Halloween wrapup

I have always dreamed of costuming my whole family into a theme, but always lacked the creativity. When David decided to be Peter Pan this year, I knew we could come up with something. Here's the result: Peter Pan, Tigerlily, Tinkerbell, John, and Captain Hook. How did we do?

To celebrate our new baby Ruth, we spurlged and gave out king size "Baby Ruth" bars to the trunk or treaters. No candy bar, however, could taste as good as those baby cheeks!

A few more festivities... pumpkin carving,

a Halloween dinner, put together by Grandma Larsen (notice the eyeballs, spider, and ghost),

and the prize for winning best family costume!

a few more..

James in his superhero spread.. When he is not at home, he is a pretty reserved little kid. His nursery leaders say that he is so polite and reverent. I rarely see that side of James... only this...

Ruth's first lesson in Legos. I think David was grateful for a captive audience.

Feeling so handsome!

"Jeepers, creepers, where'd you get those peepers?!" I sure love this baby!

Grandma came out last week for a little visit. We took a little trip to the Wild Animal Park.. It was a hectic but fun day. Keeping track of three kids turned out to be wild even for two adults.

I could have spent all day at the lion exhibit. We were inches away from these gorgeous beasts. James even got some courage to jump down from the stroller to have a closer look. The gorillas, on the other hand, were not his favorite (I think they are scary-looking, too!).

Nothing beats grandma hugs.

It turns out that I married a genealogist. Joseph is amazing with his talent for using family search and remembering our ancestor's names, dates, and facts. His new project is to compile pictures of 6 generations of our ancestors to hang on our wall. This is one of my ancestors, Jedediah Grant. Look at the amazing resemblance my brother has to him.

Nice Socks, David

Yup, that's the only pair of socks we could find today, even after we hunted through the dirty clothes. Poor orphan child.

Pumpkin Patch

I love how this picture makes it seem like we are in the middle of nowhere. In reality, we are smack in the middle of a huge city called Irvine. In Orange County, it is impossible to get away from people.

We took a pretty fun hike through a corn maze that led to these cute vegetable characters. Not one of them looked quite as tasty as my little James. :)

David and his cousin Natalia "lost" in the corn

As a comparison, here's the two of them four years ago at the same pumpkin patch... still such good buddies!

Pretty Baby

My favorite of Ruth's features: those eyes!

Here is a hint of a smile. Those baby smiles make all the hard work well worth it! Actually, her colic has worked itself out, and she is an amazingly good baby. I am really lucky!

My "D". I posted this picture because he looks like such a big boy. Will he ever stop growing?!!

Conference weekend was quite wonderful. I really needed to hear President Monson's talk on gratitude. Joseph came up with this wonderful idea. We put up a tent for the kids to watch conference in, loaded it with snacks, toys, and blankets, and they LOVED it! I loved it too, because instead of trying to entertain the kids, I could focus on listening to the talks.

Today has been a good day. It's been rainy, but I've been able to do lots of cleaning, cooking, and laundry. We have had an ant invasion the past few days and I finally solved it by sprinkling pepper all over the "hot" spot. Within an hour, there was no ant in sight! Hooray!

Ruth at 7 weeks

Here's an update on Ruth. She finally gave us some amazing smiles yesterday. She even smiled at David, which absolutely melted his heart. It is cute to see a relationship already developing between them.

We have been a sick house lately. It started on Monday when David came home from school and threw up all over the place. Tuesday, Ruth came down with a nasty cough (I thought that nursing would ensure that she didn't get sick!). By Friday, the flu bug caught up with James and I. For the first time ever, Joseph had to take work off to take care of us. Gratefully, I have been able to continue nursing through it all, and we are getting our strength back. James has been a heap in my arms all day, but when I pulled out the camera, he flashed this handsome smile. I am so glad that I have a child who likes the camera.

happenings

It's been a while since I last posted. Life feels like a crazy rollercoaster with some good days and some not-so-good. I am sure I drive Joseph crazy on the not-so-good days because I spend half the day in tears with no good reason. Joseph is a huge help. Most nights I hand him the baby at about 8:00 and he takes over while I go to bed. Three is hard!

Despite the adjustment, we are having fun. My mom spoiled me with a two week visit. My dad flew in one weekend for the baby blessing. Ruth was too small for her blessing dress, so she had nothing fancy to wear. It was okay, though, because the most important part of the day was her ordinance. During her blessing, I felt such an overwhelming sense of gratitude to have her in our family.

It has been a very cool summer. I really expected my dad to take a swim in the water, but even he felt it was too cold (growing up, he used to drag us into the Pacific in January).

So, David gets the badge of courage:

Ruth couldn't swim in the ocean, but she did get to try out the bath tub.

Now that all of Joseph's family is gone, we have spent most our days at home. Overall, it's been nice for David and James to have some time to figure out how to play together. Most days, we don't get out of our PJs until lunchtime. This was an activity that David came up with.

Here's what James has come up with:

One more picture... One reason that I am married to Joseph is for his creativity. He took this idea out of the Friend and did this FHE for the boys. We even got to throw "darts" at them.