Already a third through November!

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I gave potty training another try on Monday, 11/4.  Here's a couple of FB posts from that day:

(9:30am) Potty training take 2. I've already wiped pee off the kitchen floor and neither of them has gone on the potty yet. *sigh*

(11:30am) I am going to lose my freaking mind! I had made Makenna sit on the potty for a long time and nothing happened so I let her get off. I asked her every couple of minutes if she needed to pee and she was standing on the couch and just stood there and started peeing! I told her to sit down so it wouldn't get everywhere but, instead, she ran across the couch, still peeing, so there's literally pee on every single cushion. There's a big puddle on one cushion, then a trail of pee across the middle one, and another big puddle at the other end of the couch where she ended up. Not even a minute later, Avery peed in her panties, too. Is this worth it? Or should I just let them stay in their diapers? I'm so frustrated. Thank goodness I have a carpet/upholstery cleaner!

After a lot of feedback from friends, I decided they still aren't ready and it's not worth the fight to try to make them do it before they really want to.  They just don't care to be out of diapers yet and I don't want it to be a completely miserable experience for all three of us.  Plus, it doesn't help to try to do it when Jared is out of town.  So, I'm gonna hold out until it's their idea to use the potty. 

11/5:  I asked Avery what Mommy's real name is and she said, "Abracadabra!" Not sure where that came from. Then I asked her what her daddy's name is and she said, "He's a boy." Makenna knew the right answers, by the way, so at least one of them knows the correct answers. 

Avery thought she was pretty funny.  :)

11/6:  We went to Mommy & Me Story Time at the library that mid-morning.

Calgon, take me away! The twins woke up from their nap SO GRUMPY!!!! Crying over everything!

And that was after my relaxing weekly massage. *sigh*

11/7: Who else has seen "Room on the Broom"? My girls call it the witch show. We have probably seen it over 25 times since last Wed. Thankfully, it only takes 20 min. to watch. Makenna would watch it 20 times a day if I let her. It's a really cute cartoon but I don't know how many more times I can watch it! 

 I bought our tickets to Louisiana for Christmas!  Yay!  I can't wait!

11/8: I love when Avery enters a room and says, "Hello, everybody!", even though it's just me and Makenna, haha! She is so cute and funny.

On the flip side, I want to scream when Makenna asks for something over and over and over again like just now with "Witch show, witch show, witch show!" about 50 times before I was able to turn it on. Aaaaargh! Good thing she is also cute and funny most of the time. 

That evening after the girls woke up from their nap, we picked up Ashleigh (one of my former Young Women in Louisiana) from BYU and she spent the weekend with us.  I made her a home-cooked meal of garlic butter tilapia, baked potatoes, and garlic sauteed squash (frozen, from our garden).  After the girls went to bed, we watched a movie.

Here's a HILARIOUS video of me giving the girls some Warheads candies.  If you've never had them, they are hard candies that have a really sour coating on them.  The idea is that you suck on the really sour part for 5 to 10 seconds, then you get to enjoy the sweet hard candy.  This is what happened when I let the girls try one; it was pretty mean of me--they were so excited to be getting candy:


11/9: I got ready to have a football party that night.  I cleaned, shopped, cooked, and cleaned (trying to keep a house clean with kids is like shoveling snow while it's still snowing).  Our neighbors, who are big LSU fans (the husband grew up in Louisiana) came over, as well as Kiki and her family and Timmy.  I made shrimp and corn soup and bread pudding, which were so good, if I do say so myself, ha ha!  Kiki made ribs and baked potatoes.  It was all so good and we had a great time, even though LSU lost (which was expected, since we were #13 and Bama is #1).  We were chatting so much that it saved me from watching most of the awfulness of the game.  It sure SUCKED to lose to Bama again!!!!!!!

Ashleigh came to church with us today and stayed in nursery with us.  The girls were really good today, except for just a few minutes that Avery was being ornery.  After we came home and ate lunch, we took Ashleigh back to her dorm.  The girls fell asleep in the car but I was able to get them back into bed, where they finished their nap, thankfully!  I was still so wiped out from yesterday and from staying up talking with Ashleigh until 1am after everyone left last night.  It was worth it, though. :)

P.S.  The 5th marked 2 years since the girls were sealed to us.  Crazy, huh?

