Happy Halloween

So we never did get around to carving the pumpkin; but how many people have a pumpkin that was written on with a quill pen?

We went to the ward's trunk-or-treat party last night and had a decent amount of fun. We all got to wear our pirate costumes.

Ezra didn't really get it at first, but it didn't take him long once we started taking him around to get treats. For the first four or five people that gave him candy he kept saying,"Thank you, thank you" instead of "Trick-or-Treat" but that's okay.

The weather has been nice, and we've been able to open windows and be outside quite a bit more. Susan and the kids have been able to take walks, which has been nice for everyone. Ezra has enjoyed being able to play at the park.

He's quite the climber. There is a little climbing wall on some of the playground equipment, and he goes up it like it is nothing.

He loves going to the park, and its a good way to get some of his energy out so that he's not quite so hyper and bouncing off the walls here at home.


Both Ezra and Emma are growing like crazy. It's amazing to see them both develop so quickly.

Still a bit too small for driving though!

Emma can sit up by herself now, though she only lasts a few minutes usually before she falls over. The time that she stays up keeps getting longer and longer.



Emma is now crawling. Her crawl looks a little more conventional than Ezra's did at first. Unlike Ezra though, she likes to stick anything and everything in her mouth, which keeps things interesting.

The kids get along great. It always puts smiles on our faces when they both start giggling, either in the car when we're driving somewhere or at home when they're just playing together. Ezra still forgets sometimes that he needs to be a bit more gentle with Emma, but he's learning.

Time flies when you're having fun OR I guess "fun" is the word for it.

It's been a busy few weeks, but since when is that new with us?


We got to spend the Saturday of conference at Kelly & Cameron's house. It was nice to see them, and have some help with watching the kids.

Ezra has hit another growth spurt in the last few weeks. We had to break down and buy him some new shoes the last couple of days.


We've moved a bunch of his toys into his room. It actually has been nice, it has kept the clutter down quite a bit in the family room. Just have to clean his room up most nights.

Ezra went through a little bout of being scared of all sorts of random things. We think the 6' animated skeletons at the hardware store and craft stores had something to do with that. Luckily he's starting to understand that such things aren't real and can't hurt him. But it really made for quite a few long nights.

Got the lawn re-seeded with rye grass for the winter. At least that only has to be done once a year...

We painted some more and replaced the dining room light fixture, neither of us really cared for the old one.
The new one is much better.

Emma is on the cusp of crawling still. To say that she isn't mobile would be a lie, but isn't quite all over the place yet.

When we went to try her on her water cup tonight after dinner, she just grabbed it right out of Shawn's hands and started chewing on it. She drank a bit of the water too. Now if we could just get her to hold her own bottles, we'd be in business.


Emma has also been teething. She's had her first tooth pop through the last couple of days.

Susan has been doing a decent amount of baking recently. The shortbread has been really good.

She made caramels today, and they turned out great. It just made a ton and took an hour and a half or so to wrap them all up.
The kids both got some new Halloween pajamas. Ezra found his in with his other clothes and wanted to wear them, so we put Emma's on her as well.


They keep us busy, but we love our two wonderful children.

Outside and Baking

The past three weeks have flown. We used to keep fairly regular with posts, but you get what you can get.

Emma is pushing up and on the cusp of being able to crawl. If there is something that she wants bad enough she manages to get to it. She spends a lot up time up on her hands and knees rocking back and forth. She loves playing in her blankets and will wrap herself up in them and just chatter away.

She's such a happy little girl, and we're so blessed to have such a wonderful daughter.

Ezra keeps learning. He's as rambunctious as ever. He likes to sing recently. He'll sing "Baa baa, black sheep", "Old McDonald had a farm", and "Wheels on the bus".

Ezra likes to try and help out with his little sister and everything else that is going on around him. He loves to go outside, and we've been able to go out a little bit more since it has started to cool down slightly. It's still not as cool as it would normally be, but that's what we get for having a late start to summer I guess. The lemon tree hasn't seemed to mind it though.


We finally went out and got some more house plants. It has made a big difference in how our room feels, which is nice. We replaced a shrub that had randomly died out in the front yard, and one of our hibiscus bloomed again this last week. Just one bloom, but hopefully we'll see more as the weather eases up again.

The pink hibiscus died finally. Its only been in it's death throes all summer long. Apparently the pink ones don't do so well in the heat without some extra shade. We replaced it with a much larger one with peach colored flowers.

Hopefully this one will stay. Susan planted some poppy and sunflower seeds around them, so hopefully everything will come up and look nice for us this fall.

Of course once we start doing things, we have a tendency to do more. Susan found a recipe for pretzels so we made pretzels this morning. They were really good! Needless to say they didn't last the day.


And since we'd started baking, Ezra got the choice of cookies or cake, and he picked cake. Susan made a beautiful pound cake this evening. Yum!

