New Organ!

Unfortunately I have no pictures to go with this post, but I am excited to say that my church building just received a brand new Rogers organ!  This is very good news as our old organ was hauled out using surgical masks and glove,  cut up and put in the dumpster outside.  The new organ has beautiful sound, over 100 memory stops, tons of different registration options and some really cool chimes.  I'm sure no one else really cares about reading this (or you have already heard me go on, and on, and on about it) I just wanted a record of when we got it so I wouldn't forget!  Now I have to practice more, because as Andy said, if it sounds bad you can't blame the organ anymore!

Miracle in a Bottle

I wanted to share my "miracle in a bottle” story. Abby has sucked her finger since birth and recently added a finger up the nose and picking sores on her face at the same time. We couldn’t stand it anymore so I decided to check out yucky tasting stuff for her finger, hoping to break the nose/picking habit as well. I found this and it worked amazing.


Here is Abby showing you her pretty painted fingernails. I never would paint her fingernails when she always had them in her mouth, so she knew when she stopped that she would get them painted. This worked in a matter of a week or so. At first her finger would still drift to her mouth out of habit, and she quit taking naps for a few days while she learned other techniques of putting herself to sleep, but all seems normal now and we are really happy. This is compared to Drew’s thumb sucking experience where we put a $2400 appliance in his mouth to correct the problems he caused by thumb-sucking and help him to stop. His orthodontist claimed he was his toughest case ever because after 2 years, Drew was still sucking at night. He asked to try the “yucky stuff” and has also been able to quit. I swear by this stuff if anyone needs help with a problem finger/thumb habit. I’m saving it for Maegan’s thumb when she is old enough!

Abby also loves to pick out outfits--here is a lovely example. It is cold out--hence the leg warmers.  Also notice she did her own hair with a lovely headband!

Maegan

I never got the pictures taken of Maegan in her Halloween costume, so she feels bad that she's not equally represented here on my new little blog.   So, here is an adorable little photo of our baby.  

She now has one bottom tooth and the opposite side top I tooth.  The other top I tooth is also coming in, so she is shortly going to have fangs.  That should be cute (hear the sarcasm in my voice).  She loves to "work her tongue" and will imitate whatever you do with yours--like stick it out and razz.  She is also pulling up constantly so there are no more magazines on my coffee table because I was tired of fishing out torn pages from her mouth.  A crawling baby really reminds you how often you should vacuum.  Suffice to say--more often than I do!

Hello and Halloween!

Hello world!  I finally decided to try making a blog.  I'm sure no one will read this, so it will probably be just a place to put some pictures so grandmas can see them and I can do a little "journalling."  

We had a fun halloween--starting with our ward party.  I was scrambling to get the costumes made that whole week before.  I wish I had a picture of my sewing table--I totally had ADD because I kept switching costumes and working on different ones all week, not to mention the apron I had cut out laying there as well as my stuffed nativity set in pieces.  Brayden and Drew decided to be wizards.  Abby changed her mind frequently, but ended up being a flower fairy (mostly because that's what I wanted to make!).  Maegan was a mermaid, for like 5 minutes--the time it took to put it on her and get into the church--then she was done.  So, for the rest of the activity she was in a seashell shirt and some ugly green pants that were supposed to be under the mermaid tail.  I'm determined to put it back on her this week and take some pictures.  Last year I won the chili cook-off at our activity, but this year no such luck.  The recipe had won at two previous cook-offs, so I feel bad to break it's streak.  Here is the recipe if you are interested: (still working on the link--does anyone know how to link to a PDF?)  

 

Wednesday night we carved pumpkins.  The boys did their pumpkins all by themselves this year--Andy just cut the hole in the top.  They did a great job!

Here's how they turned out--from left to right, Drew's, Brayden's, Abby's (with help from Dad)

On Halloween the kids didn't have school, so I planned to make cake pops with them.  They were very sweet, very messy and very fun!  Here is the inspiration, but ours didn't turn out quite like the pictures. ( Incidentally, I would also like to try these pumpkin pecan chocolate cookies with maple brown butter frosting from the same site--maybe she should be over on my blogroll!)  

I stayed home to hand out candy and Andy took the kids trick-or-treating.  I actually weighed the candy when they got home--not counting all the garbage I threw away--it was 8 pounds of candy!  Now I know some of you probably have way more than that, but I don't want to even imagine what 8 pounds of candy would look like on my thighs--much cuter on Abby's thighs I suppose.  I really hate candy sitting around the house while I'm home all day.  The only good part is that if I limit myself to one per day, they are actually packaged in very tiny amounts--which is the way all candy should be packaged.  I actually saw a lady at the grocery store today buying multiple king size type candy bars and I thought "Really--3 days after Halloween you already need more candy?"  Poor lady--she probably didn't have any kids to go beg candy off the neighbors for her!

The flower fairy!

I did her hair using this style with flowers on each band to look like a crown of flowers.

Poor little Maegan didn't dress up at all on Halloween!

Drew the happy wizard

Brayden the tough wizard