Ward Halloween Party

We had our ward Halloween Party on Friday. Robert has some pretty specific requirements for him to dress up so we never bother to dress up as a family. This year Micah was Winnie the Pooh, the same outfit Julia wore when she was a baby.

Julia got to chose her own costume for the first time and chose to be Princess Aurora. This is why she was never anything too girly in years past, because I figured she would chose a princess herself eventually.

Julia found out that a lot of little girls wanted to be princesses too. She even found another Aurora. She found some twin girls around her age who were Aurora and Belle. They bonded and had fun holding hands and going to all the games together.

"Another Aurora!"

 Micah was just content to hang out with me all evening.

First Tooth

Micah has FINALLY popped out his first tooth today. I've been saying forever that he must be teething. And he finally was for real this time!

October

I have a bunch of photos from October that I'm just going to throw up here into this general "October" post.

Today we went to a little pumpkin patch in La Verne. They had a few farm animals, but what they lacked in number they made up for in cuteness: little baby goats, little piglets, and little chicks. Even Micah though they were adorable. Julia enjoyed herself by taking a long time to watch the animals and then just as long to pick up every little pumpkin as she chose one to bring home.

When I put Micah down on the hay to take his picture I was reminded of when Julia was the same age and we tried to get pictures of her with the pumpkins and hay. They both reacted the same; instead of looking at the camera they were both to enthralled by the pumpkins and hay to look up!

Micah did finally look up for a few moments.

Julia likes to help me in the kitchen because it usually means Micah is asleep so she loves to get some one on one time with me. Here she is putting butter on the cheesy garlic biscuits.

Julia sat down at the piano and composed three new songs, "We Don't Kick Micah," "We Don't Squish Micah," and "We Don't Step on Micah." She has been a little rough on him lately and has obviously been hearing these phrases from us. 

Julia was watching Peter Pan and Micah thought she looked like the perfect addition to his bouncer. He kept trying to grab her face and she was totally oblivious, engrossed in her movie.

Micah has been enjoying eating more food. For some reason he is not all that fond of the fruit! This was pears, but with apples, pears, and peaches he always makes faces. We will just keep trying to get him used to the taste.

We "got creative" (Pinterest style) with toilet paper rolls to make Halloween crafts.

I hope we have had our last 95+ degree day. We went jogging on October 15 and it was warm by summer standards, not to mention for autumn. This is what Micah wore. Julia keeps asking when the leaves are going to change colors and insisting we drink hot chocolate because it's autumn now. 

I went into their room to check on them before I went to bed and just thought it was so cute that they were both sleeping with their left arm down and right arm up.

The River

A couple weekends ago Steve and Wendy invited us out to join them at their place on the Colorado River. It was nice to get away from our house and not have to worry about what yard work or home repair we were going to tackle that weekend.

Micah proved once again that he loves the water. I put him in a couple times and he was happy to splash around in the river or pool.

These ducks lived near our beach and love to hang around people asking for a handout. They seem to go up the beach from group to group looking for food, then float downriver with any boats floating down and beg for handouts, then start over again going back upriver near the beach groups. They stopped by multiple times a day to beg for food and Julia would always see then coming, run and fill up her toy bowl with sand, and then offer them her "duck soup" once they got to us. Only, the ducks didn't really seem to care for duck soup so usually she would end up chasing them down the beach yelling, "Here ducky! Eat your duck soup!"

We also got to go out on the sea doo . I never did much water sports growing up and to tell you the truth driving the sea doo kind of freaks me out. I made a point to go out and drive around with Robert tagging along once a day so I wouldn't regret it, but whenever I would look down at the water my heart would start to race and I'd get a panicky feeling. I chalk it up to not being used to speeding around on water. Julia, on the other hand, also got to go out once a day with Robert, loved it, and had absolutely no fear. I hope we can find a good balance eventually of teaching her what is dangerous and not making her afraid to do things

Here is a video of Julia on the sea doo.

Our Week

And now we are on vacation for the weekend at the river. Lucky Julia.

Julia's Photo Shoot

A couple weeks ago we tried to get pictures of Julia and Micah that we could frame and put on the wall. Micah was adorable and cooperative, but Julia was not interested. These first two pictures are from that first day.

So the next week I took Julia out just by herself and let her goof off in hopes of getting some framable shots. There were plenty of Julia just being goofy that are not going to make it on the wall, but I thought they showed her personality at this age. I'd like to remember this in the future so I'll post some of the goofy ones here.

She thought it was a lot of fun to run around the yard and have me chase her.

This is the one that made it on the wall.

I had a hard time convincing her not to do the princess pose.

I like how you can see the yellow pollen on her nose from smelling the flower.