Pumpkin Playdate

Andrew had his bud from next door over for a playdate after school today. They painted pumpkins using a new technique Andrew and I tried out earlier today.

Love these faces... ;)

Catie was so excited to get in on the fun.

We made spider snacks too... Catie licked off every ounce of frosting and then threw everything else on the floor... and then wanted more frosting.

After the boys played at our house for an hour, they went next door to play for an hour... so Catie and I had time to play games, be silly, and put lots of laundry away. I knew I was done having her as my laundry helper when I started discovering that she was putting all of Andrew's clean underwear into the bathroom trash.

Such a great day. I LOVED getting to have some 1:1 with this little girl. She is so adorable and cuddly and fun. I am amazed by the things that she says. My favorite moment was when she was painting and she pointed to the camera and said, "The camera is right there" and then wanted me to take a picture of her painting. Obviously I'm creating a monster... it was so funny :)

Surprise Celebration!

Last week my friend Rita (the advisor that works with me in YWs) told me that she'd arranged things with Kevin so that he could get home early and that she would be picking me up at 6:30pm on Wednesday night for a little surprise.

This was my surprise- dinner and dessert at Strizzi's Italian Restaurant with loads of my favorite girls and leaders!! Pretty much all of the Mia Maids and Laurels were able to come (the girls I've taught at church for the past 3 years)... it was such a fun surprise to see all these beautiful girls who have such busy evenings stop by and come have dinner and dessert with me! Dinner was AMAZING, as was all the bread we inhaled, and so were the chocolate brownie sundaes. Mmm! I will need to work out double tomorrow. 

Love these girls!

They gave me the best present ever too... cute little useful items to pamper me and the baby, a few cute cozy sleepers, and loads of cards with special homemade gift certificates from each girl. They all know me well and I have several gift certificates for free dinner, babysitting so that I can take a nap, and lots and lots of homemade treats that they'll be making me. Yum! 

Andrew was especially excited about this portion of the gift... and will be helping me (and baby boy) devour these treats tomorrow.

What a sweet, thoughtful, and unexpected surprise! I am still a little shocked by the whole event and feel so blessed to have such kind friends.

PS- I took one last bump shot. I won't be taking any more. This is me at 38 1/2 weeks. I think I skipped the cute pregnant stage this time around and just went straight to the massive stage. I now weigh as much as I want to weigh for this pregnancy. The most common thing people say to me right now is "wow, you look ready for that baby to come." 

I am actually not ready yet and want the kiddo to stay put for 2 more weeks. I can't wait to meet him, but I'm enjoying lots of naps, sleeping in, and have way too much to do before he can make an appearance. 

Rocket Boy

Andrew manages to involve everyone around him in his obsessions... mostly because he talks about them nonstop.

Lately, the obsession is rockets... which is obvious if you read my Toddler Approved blog or follow me on Instagram.

A typical event at our house is for me to be cleaning the kitchen and look over to the couch where both Catie and Andrew have assumed their positions on the "couch rocket" and are both holding some sort of random object in the air while counting down and saying "5-4-3-2-1 blast off, we have lift off..." and then they run around with their objects.

Either that or they are running around playing rocket tag or pretending one of the beds is a rocket.

Kevin bought Andrew some real rockets awhile ago and they finally put one of them together this past weekend.

Pretty good looking rocket, right?

Then we headed off to a local park to launch it.

Andrew made sure to tell every kid in the vicinity about the cool rocket that he made with his dad and then invited them to come watch. Along the way we lost the engine cap, so we had a bunch of kids watching and waiting and we weren't sure if it would actually work.

Kevin igniting the rocket

It went several hundred feet up and then the parachute blew it into a very tall tree. All the kids came to try and help. After unsuccessfully climbing the tree, Kevin launched a large stick at the rocket until he finally got it down. Hurray!

We have three more rockets ready to launch this weekend. Andrew is soooo excited that Grandpa Kim is coming to visit so he wanted to save them to launch when he gets here. Should be a fun morning... assuming they can find another good spot to launch the rockets.

In the meantime, we have another little rocket running around our house :)

This costume is for toddlers... size 2-3T, but he wouldn't be convinced that it was too small... and it actually isn't too bad. Two of his classmates from school saw it at Target and told their mom that Andrew would love it... so we had to go check it out when she mentioned it to me. Little dude fell in love... so now we'll have a rocket boy for Halloween.

Awesome!

Science Day and a Busy Saturday!

One of my jobs as Curriculum Chair at Andrew's preschool was to help with this year's Science Day! I helped organize volunteers to come and I also helped set up, manage some stations, and clean up the event. It was a big success... mostly due to all of the hard work by the Director of the school and the volunteers and teachers!

My kids love science experiments, so Kevin got them there right when the event started and I think they stayed for almost the full two hours. They were in heaven!  

Here are some pictures of what they got to do...

Making aluminum boats and exploring how to help them sink or float

Sink or float station with different items

Milky Color Explosions

This was Catie's favorite activity... she did it again and again and again

Dry ice pumpkin

Dino Fossil Dig

Drip painting down ramps

Another one of Catie's favorite activities

Balloon blow up with baking soda and vinegar

I was running around refilling things and helping at different stations, so I didn't get photos of my kids at every spot. Andrew's absolute favorite activity was the alka seltzer rockets using film canisters. They also made bio slime, did fizzle painting, made sand volcanos, played with water tubes, explored cars and ramps, and played with dry ice BOO bubbles.

I'm exhausted just thinking about all of the fun they had!

