October

October was a busy month for our family.  I love how we were able to cram a wide variety into the month.  The weather was beautiful and stayed warm a lot longer than usual.  Here are some highlights:

We enjoyed General Conference.  We spent some quality time together making this tie General Conference banner.

Yard work buddies.

October is a busy month for birthdays in our family.  It's actually just 1 week...we have 4 birthdays within 6 days.  It's a lot, but it makes for a really fun week.  My birthday was the first one.  I turned 38. I had a French Silk pie for my dessert and it was delicious.  Lincoln did a great job blowing out my candles.  I took a breath to blow them out but before I could exhale he had all of the candles out but 1!  Edie, Lincoln and Annika also had birthdays, but I won't go in to detail since I made separate posts about their birthdays. 

Poor Annika had a hard time waiting for her birthday.  One of my sisters sent a card in a pink envelope and she was devastated that the card wasn't for her.  I let her open it so she would stop crying and then I was just lucky that I could quickly read the card before Annika took it away. In the above picture you can see Annika holding "our" card.  You can also see that her face is still red from crying.

Joseph and I attended a Halloween party.  My good friend Mari knows how to host the best parties and she never seems stressed about it.  We were supposed to come in couple costumes so Joseph and I were lucky we bought coordinating Egyptian costumes at the end of the year last Halloween.

We got a lot of compliments on our costumes. It was nice to feel like we had something to wear for the party.

Here are a few fun Annika pictures.  She loves to help "cook" and I try to let her unless I'm really in a time crunch.  She loves to just put water in the mixing bowls and make a mess.  Rebecah made her this paper crown so Annika was "Queen for a day".

Here is Lincoln wearing Joseph's tool belt.  Lincoln loves to be a "hard working man" with his daddy.

We took a Fall foliage trip to Buttermilk Falls State Park in Ithaca.  We did this hike 3 1/2 years ago when I was pregnant with Lincoln and Annika.  It was March then so we could only hike the rim trail because the gorge trail was still covered in ice.  This time we did the gorge trail and it was much prettier.  I feel like I really missed out on our experience the first time.  The hike was almost like a mini Watkins Glen.  The Gorge Trail had a lot of stairs, but the little ones did really well with all of the climbing.  There was some complaining about being tired and I had to trade off carrying Lincoln and Annika the last half of the return hike.  One of these days Joseph and I are going to do a hiking trip on our own so we can go as far as we want without having to worry about carrying someone.  Round trip the hike was about a mile and a half.

We borrowed this hiking carrier for Edie and she did great.  

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Come visit us!  I promise we'll take you on fun adventures. There is so much more to New York than just the City.

The soccer season finished up in October.  Kimball's team had a great year.  They only lost 1 game Spring and Fall season combined.  Kimball always plays goalie half of the game and then forward or mid-field the other half.  We always try to go as a family to watch his games unless it's raining.  We missed one game because it was raining.

"Booting" the ball away from the goal.

With Kimball's friend Caden after their last game.

How the kids spend the time at the game.

Please note Annika's outfit...a dress with her pajama shirt inside out and backwards on over the dress. Yes, I took her out in public that way.  I don't care anymore.  She is too strong willed and we would constantly have power struggles if I had her looking presentable 100% of the time we left the house.

Leaping over the goalie!

Smiling for the camera.

I was holding Edie up in the air by her legs for this picture. 

Such a happy guy as long as he can dig, explore and get dirty.

Edie and I were playing peek-a-boo one day and I thought she looked so cute!

 Halloween Fun

Lincoln and Annika went to a Halloween Play Group with a group from church.  These were their costumes.

We also attended our Ward Trunk or Treat.  The weather was iffy so we just went around the church classrooms collecting candy.  I love that so much more because I don't have to worry about my kids wandering off in the dark or getting hit by a car.  If it were up to me we would always do it inside.

Halloween night the big kids went out with friends while I took the little ones out.

Cleopatra

Scary face guy.  I really don't like scary costumes so this was a huge stretch for me. Why do boys think it's cool to dress up and scare people? Halloween should be about fun not scaring people.

Kimball with his friend Ryan.

