Un*be*leaf *ble

Most of our trees have lost their leaves by now. Here is the tree that we take a picture of on our way home from Kindergarten. I have stopped taking a picture of it every day because now it pretty much looks the same... no leaves! But you can see in the background that Mount Timpanogos has snow on it!

Our yard is usually bare of leaves because Joe is really good about keeping up with yard work. However our neighbor has been a bit under the weather, so we decided to help her out and rake up her leaves. Of course the boys were all too happy to help, as long as they got to play in the leaves afterwards!

Jacob and Ephraim helped me rake up any remaining leaves in to the pile. Then they took turns running and jumping into the pile.

They always have so much energy that I did not mind raking up the pile of leaves over and over so they could keep running and jumping and hopefully burn off some of excess energy. Plus it was fun to watch them going at it.

I got some pretty good practice with my action photography as well. Here are a few of my favorites:

Look at how much air Jacob got on his leap! Wow! Then I told Ephraim to flop into the leaves face-first and he was more than happy to oblige.

Splat! Just look at the leaves go flying!

Jumping in the leaves is so much fun! My boys kept at it for at least an hour this afternoon, and that doesn't include the time they spent jumping last night. Jonah actually cried when he saw the leaves being put into the garbage can.

Silly boy!

Amelia on the Up and Up

What a day!

I got Jacob ready and off to school. Then I found out what Ephraim had been up to while I was busy cleaning up the kitchen.

Don't ask me why he decided to use a pen and write all over the wall! He definitely knows better. So we got in the van and went to Walmart to get a magic eraser for the wall since I had used my last one all up!

On our way back from Walmart we stopped to take some pictures of all the road signs piled in a vacant lot by Melinda's house. It is crazy how much road construction is going on near our house. The freeway is under construction, Geneva road is under construction, the hospital road is under construction.... no matter where we want to go, we will run into orange cones (and traffic delays) on our way there!

We had to stop at the school to change books for Jacob's class. Then we picked him up and went home. Ephraim was busy cleaning the wall while I fixed lunch.

We spent the afternoon waiting for our guests to arrive. Grandma Heiner and Aunt Deanna were coming to visit and the boys could not wait to spend time with their cousins. I passed the time by taking pictures of Amelia.

Isn't she adorable?

I love her sweet smile and squishy cheeks! Not to mention all the gorgeous hair she is growing!

This next picture makes me laugh! Amelia sneezed while I was taking her picture!

It is amazing to me how fast this little girl is growing up!

Check out what Amelia has been working on lately...

Yep! Amelia has been completely lifting her little bum up off the floor. I have also seen her up on her hands and knees a few times.

I know she is going to figure out this crawling thing in no time! For now she mostly moves herself around with her arms and scoots herself backwards. Then she gets stuck up under the couch or up against the wall and get frustrated about it. I actually think it is kind of cute.

Speaking of cute...

It seems that Amelia has rediscovered binkies. No, she doesn't want to suck on them. She actually thinks they make really great teething toys. She likes to chew on them.

Amelia actually has grown her first little tooth and is working on her second one. I need to get a picture of her little chomper, but that requires some assistance.

Amelia is not the only one growing teeth.

As you can see, Jacob has one adult tooth that has come in on the bottom, and the other one is trying to come in behind that. I think this kid may have braces in his future!

Museum of Ancient Life with Cousins

This weekend Grandma and Aunt Deanna came to stay at our house Friday night. We planned to meet up with the Kirkhams and go to the Dinosaur museum together. Unfortunately some of the Kirkhams had fevers, so they didn't make it. What a bummer! But we still had a great time!

It was funny how much Amelia liked Aunt Deanna. She has hit the stage where she is not so sure about strangers, but she seemed to like Deanna right away.

She was content to sit with Deanna and watch her knit... and try to grab the needles once or twice!

We all had a great time at the dinosaur museum. The weather outside was yucky, so it was nice to have somewhere to go and something fun to do. They enjoyed the "Notion of Motion" exhibit that is at the museum right now.

It was fun to try to spin the balls and discs on this rotating circle.