Doo... Doo.... Doo.... Lookin' out my back door

It is always really inviting, looking out the door at the back yard. It makes you want to go outside; well, at least until you remember that it is close to 110...
Emma has been growing a lot the last little bit. Her hair is getting longer. She's just shy of crawling. She can kind of scoot a bit, and when she really figures that out the rest of the way she'll be mobile. Unlike Ezra, she just sticks everything she can in her mouth. That's going to make for exciting times.

We've all been a little sick the last bit, but that's life I guess. (random colds and stuff the last few days). We'll get better soon hopefully.

Emma got a new toy. She always wants to be sitting up so that she can see everything, but it does a bit of a number on one's back to hold her all day long. She loves it. Ezra likes playing with it too. (Though we have had to explain to him that he's too big to fit in it).

Ezra keeps coming up with new things. The last week or so, his affirmative answer to a yes/no question has gone from always being "OK" to mostly being "Of course." Every now and then he'll say "yeah" or "yup", but not usually.

We've noticed random perfectly straight lines of toys fairly often. Ezra likes to arrange things this way for whatever odd reason. Couldn't have anything to do with all of the engineers on both sides of the family could it?

Happy Birthday...

The last few weeks have gone by fairly quickly. We've had some bad monsoon storms, but luckily we didn't end up losing any trees or anything (though at one point we weren't so sure).


Kelly and Cameron were nice enough to come and watch the kids yesterday, which let us go out on a date for Susan's birthday. We went to Dave & Busters. It was fun to play around the arcade, and to get out, just the two of us.

Shawn made some carrot cake cupcakes for the birthday cake. (Susan helped a bit, and it was the day after, but that's how it goes). Shawn ended up breaking in Susan's birthday present of a new beater for her mixer that scrapes the sides of the bowl as it is mixing.

Church went well today. Susan had taken a bunch of Ezra's little broken crayons and melted them into "new" crayons. They were a big hit. They kept Ezra occupied for all of sacrament meeting.
The kids keep us busy. Ezra has a new thing the last couple of weeks. He counts, "1... 2... 3... GO!". Sometimes the count goes as high as 5 or 6, sometimes it only gets to 2. He waves his arm while doing it. It's kind of funny.

Emma has been teething the last week or so, which has made her a bit grumpy some evenings, but overall she's been okay. She's a happy little girl, and we're thankful for that.

Good food...

This weekend has been both busy and restful at the same time. Not really sure how that worked out, but hey, why not? We got the orchid tree re-staked. With all the wind we've been having, it was starting to wind its way around the stake right up against it.

We've had some really good food this weekend. We broke in our smoker with some ribs, don't they look good?


We made some nice coleslaw to go with them, had BBQ chicken pizza for dinner tonight, and for dessert some good banana bread.

Emma even got to try something other than formula for the first time. She started with green beans. She spit out a bit, but did really well for her first time eating solids.

Ezra continues to get into things. He got really quiet on Saturday, and this is what we looked over and found.

I guess that tissue is really fun to tear up, apparently.

He has also been grabbing Emma's headbands and putting them on whenever he finds one. Its kind of funny ...

Sentences, Projects, Monsoons...

We got the pictures back, and they turned out great. Thanks everyone for putting up with the heat for these. Here's a really good one of Ezra and Lizzie.


Ezra has taken to saying a few new sentences:

"Come back here ... NOW!!" when you wander off on him.

"Give it back" when you take something from him, or when he just wants something that you have.

"Going on?" when he wants to know what everyone is doing. This one is heard a lot at night when he comes to his door when he's supposed to be asleep.

He likes to help with things. He helped Susan make a pound cake this evening. Every time she would turn the mixer on, he would start banging on the counter with a measuring cup and yelling, "OH YEAH!"

The two kids get along really well. Ezra likes to come up to Emma and in a sweet, higher voice say "Hi Emma" over and over again. She smiles at him most times.

She rolls over all the time now, though sometimes she gets a bit frustrated if there is something in her way. It is almost automatic for her to flip from her back to her stomach. She can roll back onto her back, but doesn't quite as often.


We sorted through a bunch of stuff that was stuffed in the closet this weekend. It was like Christmas all over again for Ezra. We even found Shawn's old toy dog and attached a new string to it. Ezra has been pulling it around the house. He gets a little frustrated at it when it falls over and catches on things, but he gives it a good, "Come here... NOW!" and that seems to help.

It has been really humid as of late, thank you monsoons. The storms initially didn't do too much cooling, so it was fairly miserable for a week or so. It has cooled it down quite a bit the last couple of days, and we've been able to go outside in the evenings. Ezra has been quite happy about that.



Looking around in the yard, we've come to find that we have a new resident. On the tangelo tree there is a 2" praying mantis. That should keep the other bugs away...