Not too much has happened since Halloween, other than just hanging out here at the house.  On Friday, I had a couple of friends and their kids who aren't yet in school over for lunch to help me eat some of the left-over chili from Halloween the previous night.  The girls had fun playing with the other kids.  Funny story:  While those kids were over here, one of the boys got down the Cootie game and the girls were playing with it so, of course, a couple of the tiny pieces were misplaced and I drove myself crazy looking for them.  I found them the next day under the couch, along with a bunch of stinkin' candy bar wrappers and other trash!  Jared is such a stinker!  He said, "Wait until you find some of my other hiding places."  Good thing he's out of town.  :)

I took all of the Halloween decorations down yesterday and the girls miss them.  They were so sad when they woke up from their nap and the big spider and all the ghosts and skeletons were gone.  Funny, since they were scared of it all at first, ha ha.

Our new thing thing is for the girls to run around the kitchen island while I hide in the pantry and jump out and scare them as the come around the corner. I got this video yesterday.  About 50 seconds in, Avery gets mad at Makenna for pushing her. It's pretty funny. I showed it to them and Avery was laughing so hard and wanted to watch it over and over again. I had tears in my eyes from laughing.
 

After their little "fight", they got right back to running around:

After bathtime last night, I got Avery dressed first, then I was getting Makenna dressed and I yelled and asked Avery what she was doing and she came in and said, "I'm watching football!" and ran back to the living room (I had left a football game going on the TV). About a minute later, she came in and said, "Give me five, Mommy!" and ran back out after I did so.  As I put her in bed and left the room, she threw a fit  saying, "I want to watch football! I want to watch football!" This makes me smile.

It snowed just a tiny bit this morning before church (didn't stick and stopped before we left for church).  The first thing the girls said was, "We need our jackets!" And Avery wrapped her arms around herself and said she was cold. Drama queen.

Makenna put Elmo in time out this afternoon. Meanwhile, Avery yelled, out of the blue, "Surprise!! Happy Birthday!!!"  So random.

And she was combing his fur later:

This morning before church, Elmo wasn't feeling well, so Makenna wrapped him up in Avery's blankie and they were giving him medicine:

Makenna fell and hit her head on the stove right before bedtime tonight and has a huge bump on her head so Avery wanted to sleep with her to help her feel better. So sweet but it didn't last long.  They would chat and laugh for a bit and I'd go in or tell them over the video camera to go to sleep or they'd fight and cry over a blanket or Makenna would tease Avery, etc.  At one point, Makenna actually asked for medicine for her head, so I went in and gave her some Ibuprofin.  After just a few minutes, I had to go in there again for the 50th time and I'd had enough so I put Avery back in her bed and she threw a HUGE fit for several minutes, saying, "Makenna's bed!!!" over and over and over and over...  She finally gave up and went to sleep, though.

So that's it for now.  The time changed last night and I already hate it.  The girls are gonna start waking up earlier now so I have to train myself to go to bed at a decent time.  It shouldn't be a problem right at first, because it feels later than it is and I'm already tired and it's only midnight, but, as I adjust to the time change, it will be harder to make myself go to bed at a decent time to get at least 6 hours of sleep.  

I think I'll try to go to bed now.  Might as well start out on the right foot!  Love ya!!

Halloween!

First, I'll start with a couple of days ago.  I posted this on FB on 10/29:

Makenna is playing with the baby dolls, giving them kisses and saying things like, "I'm wrapping you up" and "Be nice to each other" and "Do you need a scooch? Like that?" (then she moves them around a little) and "The babies are so cute. They're holding hands." 

 

That girl cracks me up! 

That night, we went to Jump On It, then went and ate at Chubby's (a restaurant owned by a couple of guys who grew up in our stake in Louisiana--I dated their older brother, ha ha!).  We had so much fun.  The girls loved being able to go there with Jared.  When we went with Kiki earlier this month, Makenna kept saying she want to bring Daddy there.

