Climber

Who's helping Daddy cook?

Yep, 1 year old Theodore. Climbed up the ladder all by himself a couple weeks ago.

This afternoon I walked into our main room (Kitchen/ Dining Room/ Living Room) the kids were sitting at the table coloring and Theodore was ON the table watching them. I said, "Who put Theodore on the table?" They both looked up and were surprised to see him there. Michael asked, "How did he get up there?" Then I took him off the table and put him back on the floor.

And he proceeded to show us, how he got up there. What am I going to do now?

Baby Name

As most of you know we have had a hard time picking another boy name. When we asked Michael, he said we should name him "Theodore"

When we asked Vivian, she said we should name him, "California"
When we asked Thodore he just laughed.

We tried to give him several suggestions but he just laughed harder at each one.

Both me and John were hoping he would be a little more helpful considering he's the one that saw his brother in heaven last, but he still just kept laughing.

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John has been particularly picky about this name and kept turning down everything I suggested. Finally I told him he needs to give at least some of the names a chance.

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Soon after that I became pretty set on a name. It has taken him WEEKS to come around to it and he's not 100% attached to it but he has finally agreed to it and there is no turning back now.

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Our third son will be named

Lawrence James Bowman

Lawrence means crowned with laurel. (Laurel is a tree but also means honor.)

So Lawrence means Crowned with Honor and James is a 'substitute'.

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So we now have our name and we can start refering to my tummy as Lawrence. Again we will not be giving him a nickname we will call him Lawrence just like all our other kids go by their full name.

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Lawrence will join our family on February 10th. (At least that is the induction date and I am fairly motivated to pop him out quick this time. I stalled too long with Theodore.) And I am hoping that we can keep the 12th set aside as Michael's Birthday.

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Hope life is treating you well.

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With Love,

Johnathan Ray

Lorina Renee

Michael Xavier Marshall

Vivian Rose

Theodore Scott

and

Lawrence James

Halloween Costumes

After that Girls Night Out I was kind of done with Halloween. For months we've been planning on being characters from Nintendo Mario Games but when it came down to it, we were too lazy. So at the last minute we through together our costumes.
John wore his suit with a nice black hat and when anyone asked what he was he said, "What do you think I am?" And whatever they said he would say, "yep, that's what I am." So he was a few different things, a Pimp, a Gangster, Michael Jackson, Oompa Loompa and a Newsie.

I couldn't find a hat that fit me so I ended up being a pregnant fairy. Not the best costume... oh well.

Nana dressed up for the first time in Years and she made her very own princess dress. Papa was a hippy (He actually got to have hair) and Kenney wore a black hooded cloak and was the Grim Reaper. But I never got pictures of them.

I didn't get a very good picture of Vivian but she wanted to be Dora. Grandma made her some orange pants and she bought the hat for me to try and make black hair but I thought she was cuter with her own red hair. We already had the back pack so the orange pants were the only thing missing.

Grandma decided to make Michael some fleece pajama's and let him borrow Grandpa's old Helmet. He loved it.

We even taught him how to Army crawl and I caught him doing it through the tables through out the party.

This little guy took the most thought but ended up being the cutest. I had bought this sleeper for him a couple weeks before Halloween and we always called him a jail bird in it. So when I couldn't think if anything else for him to dress up as, I just made him some shackles out of wide ribbon and used black pipe cleaners for the chain.

He looked so adorable walking around the Cultural Hall.

I think I was probably the only one that was in something uncomfortable (my feet were killing by the end of the night). Everyone else looked super comfy in their pajamas or in John case in something he is used to wearing every day. All in all it wasn't a failure but hopefully next year I will be able to put more thought into it. (We even bailed on setting up our trunk for the trunk or treat but next year we will do it for sure. I had so many idea's left over that I didn't get to do for my party that I was going to use for the trunk or treat but I just lost my steam after that.)

Vivian Moments

I had to take Vivian to the Doctor yesterday because she has been sick all week. Her fever has been up and down, her eyes have been especially droopy, she started getting a runny nose and then we noticed her pee stunk really bad and just didn't seem normal. So we are sitting in the waiting room and they call her name. She was busy playing on the floor so she yells, "What?" All the nurses start cracking up, I don't think they get that response very often.

So Dr. Lunat checks her tummy (because we think it's a bladder infection) and sends me home with a couple cups to try to get her to pee into and a lab slip to drop it off at the lab when we get the sample. Since it was Friday he also gave me a perscription for amoxicillan in case it is a bladder infection but told me not to start the meds until after she peed in the cup.
So later we picked up John from work and we were talking about how she needs to pee in the cup and we showed her the little cup and then she says, "Yeah I will pee in it and then it will be a pee rattle." We laughed so hard because that is just too hilarious. (Don't worry, no one used the cup as a rattle after, or before, it was peed in)

Michael is such a good big brother.

