Monkey Joes

It rained all day Saturday and with 6 kids four years olkd & under in the house we had to find something to do! We took the kids to a place called Monkey Joe's which has a huge room full of inflatable jumping castles and slides. We were there for 2-hours and they all jumped themselves silly!

Ella was the champion jumper for the day. She did not stop the whole time we were there and went down the biggest slide over and over.







This morning before going to church Sam and Ella along with their friends Sarah and Jason who are staying with us entertained themselves playing with a wooden train track. I think this is the only time all weekend they all played together with the one toy at the same time! Of course Owen wanted to be right in the middle of things.

Thanksgiving

We had a really fun Thanksgiving yesterday. An old friend of Chris's and his family have come to stay with us for 5 nights over Thanksgiving. Shane and Cindy live in Florida and have 3 children the around the same age as ours. The kids have had a blast playing together. We weren't quite sure how they would take to each other since they haven't met before, but we didn't have to worry at all, you would think they had all been friends forever.

Yesterday we enjoyed a thanksgiving meal at lunch time (which I didn't get any photos of!) and spent time outside at the park in the morning and the afternoon. Below are a few shots from our trip out to the park on Thanksgiving morning. Chris did most of the cooking which was great for me!!

Happy Birthday Ella!

Ella turned 3 on Saturday. She has been so excited about the big day and loves to remind us what a big girls she is. It seems like she should have been 3 a while ago. And at times she can act like she's 13 not 3! Some things I love about Ella -
- Her spicy personality
- Her made-up words. For example, "cutters" for scissors and "up shoes" for high heel shoes. She refuses to be told that her words are not the right ones.
- The way she eats her pancakes and waffles with lemon juice ("lemonade") and no sugar and doesn't even wince.
- She is such a girly-girl

Some pictures below from the big day. She was so tired out at the end of the day that she just sat and watched her friends hit the pinata. She then feel sound asleep at 5:30pm and did not wake up until the next morning.

Getting ready to open her presents. She had to wait until Owen woke up which was about an hour or more after she woke up..


Reading some of her new stories with Dad..
Blowing our the candles on her birthday cake at her butterfly themed birthday party. She had about 6 little 2 & 3 year old girls at the party.
Chris doing a great job on crowd control


Ella gave her dummy (pacifier) away to the birthday fairy to give to a new baby the day after her birthday. We've been preparing her for months for this big event. She was quite happy about it all until it was time to go to sleep on Sunday night.

Ella asleep Sunday night without her dummy and a present waiting for her to open the next morning from the birthday fairy to say thanks for giving up her dummy
The present was a small blanket. She has a big one made by her Auntie Laurel-Lee and calls it her baby. Laurel-Lee also made her two small ones, both of which got lost. The last one was lost at the Science Center in Calgary back in May. Ella was soooo excited with her gift and told us that the Birthday Fairy had found her little baby and brought it to her here in Georgia. We had one happy little girl and she has not asked for her dummy once. And I am so glad to see the dummy gone!!

Backyard fun

This week we've spent almost every afternoon playing in the backyard. The weather has been really pleasant and we now have enough toys and activities to keep the kids entertained outside for a long time - something that I obviously love!

Here they are playing on their "new" swing set that arrived today. I picked it up from a yard sale a few weeks ago for about $40, which included delivery and set-up! What a bargain!




A couple of days ago I raked up the leaves. Of course the kids had a great time rolling around and playing in them!

Ella and Sam love to use "rain-brellas". We had a little sprinkle of rain and they played with the umbrellas for a long time, even after it stopped raining.

Owen posing for the camera and saying "cheese"..

And here's one of our first pics of baby #4. I turned 35 this year and have now hit the "high risk" category. The doctors like to do early screening to look for any issues. At 17 weeks the baby looks just great and was kicking and doing tumble turns yesterday making life a bit difficult for the ultrasound tech. Anyone want to guess if it's a boy or a girl? We're keeping it a surprise and so the ultrasound tech had to turn the screen so I wouldn't accidentally check things out.

Happy Halloween

One of the things I love about living in North America are the holidays. It all starts with Halloween and then there seems to be another holiday to look forward to every few weeks until Easter. And then after that summer is just around the corner. We've had a great time with Halloween this week and the kids are now getting excited about Ella's birthday and Thanksgiving in November.

We had fun this week carving our Halloween pumpkin. Sam chose the stencil off the internet. It's so happy - just like Sam!

On Thursday night we went to a Halloween party at church. The evening included a chili cook-off and prizes were given for the best three. I won a prize for the best tomato-less chili (it was the only one!). I made Lizzie Maughan's white bean chili from a cook book that the RS sisters put together while we were in Chicago. It's a recipe we love and make often.

Chris, Ella and Sam at the Ward Halloween party.

Owen getting into mischief!

Friday night was Halloween. Here are Sam and Ella with their friends Malcolm and Myla setting out to go trick-or-treating. They came home with way too much candy!

Yesterday we drove to Columbia, South Carolina and took the kids to the zoo. Sam has been mentioning the fact that we didn't go to the zoo almost every day in his prayers lately so we thought we had better go! The weather was just perfect and we had a really nice day out.