 

 

 

10/30--Jared had to leave on a very last-minute trip yesterday so he missed Halloween with us. He found out he had to leave and left maybe two hours later!  :(

10/31--Grandma, Aunt Laura, Daisy, and Cody came over to trick-or-treat with us.  The twins had so much fun with their cousins. They didn't even eat any candy tonight because they were so wound up from playing with their cousins. Our neighborhood is AWESOME, btw.  Our neighbor/my visiting teacher made doughnuts for all the kids again.  SO yummy!

 

 

 

 

They were doing really well going up to the doors until this guy answered his door, ha ha! Then, they were scared of pretty much everything after that. Makenna was petrified of our RS president's house (I thought it was awesome, though!) and they were both terrified of the houses with fog machines, ha ha.

After trick-or-treating, we went home and enjoyed some home made chili and corn muffins. Avery all of sudden started shoving a corn muffin in her mouth and said, "Cookie Monster!!!" It was so funny!

 

 

Such a fun night but we sure missed Daddy!!!

Pumpkin Patch, Swimming, Painting Pumpkins, Halloween Party, Birthday Party!!!

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It was a fun-filled week, so there are a ton of photos!!

10/22--I was supposed to play Bunco on Tuesday night but we didn't have enough players, so it was cancelled. :( So we ended up having a family night, instead.  :)  As soon as the girls woke up from their nap, we went to Evans Family Farm, which is really close to us, and had a great time.

We had so much fun at the pumpkin patch this evening. So many fun things to do there--hay ride, picking pumpkins, farm zoo, barrel train, corn maze, hay maze, corn pit, hay pit, straw pyramid with tunnels and a slide, etc. So fun! I took 200 pictures, ha ha!

On the hayride

Pumpkin patch

Barrel train

Farm zoo

Family photo op

Corn stalk maze

Fall cuties!!

Straw maze

Avery ready to get out of the straw maze, ha ha!

Corn pit

Straw pit

Tunnel through the straw pyramid

Slide down the straw pyramid

Jared and Avery on top of the straw pyramid

Playing by the straw pyramid

 10/23--So tired/relaxed from swimming and eating out with the family then getting my weekly massage. Too late far a nap, though--I'd never go to sleep tonight. We're gonna paint pumpkins when the girls wake up from their nap. 

We took the girls to the rec. center to swim.

 

 

 We painted pumpkins that evening:

 

 

They get so serious when they're doing craft/art projects. :)

 

A treat after the hard work of painting

  

I painted the pumpkin in the middle (Jared saw it at the pumpkin patch and said it would be perfect for a skull, and it was!); Jared painted the other two pumpkins.

The girls' pumpkins

 

10/25---The girls had fun (for the most part) tonight at our town Halloween party. They were scared of some the decorations and some of the the the costumes, like Beetle Juice and the Harley Davidson mascot--I think it was an ape or something. Makenna was even too scared to take pictures with Miss Lehi, ha ha. But they enjoyed trick or treating and playing some of the games! 

Trick-or-Treating

Balloon bracelets (ladybug and frog)

"Fishing" for prizes

The Chik-fil-A cow

Shooting some hoops

 

Dancing (there was a DJ)

Playing some games

 

Afraid of Miss Lehi, ha ha!

REALLY afraid of the Harley Davidson mascot!!

10/26--We went to my nephew's 5th birthday party, a Plants vs. Zombies party.  It's a game that he plays on the iPad.  It was such a cute, fun party.  Kiki did a great job.

Bowling for zombies

Pin the eye on the zombie

Eyeball pinata

 

"Open for me, Mommy?"

The birthday boy with his loot--I can't believe he's already 5!

Awesome zombie cake

YUM!

The girls did really well in sacrament meeting today.  I got to go to Relief Society today during the second half of nursery; they had the Young Women take over all of the Primary/nursery classes so all the women could attend RS.  It was awesome until one of the YW brought Makenna to me about halfway through because she was crying too much.  She was really good and sat really quietly so I could stay and listen to the lesson, though.  Avery stayed in nursery until the end of church; I thought she would be the one they would have to take to me!  I'm really afraid of what they're gonna do when they move up to Sunbeams in January and I won't be their teacher anymore!  Expect the worst and hope for the best, right?

 I'm hoping to get some really good photos of them in their costumes on Halloween night.  My SIL and her family and my MIL are coming that night, so it's gonna be fun and we're looking forward to it!