Cora's room

Cora's room has gone through a few improvements over the past two weeks.

First, we got a more fitting bedding set for her big-girl twin-sized bed.

It's a fairy duvet set, and I love how the colors tie in to all the girly pastels in her dresser, and the green and yellow checks of her curtains.

More importantly, Cora loves it too, and has been sleeping well.

Next, Stace installed a curtain rod for hanging up her artwork. He stole this idea from Colleen and Rigo's similar setup in Lucas's room, and has been wanting to do it for a few months.

We also put up a little shelf from Genia, and taking pride of place is Cora's first-ever piece of painted pottery.

Thanks to the generosity of our friend Michelle, Stace and Cora used a Groupon-type coupon for Color Me Mine last week.

This was Cora's first time, but I'm sure it won't be her last. She loved it, and Stace had fun taking her. He used to enjoy pottery when he was younger.

Cora chose to paint Ariel, and Stace helped her with the eyelashes. The rest, Cora did herself! Pretty darn good for a 4-year-old, if you ask me. I am ever the impartial critic.

Pre-Halloween Post III

On Halloween morning, Cora's preschool hosted a carnival for the children, their parents and younger siblings. Here is Cora playing the fishing game...
...and here, she successfully tosses a ring 'round the pumpkin stem, to the cheers of Miss Lorrie the Ladybug.
Here, Cora is shooting a ping pong off a bottle, with a water gun. The games were all so cute! Cora had a lot of fun, as did all the kids. They won candy and tickets, which they could exchange for prizes. Cora was thrilled to pick out two rings and a little plastic pumpkin to hold them in.

Watching two kids, even in a small area, can be a challenge as they each head different directions. Before I could grab her, Violet decided the residual water in bottle was "alguie" for her to drink.
Violet then made her way to the craft table, where the helper-lady assisted Violet in decorating her own pumpkin. I must admit it was a bit strange to watch my little one making her own craft! How is she big enough already?
Then it was food time - a potluck of fruit, vegetables, crackers, cheese and meat - and the sisters sat beside each other, eating contentedly.

Pre-Halloween Post II

I'm telling you, Cora and Violet got to dress up practically every day the week before Halloween!
First, at our Mom2Mom meeting, the children paraded through our breakfast wearing their costumes...

On Wednesday, Pioneer Clubs hosted a huge Trunk or Treat event. Here are Cora and Lucas on Rigo's cool old truck.
Liana showing Violet the love...
...and Rigo entertaining Cora and our friend Jen and her boys, Jack and Charlie. Or, looking closer, maybe that's Cora entertaining everyone?

On Thursday, our Mom2Mom table's mentor mom, Beverly, hosted a lovely luncheon playdate for our table. She loves Halloween and was happy to have all the kids racing around her house and yard, in their amazing outfits. (Violet transformed into her doggy self after I took the photo.)

Here was the snack table at Bev's - so so cute!

Pre-Halloween Post I

Halloween isn't just one night of fun when you have small kids who are involved in school and activities.

Here are some photos of our church's "Halloween Hoedown," an awesome event with Trunk or Treating, food, games like bean-bag-tossing, and more.

The first two photos show them pumpkins we decorated to help make the parking lot more festive. I did the ghost, and Cora designed the princess.

Then, one of our favorite trunks was the Disney themed one. (Though Stace preferred the Indiana Jones and Star Wars trunks, and Violet liked the Disney Princess trunk best.)

And finally, the amphitheater was turned into a dance party, with alternating live music and a DJ. We spent as much time watching Cora dance (and doing a bit of dancing ourselves) as all the rest of the activities. Cora found an adorable Tinkerbell to dance with.

Halloween, 2011

Happy Halloween!

Here are Stace and Cora's scary jack-o-lanterns. Gotta love printable Internet patterns!

We all had a great time trick-or-treating tonight - Cora was polite and kind, and Violet was just happy to be out in her car (her "beep beep").

Once she got the sucker in her mouth, her very first one, we didn't hear a peep out of her.

After trick-or-treating, we stopped by John and Genia's. No surprise, we stayed there for the rest of the evening.

Some scary Jack Skellington lookalike snuck into a cute photo of the kids.

18 months

Well, I guess I should stop saying "baby" now that Violet is 18 months old. A couple of weeks ago, we went to visit Melanie and baby Heather at the Burbank mall, and Violet had a blast. She ran and climbed all over the place.
Speaking of climbing, Violet is easily able to climb up on the chairs now. We're trying to make sure she doesn't stand on them, which is hard since we allow Cora to stand on the chair to put away the cutlery (one of her jobs) or help with cooking. In this photo, Violet pushed the chair over to the pantry. And once this month, I've caught her trying to get a leg over her playpen side. Uh oh!
This month, Violet has grown more attached to her seahorse and her "night night." She always holds on to seahorse as she falls asleep, to the point that I need to pick up a backup soon! She threw it in the toilet the other day, and with the soft cover was in the washing machine at naptime, she really struggled to get to sleep.
And, Violet with two of her favorite things - her night night and her sister. At this point, Violet definitely would have a hard time going to sleep without her pacifier/dummy. We try to make her keep it in her bed, and sometimes she has a fit about that. Generally it's not a problem, but since I didn't face any of this with Cora, I do wonder if we'll have trouble in future months when we need to break the night-night habit. Still, since we always have an upcoming big airplane trip, I'm happy that she has a comfort for the flight.