And this little guy gets put in the weirdest places.

Back to Vivian: She has been getting sick a lot lately and whether this is a bladder infection or not we are headed for round 2 of potty training for her. The first round was unsuccessful because she just doesn't realize when it's about to come or didn't care if she did. We were having 3-5 accidents a day after 2 weeks so we decided to give her a break. It's been 2 or 3 weeks since so this morning when she was finally ready to pee in the cup she told me she needed to go and we rushed to the bathroom and got set up and after a couple minutes she looks at me with big bright eyes and says, "The pee pee is about to come out."

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It was adorable and she has been in underwear all day without an accident until just now. Hopefully this time around it will be successful. I did let her pick out a package of underwear at the store and asked her a lot of times if it was going to help her go potty in the toilet. She already has a Dora chair because she is too tiny for the normal toilet seat (and was kind of scared of it). Because I'm worried about the germs and her getting sick so often has anyone every used the flushable wipes, and would you recommend them or would it be a waste of money? Does anyone have any other tips? What potty training tricks worked for you?

Girls Night Out

This year in Relief Society we started what we call Girls Night Out. Each month there is a different host that chooses where and what we will do. The purpose for this is to learn new skills, learn what other people are interested in, to have a night away from life and mostly just get to know one another better. I chose to host October because I love Halloween and I knew it would be a good excuse to get into it. I put out flyer's a couple weeks ago that advertised, "Bingo Night, with a Halloween Twist" People started showing up at 7:00 last night and this is what they saw on the door. (The other side says, "Sorry Out of Candy")

When you walk into the house we have a couple rooms and then there is this entryway into the rest of the house. I decided to put a bat attack there as people walked in.
Then there was this little witch on the wall.

Hanging by our back door is Mr Jack. He's supposed to be just a Pumpkin Man but I have nicknamed him Jack. And this is Chris Papworth our new Relief Society President.

I told everyone I wasn't really taking pictures of them, I was getting the decorations on the walls. So these are the pumpkins that Michael and Vivian glued the faces onto.

These are some of the paintings that we did. They are supposed to be ghosts. They look pretty scary to me.

Here are some more Paint blobs and the balloons that Regina, Tammy and Rachel put up for me.

More Paint blobs. The two bats came out pretty good. Everyone is engrossed in the word search puzzle I made. 80 words are in it. I know I am crazy, but everyone enjoyed working on it.

Here is a close up of my table decorations. The tree is made out of a paper grocery bag and the little figures are just out of salt dough that we put in the microwave to get hard.

As you can see, I had the kids help with this one. It's amazing how messy they can get.

Here is my lovely snacks I had available. Cantaloupe and grapes, candied orange slices, homemade pumpkin bread, witch's fingers (out of string cheese), monster toes (out of lil smokies and strips of tortilla), and Halloween snack mix (including, homemade Carmel corn, raisins, cashews and candy corn).

And here is my candy buffet. Butterscotch, Carmel squares, pumpkin shaped candy corn, and chocolate with eyeballs and monster wrappers. I bought a ton of Apple cider for the night but wasn't sure how to serve it so it just sat there looking cool. I did have Tang and water though.Here are some of the games we played. We did a word unscramble, a Halloween Trivia that was 20 questions long. And then the word search that I made. I also had little cut outs of ghosts that they could take home and make with their kids or grand kids.

I had this jar of tootsie rolls for people to guess how many were in it, but everyone forgot so I ended up writing every ones names on the little slips and I just drew randomly for who won it. I also had door prizes that I gave away using the same method. (I didn't realize the pun last night, but the prizes really were for the door.) I had made 3 extra of the Trick or Treat/Sorry Out of Candy sign.

Here is the Bingo Game we played. My mom actually created it years ago and I got the master copies from her and copied them to orange paper, then glued them to the red cardstock and laminated them. We used candy corn for the markers and everyone enjoyed it. The game to the right is a memory game I made for the kids.

They also got to pick up a couple treats on their way out. I made chocolate covered pretzels. Chocolate covered large pretzel sticks with sprinkles. Chocolate covered marshmellows with coconut shavings. And chocolate covered marshmellows with sprinkles. There are a few white chocolate things in there too.

Also for fun I decided to dig this out of the game closet. This is something I made in 8th grade (I think). It is a full board game that I got 50 out of 50 on. I did a pretty good job back in the day. John, Regina and I played it the other night and it was fun. Each player has a list of items they have to go around the board and collect for the Halloween party. The first player to collect all their items and return back home wins.