Catie was so worn out afterwards that she napped for 3 hours!!

I was so exhausted after the full morning of craziness (9am-1pm of setting up, running around, and cleaning up) that I crawled onto my couch and basically did nothing for 3 hours once I got home. I don't usually complain much when I am pregnant, but my legs ached so bad when I got home that I didn't know what to do with myself... fortunately distracting myself by not having a pity party and instead going through boxes of baby clothes and putting them in drawers helped a bit. I also attempted to take a nap... and managed to fall asleep for 5 minutes before Catie woke up. 

We spent the rest of our Saturday afternoon relaxing, cleaning up the house, doing dishes, and watching Halloween movies... while Kevin went to Stake Priesthood meetings with Elder L. Tom Perry.

I managed to get some relaxing in during our evening Stake Adult Leadership Meeting too! Kevin scored us a seat on the soft benches and we enjoyed listening to Elder Higham (Quorum of the 70) and Elder L. Tom Perry (of the 12 Apostles). It was an inspiring meeting!

We celebrated our hard work and a great day with a date night trip to the San Francisco Creamery after the leadership meeting. Yum!

Now I am so excited to head off and grab a tylenol for my exhausted legs and then attempt to sleep! Hooray!

Jessie's 25th Birthday Bash

We celebrated Jessie's birthday a few weekends ago. Andrew helped plan the party... so it was a hit.

The first game he came up with was Booty Bingo. I helped him refine the game a bit and we created Booty Bingo boards. It was so funny!

Everyone had to go around and share a favorite thing about Jessie. Then they had to draw a picture of it on their Bingo board. Once our boards were filled with everyone's favorite things about Jessie, we played bingo!

When you got 5 in a row you got to yell- BOOTY! -Andrew's favorite part (and stick your behind into the air).

Caters just enjoyed going from person to person and stealing M&Ms

After our game, we sang Happy Birthday and ate mint chip ice cream pie

Cat and Scott brought a confetti gun that seriously made Andrew's night

Little dude loved goofing around with Jess too. 

and Catie ate bowl after bowl of pie

Kevin decorated the house for the party using his fancy streamer skills... 

He is so sad that he shared this talent with me... now he is forever in charge of decorating :)

After ice cream pie, we played musical chairs and I just cracked up watching Catie and Andrew dance and compete with everyone.

Such a fun night! Happy 25th Birthday Jessie!

Adventuring in Palo Alto

It has been far too long since we've ventured to Palo Alto/Menlo Park, so today we went and met up with some friends for some adventuring, chatting, having fun, and exploring!

We started the morning off nice and early at Shoreline Park. We walked, the kiddos played, and I caught up with my good friend Ashley (a friend and PAUSD work buddy). Her son Jack is absolutely adorable and it was fun to watch the kids interact a bit while we chatted. Once my phone recharges I will add a picture or two of Catie and Jack!

After we hung out with Ashley, we ventured to MP to chill with Aunt Jessie and play at her cute little apartment playground.

Catie and Andrew absolutely love Jessie, so they had fun showing her some acrobatics, talking with her, and hunting for spiders around her apartment complex.

We spent the late afternoon hanging out with the Balenas chatting and eating and relaxing. Andrew and George played nicely outside while Liz and I hung out with Catie and Henry. Catie had fun learning about make up brushes and lip gloss from Liz and I am SO MAD I didn't get a picture of her getting "pampered." It was adorable to watch. Liz got us lunch from Lulus and I ate every last drop of my salad. Yum! 

After our fun with the Balenas, we played at Holbrook-Palmer Park for a little bit and then ventured over to explore Stanford because it has been forever since we've roamed around there!

Little girl with an atti-TUDE 

This discovery was quite a surprise...

Pink fountains at Stanford for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Andrew's shooter thing sabotaged my attempt at a cute photo shoot

Poser... and his annoyed sidekick

Catie's head down look is a favorite of mine... it is her pouting without letting anyone see her

So mad I wouldn't let her swim in the fountain...

there was actually a group of 5-6 kids swimming in there.

Exploring

There were so many fountains and things to check out... we will definitely need to go back and explore again. I love how you can walk a block or two with kids and they are amazed at everything! Helps make me appreciate the beauty around me more!

After an hour of so of exploring (and trying to really tire the kids out), we picked up Kevin, stopped at the new Chick-fil-A for dinner (that is right along our way home... what good fortune!), and then we dove into Friday night traffic and enjoyed chatting while we ate.

My favorite way to get Catie to practice making requests and using polite language is to eat food in the car. My total slacker mom skills have significantly helped her talking skills. :) I give Andrew chicken nuggets and sauce to hold in a little container. I give her one chicken nugget and then she has to ask Andrew to dip it in ketchup for her and then she politely thanks him and eats her food... until she needs another dip or some more chicken... and then the process repeats itself. She stays much tidier because Andrew is quite stingy with the ketchup and I can enjoy the drive not worrying about helping either of them. Hooray!

When we got home from our adventure tonight I went to Andrew's school to help set up for Community Science Day and was excited when I got home to discover that we'd been BOO'ed by a neighbor!! I'm hoping it is from one we know? I'm trying to not be paranoid and wonder if the bags are filled with poison candy...

Catie and Andrew are going to be sooo excited to check out their BOO bags in the morning.

We also got a cool Mrs. Fields package from Grandma Julie that the kids are going to LOVE opening in the morning. Can't wait!

Such a great busy day! I think we will sleep well tonight!