Violet also still loves her sister, as long as Cora doesn't have something Violet wants. Then we have screaming. Lots of screaming this week from our toddler! Sometimes we can get the screams to turn into laughter if we start howling, and then she'll join in. And singing helps too - she especially likes Stace to play "Old MacDonald" on his guitar.

But back to the sister love - Cora has had some fits of her own this week, leading to time in the chair/corner. Violet will try to comfort her, going up to her and offering hugs and love. It brings me to tears to watch.
And, Violet's third favorite things - her aggums. The word, by the way, (sometimes pronounced "alcomb") now means all animals except for dogs. We were pointing out the animals in a book, and Violet was also pointing them out: "Aggum... Aggum... Aggum." It was super cute and I wish I had been videoing it. Her inflection was exactly the same as ours, when we're naming different animals.

In other speech news, I must say that Violet has not progressed much this month. She still says the words she's been saying, but she's added some random (baby talk) phrases that she'll use whenever we ask her to try a new word. Saying that, she has added the word "yeah" to her repertoire, so she can answer in the affirmative out loud, and not just by nodding.

Eating-wise, some good news - after a couple of months of being picky, Violet has become a good eater once again. At some meals, she out-eats her sister.

Sporting and Scary Saturday

We had a fun day on Saturday, starting early with cousin Elizabeth joining us for the family bike ride to Cora's soccer practice.

Elizabeth played soccer so it was great to have her watching Cora. We then all rode to Starbucks for a drink, which is becoming a post-soccer habit of ours.

After lunch, my dad came over to watch the girls, and Genia was kind enough to drive us to Magic Mountain.

My mom has been working at Fright Fest as a ghoul this year. She is one of the witches who walks around one of the "scare zones" and of course we wanted to see her at her worst!

Before the frightenings kicked off, Elizabeth, Stace and I went on a few rides, including Jet Stream, where you see us in these photos. We also watched a couple of shows, and we highly recommend the hypnotist show to anyone going to Magic Mountain. Wow. We were laughing so hard, my stomach ached.

And then, on to the scares. We didn't do any of the crazy scary mazes, but had a good time seeing the ghouls walking around scaring people in their incredible makeup.

Can you believe that witch is my mother?? Who knows, maybe she'll have a new acting career when she retires. She was doing a great job and we were so proud of her!

Lombardi Ranch 2011

It's October - time for our trips to Lombardi Ranch! Yes, "trips." We went as a family Monday afternoon, and our Mom2Mom group went together Tuesday morning.
Here is Violet, smiling her happy cheesy smile. I love it!


On Tuesday, we rode the train with Genia and Colleen and most of our kiddos, minus Ave and Lucas. Going to school all day, five days a week, is rough!
Here I am with Liana. She is getting so grownup, just look at the pony tail!

"I like this one."

"I'll take two."

Violet loved looking out of giant pumpkins. Cora had fun inside making bird nests, using a spoon to scoop together straw, dirt and pebbles.
These two play so well together, at least when Ave is in school. When she is in the picture, Cora and Ave play together doing girly things, sometimes including Johnny and other times, not.

The Whole Foods Experience

Today, Cora's preschool class took a field trip to Whole Foods Market.

It was a fun event, full of yummy samples. Cora really enjoyed it; she was laughing and smiling most of the morning.

The first stop was the peanut butter and almond butter station, where the nuts are freshly ground when you push the lever. The children (and we moms!) had apple slices to dip; Cora preferred the almond butter.

Next was the produce, where you can see Cora and the others offering their pinky fingers for the store tour guide to place a raspberry.

Then, it was on to the seafood counter, where the guy (fishmonger?) showed them the sharp teeth of a red snapper.

He then passed out samples of "salmon candy," a smoked salmon treated with a lot of brown sugar.

Yum! I was pleasantly surprised that Cora loved it, and she also liked all the other samples, even the odd vitamin juice that we moms thought was a bit strange. Other bite-sized treats included chicken strips, pizza, cereal and a mystery smoothie, which tasted great even though it was green.

The kids had a great time and were really well-behaved.

Since the parents aren't asked to volunteer at this preschool, it was nice to get a peek at how Miss Lorrie and Miss Kayla run things. It's clear they have a very good handle on their 4-year-olds, who walked happily together as a train, hands on each other's shoulders, throughout the store.