"Long and Lean..."

...was one of the doctors' description to me of Abby at her 9 month check up. "Just like the rest of the family," he commented. I was recalling at that moment when I had taken Jonathan in for his 9, 12 and 18 month check-ups and the same doctor was worried about how thin he was (he too was and still is long and lean). And, I just reiterated to the kind doctor that the fact is that on both sides of the family our nieces and nephews are the same way.

I got (and still get) the same comments about Catherine in her check-ups... Now, Abby isn't so thin as she is on the charts, unlike her counterparts. YEAH!! She is 17 pounds (in the 25th percentile) and measures 29 inches in length, putting her in the 90th percentile. Not too bad, I don't think.She is still a very happy girl! She is crawling all over the place and pulling herself up. This past week she started standing on her own; Jonathan and Catherine have been encouraging her greatly to start walking.She's eating like a champ- she loves feeding herself cheese and any other little toddler pick-up foods I can find.

Abby is also fairly vocal- shocker, I know... if you know anything about our family. :-) Her words include: all done, more, mom and milk. I guess with all of the other talkers around here she needs to get her two cents in too if she wants to be heard.

She is still so sweet and super happy. I just shake my head in dis-belief, though, that she has been in this world for 9 months... time sure does fly (especially when you are having fun)!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

There's nothing better to me, than a warm, homemade batch of chocolate chip cookies (made with real butter, of course) on a tough day. The other day I was feeling a bit down and frustrated, as the kids were a bit trying. So, to lift my spirits I made one of my favorite comfort foods. It really did brighten my day- and the kids!

Halloween

We had a nice Halloween. The weather was the perfect autumn evening- as two days later it snowed about a foot- and the kids has been looking forward to the night for a long time. They were excited both to go Trick or Treating and handout the candy. We now have enough candy to feed an army, a couple of times, as they went from house to house for a good hour or so. Then, they were able to give candy to quite a few youngsters who stopped by our house. For someone who doesn't like Halloween very much, I've gotta say I had a great time too!

Chris dressed up as a spider, Abby a tiger, Catherine was Mary (the Mother of Jesus) and Jonathan was Mr. Incredible (his black mask is on the top of his head- it makes the outfit! But, he didn't want to wear it in the picture)

Abby was a super happy tiger!

Jonathan got these steller glasses in his treat bag from his Halloween party at school.... pretty nice, huh??

Halloween Preparations

The kids and Chris were pretty excited about carving pumpkins we got at the "farm" down the street from our house. Being that I'm pretty big party pooper, it did take some convincing for me to join in on the fun... I'm so glad I did. The kids were excited to scoop out the guts and tell us what kind of faces to cut- scary or nice.Here we are prepping- gotta lay down the plastic on the table, sharpen the knives (something Chris was excited about) and put on aprons (again, Chris's idea)

Jonathan scooping out the pumpkin Catherine and I were working on


It's starting to look like a jack-o-latern! Jonathan wanted a really scary face!

Jonathan decided his still needed more scooping!

Catherine wanted to scoop too

The finished products!

It just snowed for the second time in a week... so we'll see how much longer they last.

The First Snow

I know my last post was about the kids playing amoungst the leaves in the beautiful fall weather ... but just a few short days later Colorado received its First Snow! The kids were extactic. They couldn't put their snow gear on more quickly. They spent the afternoon playing together, throwing snowballs, making snowmen, trying to build a fort and making snow angels. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised that they spent over an hour outside! After all, it does take about 20 minutes getting them ready for it.

Here's Catherine all bundled up for "winter" fun:
Jonathan ran outside to start building his snow fort


Abby was adorable- as always. She stood at the door "yelling" at them the entire time. I think she wanted to go outside too... but that will come in time. :-)

Now, all of our leaves are on the ground- we are just waiting for them to dry off a bit so that we can rake them up and jump in the HUGE piles they will make!

Leaves falling off the trees means...

... fun in the leaves! There have been a minascule amount of leaves falling from our trees the past few days and the kids have been dying to rake them up and play in them. So, the other day I got out the rake, dusted it off from last year and spent all of about 4 minutes raking up the tiny amount of leaves that had drifted to the grass. It was a small pile of leaves, to say the least, but the kids played with them for about an hour. It was cute!

Zoo!

Gosh, it's been awhile since I've posted anything... not sure I have a good excuse for that. :-)

Fall has been absolutely beautiful here (except that it snowed yesterday- more on that at a later post). So, one fine afternoon we decided to take the kiddos to the zoo. It had been awhile since I'd gone and even longer since Chris had. It was great to go as a family! All of the animals seemed to be out and active- which made the trip even more exciting!

(In the recent past, Chris has taken notice that there aren't too many pictures with me in them- so he really worked hard at taking some with me in them.)

One of our first stops was to see the Stilt Leg Foxes... but to no avail, they were no where to be seen. But, we had fun searching. Abby enjoyed just hanging out in the Ergo pack for the trip.

The leopard was out and pacing around quite a bit. We hadn't seen him before. We all had fun watching him for quite some time.

The giraffes were inside. It was great seeing them all up close and personal!

The sea lions were also actively swimming:

I found out this trip, that Chris's favorite animal at the zoo is the sea lion

We also took a peek at the snakes:

Although, we didn't get a pic of the anaconda he was pretty impressive. I had never seen one before... he was 35 feet long!

The sea turtle is always fun, but I do feel bad for him as he is in such a small, confined space.

Our last stop, right before it started down pouring was at the polar bear exhibit, though I think he was sleeping if I remember correctly:

The kids are watching me right now post all these pictures and they are asking when we can go back to the zoo... we really did have a great time!