articulate--she described the music so beautifully.

Last week the guy brought his guitar and taught them puff the magic dragon. Sophie came home and sang the whole thing to me. Then she proceeded to explain to me what the song meant--When she got to the part about the boy growing up, I could see tears welling up in her eyes. She was explaining that when kids grow up they don't have time to play with their toys and that Puff would never see his best friend again. The way she described it was so touching that it brought tears to my eyes too. Then she stopped and said..."Mom-- look at us, we're both crying about a song". We both laughed through our tears. It was such a tender moment, I wish I had her gift of description to better document it.