We packed our Saturday full of fun, starting at the Hot Air Balloon festival in Clovis with Emily's family. We love that cinnamon roll food truck stop after! Then we did all of our Saturday chores and errands before nap time all around (except Westin skipped napping 5 times this week and played in his room instead... is this the end?? I want him to make it to his fourth birthday just because that's a solid marker). After that Westin went to Colt's birthday party. He loves playing with Colt! He specifically asked me to write "We have fun together!" in Colt's birthday card. Then we all went to our ward trick or treat together.
Michael:
Finished his last full week at the VA! Wednesday will be his last day there. He taught Elder's Quorum today, and made our backyard beautiful yesterday, and also found Kitty on our roof this weekend. How long has she been visiting our roof? We'll never know. He decided he wanted all the seasons of Seinfeld for his birthday so we've been watching those from the beginning lately. So so funny. I don't know why I haven't seen that show more than I have.
Maddie:
feels BUSY right now but I haven't figured out how to keep working out when the really busy feelings hit. It's the first thing on my plate to drop off when things get full, and I admire the people who workout everyday no matter what. I want to be like this! So that's the goal this week. I've been working on so many Christmas projects, cross stitches, and primary stuff. We had our program today and the kids were so wonderful to listen to.
Westin:
loved his new swimming teacher and class on Tuesday. I went to his parent teacher conference on Friday and his teacher was fun to talk to. She really seems to know these kids well. His self-portrait was adorable to me, and I was happiest that he scored 100% at everything in the social/respectful category. Now we gotta figure out how to get that going at home. He's such a sweet boy! And sometimes he's not. But inside he always is, I know it :)
Bennett:
has been doing this weird thing lately where he wakes up around 9:30 or so and cries, and doesn't let us put him right back down to bed. He just stays up with us, lays on our bed, and wants us both to lay by him. He even pats the bed when we try to get up for us to come back and cuddle him. After about 30 minutes of this he'll go back to bed, but it's cracking me up. He really doesn't get one on one time much, apart from when Westin goes to preschool on Fridays with his Sunbeam class. When Westin is at preschool on Tuesday and Thursdays Bennett is napping, so he doesn't get one on one time then. I guess he needs it at 9:30 at night? It's funny but, not like, a preferred new habit.
Happy Halloween from the Daetwylers!
Trunk or Treat
Post Primary Program! Dad is at a meeting somewhere.
Pinata at Colt's party
This monkey boy couldn't see too well but he liked making monkey noises.
Mater came too! Thanks to hand me down costumes and borrowing another, we spent $0 on Halloween costumes, and $4 on our trunk. Feeling pretty good about that, but then the candy budget ruins the numbers! So much candy.
Cinnamon Rolls with the cute Ryan girls!
We didn't get there as early as we did last year, but we saw one go up and down that was tethered. Next year we need to find a middle ground with our arrival time.
Kitty loves the days we don't have dogs around. Our Rover activity has been crazy this month and we're ready to scale back. She also had a run in with a dog when we weren't home that left a crime scene in our bathroom... it was bananas. We'll never know what happened in there but she's perfectly fine and we didn't even notice until the dog had gone home, so... weird.
Westin was asked to draw a self-portrait before parent teacher conferences, so he drew his sweet friend Emery. Then his teacher said that a self-portrait is of yourself, so he added Westin by her. I love it.
Music time
Mornings with mommy
They saw me throwing all our Costco boxes in recycling and wanted to play with them all. I let them each pick one and they went into robot mode immediately.
Monday's Costco run. We've started going right when they open now, since they moved that up to 9am instead of 10, and it's way better. Costco and crowds is serious stress to me.
Getting our carpets cleaned (for free!), seeing Westin conquer his swimming level that he's been stalled at for a while, going to dinner with some residents' wives to celebrate babies, having fun at a pumpkin patch/carnival that Westin has been talking about every time we go to the post office (it's across the street), dinner with daddy on Saturday, and just playing together.
The rough parts:
Toddler anger! Heaven help us. Really though, I ask for help with this from heaven every day.
The happiest part:
Watching Westin and Bennett ride carnival rides together without mom or dad.
The sweetest part:
Hearing Westin pray "Please help the Gospel make me not nervous for swimming lessons" and before we went in to the pool he told me, "This will be hard -- but I can do it! I KNOW I can!" And he did! He has been nervous to do a "superman" for about 4 weeks now, but he finally conquered. That meant he goes to 30 minute lessons instead of 20, with a new time and new teacher. He'll be with 3 other kids now instead of 1, and learn some different skills. We're so proud of our Westy boy!
Pictures for the rest!
Sundays with my boys! Bennett did 40 min of nursery by himself this week.
Westy and I did our last 2-hour primary program practice -- next week is the big day!
Their faces are the best!
This was so sad and so Bennett -- the boys got these two balloons with rubber band handles with some kids meals. When daddy was blowing up Bennett's blue balloon, it popped. He looked a little sad, then grabbed the rubber band and started running around and bouncing it just like Westin's balloon. He was so happy and content and not even sad that his balloon was broken :)
Pumpkins at Preschool!
Library Story Time
Gym time at preschool
One time our neighbors trimmed their trees and all of it fell in our yard... ? Two sides of it.
Is this not so weird? I was so weirded out by this... the boys enjoyed playing with them for a little bit.
Maybe at a different time we would happily cut them all up and throw them all away.
But during our so-little-Michael time... I maybe just threw them back over the fence....
This little Kubo dog didn't know how to go for a walk. I tried to get him to ride with Bennett but Bennett didn't love that...
in the end we just gave up after two blocks!
And Bennett decided he'd have storytime instead of a walk.
But Kubo wasn't a very good audience.
My Aunt Marj has written a birthday card to all of her posterity for years and years. She is my great-aunt, in her 90s, and I've gotten a birthday card from her my entire life. This was the first card that was dictated and I just was really struck by her service and priorities and the way she has loved her family so well her whole life.
These slippers magically appeared in my mailbox from Old Navy. I never ordered them. They're the most random things.
Pre-KonMari I may have just thought it was funny and put them on my shoe shelf. But I took them into Old Navy and told them I never ordered these, and she said she could give me a prepaid shipping label to return them or I could bring them into a store. And we were having this conversation in the store? Just felt like an appropriately weird conversation to end the weird situation.
Go Westin!
Lunch Dates.
Westin grew this pumpkin! And he was just so excited to make pumpkin seeds and eat them.