After the party I decided to put up my display of salt dough figures on the entryway table. There we can enjoy it until Halloween.

All in all, it was a super fun evening. We had a pretty good turn out with new people coming so it was super fun. I was glad I got most of my decorations up and if you want to do any of the crafts most of them are from familyfun.com. Also it felt so good to go to bed with a clean house (except dishes, which Tammy is awesomely working on as I type).

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN everyone.

Little Rascal

I know it seems like most of my posts are about Theodore. But how can you ignore this...

This picture didn't capture it correctly but if he's not picking something out of the trash then he is using them as a walker and pushing them all over the place.
This is his favorite toy.... and there is one in every house!
He crawled up right underneath me while I was trying to cook. (It was hard capturing this picture because of my big belly. The more I leaned back, the more he did too.)
We definitely have to do something about this.

Because I keep tripping over him.

And that smile is just killer because he knows it is wrong.

Oh and those magnets hurt when they end up under your foot.

(There is that smile again.)

Washing dishes twice isn't fun either.

Even though it's been nice to not have another baby gate up, I think it will be exiting the garage in the very near future.

Warning: If you hear really loud screaming at random points durring the day, Just know that it is Theodore frustrated at the new gate blocking off his favorite place to be.

Pumpkin Patch

Here is Michael's class. Not all of them are kindergartners. This field trip was for the whole synergy program so it does go up to 8th grade but there are very few in higher grades.

This is Michael's favorite teacher Mr. Meade. He teaches the Science class and we see him around a lot as he is highly involved in the Synergy Program.

Michael was making "baa"ing noises the whole time I was taking this picture.

This sign was up all over the farm.

This is on one of the bridges in the Corn Maze. We all went as a group so Mr Meade is the one who was following the map and we didn't make any wrong turns. It was kind of like taking a walk in corn. Not as exciting as getting lost but the way my brain was working (or not working) I wasn't about to wander in there alone. Vivian was terrified of the steps up to the bridge and was even scared during this picture.

Family picture. (Yes I left Theodore home. I didn't want to pay for him too.)

The Tram ride. I think we were supposed to get facts about the farm while we were on this ride. It sure would have made it more interesting because it was only going about 5 miles an hour.

Michael really wanted to sit next to Emma. Too bad he leaned in front of her right as I took the picture. I was excited to get a candid shot of her... it's not easy.

Here is Michael next to Chloe on the Hay Ride. I think we were supposed to receive information on the farm here too but still nothing. At least he was going 10 or 15 miles an hour.

Here is me and Vivian, I don't know why she has her hands in the air. Maybe she thought it was a roller coaster, but I feel terrible for catching this lady scratching her nose.

They had a beautiful Zebra in the petting zoo. I never really though about them being grey before.

Here is Michael petting the Zebra. They kept asking for food to feed them but the whole group was in there at the same time and I figured they were getting enough food for the time being.

Here is Vivian with the baby goats but she kept yanking her hand away before I could get a picture of it.

Here is Michael ready to race. The women with black hair in the plum shirt is his teacher Mrs. Anita.

Here Michael is almost tied with his friend Quinton. Later Michael ended up ahead quite a bit and was very proud of himself for winning the race. I won't be surprised if he tried to rub it in his face next time he sees him. Maybe I should try to prevent that.

Here is Vivian in the Kiddie Land. She was loving this race car. Later she finally went in the bounce house and a minute later she stuck her head out and was like, "I'm doing it mom!" So I gave her a thumbs up so I wasn't yelling across the yard and then she was so adorable giving me a thumbs up back. I love watching her grow up and try new things. She has been making really good strides out of her little shell and I think she knows it.

After they had their fun in the Kiddie Land we walked over to the old town set up they have their to take pictures. Vivian goes in the jail and says, "Ayudeme, ayudame!!" (Which is help in Spanish from Dora)

Michael goes in there and shakes the bars and says "Help, I can't get out, I'm stuck here forever!"

The lighting isn't very good but they were having fun. Michael always liked to look on the other side before he stuck his face in so he knew what he was being.

Here he is getting Vivian something from the store.

Hard at work.

She is so cute and tiny.

I had a lot more pictures but I figured that was plenty to show you our day. We had fun and I enjoyed spending the time with them without distractions from Theodore or anything else. I was surprised how much came with the Field Trip price. I highly recommend everyone go check out Del Osso Farms before Halloween. During a weekday is the best but if you have to go in the evenings or on a Saturday, just be prepared for crowds. We have gone every year for the past 6 years and it gets bigger every time.