Annika put this costume together at the last minute.  She had planned on being a giraffe all day until about 5:30.  She would have been much warmer as a giraffe!

Our friends, the Olsons went out with us.  Lincoln and Annika love to get together with Porter and play.

Kimball was out collecting candy about 2 hours.  He came back with a lot of candy.  I think his stash alone weighed over 8 pounds.  His school is collecting candy to send to service men and women so I was glad that he donated some of his candy to that cause.

On the 31st we finally had to turn our furnace on.  We made it almost the entire month without running the heat.  It has been such a warm fall.  We are ready to see a few snowflakes here in the next few weeks.  Joseph is very eager to start skiing again.

Lincoln and Annika turn 3!

Lincoln and Annika had a birthday 2 weeks ago and they are now 3!  I can't believe I have been doing the twin thing for 3 years now!  It's definitely easier than it used to be.

Lincoln loves cars, tractors, tools and coloring.  Even though he likes a lot of toys that are geared toward boys he can play princesses with the best of them.  He and Annika will frequently fight over Hans or horses as they act out Frozen or Beauty and the Beast.  I love to watch them play together.  Lincoln likes stories and I love it when he will recite parts of the stories we read frequently.  He has such a sweet little voice.
I recently took away his special blanket because he sucked on it.  It was gone about 3 weeks and every night he would ask for it.  I finally felt so bad about keeping it from him that I gave it back.  The joy on his face was priceless.  He is so happy to have his blanket back.  He puts it close to his mouth but tells me he is smelling it instead of sucking on it.  So far I haven't caught him sucking on it, even in his sleep, so I hope we are in the clear.  I would hate to have to take it away permanently.
Lincoln is still a feather weight, but I transitioned him and Annika both to 2% milk a few weeks ago.  The Nurse Practitioner told me I could still give them whole milk since they are small, but I don't think they need to develop a continued taste for whole milk since it isn't the healthiest long term.  Lincoln weighs about 28 pounds and he didn't cry one bit when he had his flu shot.  I'm still hoping that Lincoln will catch of vision of potty training.  He can go in the potty and goes in public places, but at home he would rather wear a diaper.  He'll get there though.



I put 3 construction truck Hotwheels on Lincoln's cake.

Annika is our spicy independent red-head with a sweet streak.  She loves princesses, coloring and organizing. She has been our child who is best at pretend play with or without a playmate.  I love to hear her chatter as she acts things out with her toys.  She loves to pedal her bike down the street but she doesn't like to stop and wait for Lincoln and me and that makes me nervous.
Annika is potty trained and can dress herself.  Dressing herself is a mixed blessing since that means she puts together her own outfits--usually mismatched--and sometimes changes her outfits multiple times a day.
Annika is just over 26 pounds and didn't cry for her flu shot either.  She did asked me: "Why the lady give me an owie?"  I thought that was a sweet way to phrase it.

I didn't make a special treat for their birthday breakfast because they don't care enough about sweets for me to make something special.  I did let them open a cereal that they really like.  For dinner we had Grandma Bev join us and I made pizza.  They both really like pizza.  Lincoln wanted a green cake and Annika wanted a pink cake.  I decided to make a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and make the frosting the requested colors.  Annika kept saying she wanted a pink cake but shortly before her birthday she was picking out her outfit and kept saying she wanted the pink dress but kept grabbing the purple dress instead.  I figured it out that she is still confused at times with her colors and really wanted a purple cake.  I had already bought pink candies for her cake so I just bought some purple candies too and put both on her cake.  They were both more excited about the appearance of their cakes rather than eating the cake.  At least the rest of us enjoyed the cake!

This post is long in coming because I can't figure out why these pictures aren't rotating for me.  I have the correct orientation for them on the computer but when I load them to the blog they are all vertical whether they should be or not.  I'm including the messed up pictures since I know some people like to pull pictures from my blog and then you might be able to correct the orientation on your personal computers.

I put 3 princess Lego mini-figures on her cake.

Birthday crowns from Nursery.  Just after we took this picture Lincoln needed to use the bathroom and his crown fell in the toilet!  That was the end of that.

This picture is the only one horizontal picture with the correct orientation.  This is the only picture taken with my camera so maybe that had something to do with it.