Of course we had fun looking at all the fossils too. Here is a picture of Marisa, Jacob, Braydon, and Ephraim next to some Dimetrodon  fossils. I usually make my kids stop here for a picture when we come to the museum, I am not quite sure why.

Next we got to see the Supersaurus fossils. It is amazing to me just how BIG these dinosaurs were.

Here are the kids by the lower leg bone.

I love the hands-on activities at the museum. The kids had a great time putting together this supersaurus puzzle. It was on an enormous magnet board (which seems fitting).

And of course they LOVED the erosion table. Water, sand, dinosaurs and palm trees... what's not to love?

I think we spent well over a half hour here! They all had a great time!

We saw lots more great fossils, including the Tyrannosaurus Rexes and my favorite, the Archelon Ischyros which looks like an enormous sea turtle. Before leaving the museum, we had to stop and dig for dinosaur bones.

I think the kids could have stayed there for a long time, but unfortunately our visitors had to head for home (actually Logan, to go see the Kirkhams). Deanna took a picture of me with Amelia to prove that she and I were at the museum too.

Snowman Preschool

It has been my turn to teach our cooperative preschool this week, which has kept me pretty busy. On Monday we did the letter R and talked about Zoo animals. So we read a ton of zoo books and a fun book called "Raccoon Tune". Then we made raccoon masks out of paper plates, which the kids loved.

I was excited about my lesson for today. I was teaching the letter S, so I decided to focus on snowmen! As you would expect (since I am a librarian), we read lots of fun books about snowmen. I especially loved the three books I read by Caralyn Buehner. I really need to get "Snowmen at Night", "Snowmen all Year", and "Snowmen at Christmas" for my boys. They love them!

But I am getting ahead of myself. First we do "circle time" where we talk about the date, the weather, sing the ABC song and count to 20 . THEN we read the books. After we are done reading, next we cut and pasted pictures into our alphabet notebooks.

Ephraim loved helping me pick out the pictures that I printed. He is getting pretty good at cutting the pictures apart.

Next we moved on to the craft. I was a little apprehensive because I chose a messy craft. We used a concoction of part shaving cream and part Elmer's glue to make these puffy snowmen.

I found the idea on Pinterest (original idea here), but instead of using brushes to paint on the foamy stuff, we used balloons. We dipped different size balloons into the foamy paint and plopped them on the paper. That way the snowmen would be made out of circles.  The paint dries kind of puffy, which is cool.

Then we had the treat, which were my favorite part of the day. Check these out!

Aren't these powdered donut snowmen cute? They just have candy corn noses and gel frosting eyes and smiles. They were a big hit with the kids!

Amelia was a good girl for me during preschool this week, and today she even wore her snowman onesie for the occasion!

Amelia in Disguise

This week was fun because we got to see Grandpa and Grandma Heiner twice! They went on a trip to Moab to go on a trail ride in their Razr. You can read about it on my Dad's new blog if you want. They stopped to spend the night at our house on their way to and from Moab.

So did I take any pictures of my kids having fun with Grandma and Grandpa? Nope! Silly me. I just took pictures of Amelia.

I was working on my photo scavenger hunt post, and one of the prompts was "disguise". So I for out one of the mustaches that Emily brought earlier this year and put it on Amelia. We all laughed so hard!

She was a bit puzzled about this fuzzy thing that was stuck on her face.

She kept putting her hand up there to rub it, which looked even more hilarious!

She was probably wondering why we were all laughing at her!

She was pretty good natured about it and left the mustache on for a few minutes. When she really started rubbing at it I took it off.

Thanks again for the mustaches, Aunt Emily! They are awesome and continue to keep us entertained!

Visit to the Randalls

I had not been to Melinda's house in FOREVER. With Jacob in school I seem to have even less time than I did before. I really missed hanging out with Melinda, so I took the kids over this afternoon. The boys had fun jumping on the trampoline and playing with Sara and Eliza.

Amelia had fun playing with Sara. How cute is this?

Melinda and I are always laughing about the fact that Sara will probably have 10 kids when she grows up because she likes babies so much.

Melinda was kind enough to take these pictures and send them to me. She also took one of me and my baby girl. Aren't we cute?