Nine Years

Nine years with Baylor Morgan Smith! She brings such fun, sass, and flair into our family. She is the best middle child and fulfills that role to its fullest. Her love language is definitely gifts and quality time. I love watching her open presents because she gives the best reactions. And you can always tell when someone spends time with her and is willing to play with her because she loves them fully. She is a great student and example. She loves her friends and is a great friend. She loves math and loves to learn things. She loves to take things apart and do science experiments. She loves slime and anything squishy. She is assertive and loves to be in charge. She is such a great helper and is always the first one to help when asked. She loves to take videos and will sing and dance and lets it all out at home and then is quiet and very orderly at school and church. She is by far my pickiest eater and will let me know when she doesn’t like something, but when she does love something, she will also tell me about it. She loves to talk, sing, hum, and make noise and is by far my loudest kid. She brings fun, ideas, and silliness. She hates physical affection and has a really hard time saying, “I love you” but shows her love in different ways. She loves to ride her bike, explore and be outside, jump in leaves or the lake, and just lives life to the fullest.

She had a wonderful birthday that lasted a full week! She wanted an art birthday and so she woke up to some balloons and some paper chains I made out of paint color swatches. Then we had a big family dinner (chicken noodle soup in bread bowls) with Nona, Pops, Anna, Scott, Brett, Eliza, Corgan, Lili, and Aunt Nancy (Dale's sister) and Uncle John even showed up. We played some art bingo and then she got so many fun presents to enjoy.

She wanted "Baylor's Beauties" for dessert. It is her own creation and is a brownie topped with Oreo Salad and some whipped cream.

She played with lots of presents all week and took some fun goodie bags to her classmates on Monday. Then Saturday, she had a friend party and had 3 friends from school come along with Celina, Matilda, Jonah, and Carly. We enjoyed some pizza, did the art bingo again, decorated claw clips, colored some small picture frames, and then more presents and ice cream sundaes.

She also wanted to include Bella and Lizzy, but they had dance so they came over in the evening and had dinner, and they all watched "Zombies" together and had some dessert.

We loved celebrating our favorite 9 year old!

Preschool: Our Neighborhood

This week for preschool we talked all about our neighborhood.

Here’s what McCall did:

• She practiced writing and recognizing the uppercase and lowercase letter N and the word neighborhood.
• We talked about how our house is in our neighborhood. Then she used different shapes and told me what each shape was to create our house.
• She counted the rooms, doors, and windows in our house.
• We talked about road signs and walked our neighborhood to see what road signs we could see.
• She created her own stop light and then we played red light, green light.
• She drew a picture of our neighborhood and the houses she knew that are in our neighborhood and then she told me what her favorite things to do in our neighborhood: Ride bikes with sisters and friends, ride scooters, walks with Mom and Dad, go to Nona and Pop’s house,  gymnastics and tag in our front yard, playing outside, and playing Paw Patrol with friends.
• We did a house color matching game.
• She played with a neighborhood of Little People.
• She drew a map of our neighborhood and counted how many houses were in our neighborhood.
• She did a scavenger hunt of things that are in our neighborhood.
• She picked a number out a bowl and then had a build a building (Lego tower) that many blocks high.

Halloween

We had a great Halloween week! We love our traditions and I love holidays! They truly are magical!

Monday, we carved pumpkins! Nate helped mostly McCall. She wanted a scary jack-o-lantern this year and drew the face and then Nate helped her cut it out. Baylor and Paige both found some designs online that they loved. And I stuck with the Alice in Wonderland theme for my pumpkin. They all turned out great!

All done!

And of course, a favorite in our household, roasted pumpkin seeds.

Baylor's school had a trunk or treat on Wednesday, and the two younger girls enjoyed it. The teachers went all out on their trunks, and it was a fun event.

On Friday, I went with McCall to the Halloween story time at the library with Celina and her kids. They had a cute puppet show and then we went trick or treating around the library.

Nate found a fun witch candle at the thrift store, so we kicked on off Halloween with the lighting of the candle.

It was a beautiful day for Halloween which was amazing! I spent the afternoon out in the yard cleaning up. Then Celina did the face painting for Baylor and McCall for their costumes. She is so good at it and the girls love it. Then we had our traditional sandwiches for dinner with Anna and Scott's family, Nona and Pops, and Celina and her two joined us this year.

Then it was time for the main event- trick or treating!

We started off together and then after a while the three older girls wanted to go faster so we split into two groups. It was a perfect evening. Perfect weather. And SO much candy!

Happy Halloween!

Preschool: Halloween

Halloween week for preschool was spooky and sweet! We did lots of fun activities and ended our week with a fun story time and trick or treating at the library.

Here’s what McCall did for our Halloween week:

• She practiced writing the letter H and Halloween in uppercase and lowercase.
• She created a fun witch out of paper.
• She counted candy corn and of course ate some.
• We took turns rolling dice and would count monster googly eyes to put on the number that we rolled.
• She gave Frankenstein a haircut and practice cutting on the lines.
• We went on a beautiful fall walk to the park to enjoy the colorful leaves.
• She practiced patterns with some Halloween gems.
• We did a science experiment with baking soda and vinegar where it blew up a ghost balloon.
• She created coffee filter ghosts.
• She made a handprint and footprint bat.
• She painted a salt spiderweb.
• She practiced her letter with some skeleton bones (cut up Q-tips) and then created her name with the bones.

I'll post about the library story time on my Halloween post. Another fun week of preschool in the books!

 

October Doings

It is almost Halloween and October has been busy and filled with so many fun things. The fall colors are in full force, and I love it so much.

At the beginning of the month, the trees by Paige's school were stunning, so McCall and I went early one day so we could walk under the beautiful leaves and take in the gorgeous fall day. McCall had the phone for a bit, and I loved to see what she loved by the pictures she took.

The fall colors make me so happy! We do live on an incredible planet with some of the most amazing details.

The first weekend of October we had general conference and Fall Fest. Dad had to work so we got to see him on Saturday and got some pumpkins and played some fall games in between the two sessions of conference. Then Sunday was cinnamon rolls and sausage balls and a day spent at home listening to some wonderful talks.

One beautiful fall day, I went on an adventure with McCall and Anna. We drove out to Issaquah to the fish hatchery to see the salmon going through, then we went and saw the troll, got some Ivar's for lunch, and donuts at Krispy Kreme.

We have had some wonderful weather this month and most of our evenings were spent playing in the road with neighbors. It is glorious!

Usually if McCall takes a nap during the day, then she is up late and one night she put me to sleep on the couch. :)

McCall also got a couple of colds this month, so she has been falling asleep on me and slept in our room a couple of nights. There is something about a sleeping child on you that just melts you.

More fun random shots of McCall: red lipstick from Paige, armor of God from primary, and jumping in leaves is pure joy for this little girl.

One afternoon, I took McCall and Baylor to ride bikes at the park. It was a beautiful way to play outside with the beautiful fall colors and the girls had fun on the playground.

Anna set up a time for a bunch of ladies from the ward to go and see the new Sense and Sensibility. We ended up having a little over 20 ladies go which was so fun. I had never seen or read any version of Sense and Sensibility and didn't know the storyline. It is such a cute story!

Some fun thrift store finds: Nate always finds old electronics that aren't worth anything for Baylor to take apart. He is always finding poop or farts books and the girls love them. And last he found this cute teddy bear that we have named Luna. She has little hands that you can clip paper into, so we are writing kind notes to each other, and we find Luna on our beds with kindness from each other. We all love it!

Another great month filled with fun, adventure, and love!