We love Grandparents!

The kids adore their grandparents, but getting good pictures with them is not always very easy.  We had some valiant attempts with Grandpa & Grandma Boote.  For a hilarious sequence of events, see my sister's blog post here.  You can watch a video version here.  These are the best we got...

Grandpa & Grandma Lorenzen went much better...

We love you!

Happy Birthday, Emily!

We got to have Emily's birthday party on her actual birthday this year.  She was super excited, to say the least.  She drew lots of pictures to hang on the wall for decorations and even made an agenda.

Emily frosted and decorated the requested birthday cinnamon rolls with butterfly sprinkles.

Aunt Courtney frosted a beautiful strawberry butterfly cake to match all the butterfly decorations.

Emily got lots of fun crafts and games, including "Steady Freddy," which was a big hit with both kids.

She also got a fun Plasma Car to be used in the basement or outside.  Everyone had fun trying that out!

 

She also got the beloved magnifying glass she has been wanting since August.  Now she can look for clues and solve all the mysteries in our house!

Happy Birthday to our beautiful 5-year-old!

Two little monkeys

We were lucky enough that it worked out for my sister and nephew to come with my parents.  Ryan is 4.5 months younger than Lincoln.  As you can see, these two have a lot of fun together and will for many years to come!

 

An ice cream outing

One of the fun things we did on Saturday was walk to Duos for ice cream.  It's always interesting with little ones involved!

Grandpa's magic corn

My family arrived on Saturday afternoon for Emily's birthday weekend.  One of the first things they had to do was check on Grandpa's magic corn.  When my parents were here for Lincoln's birthday in May, my dad had a few seed kernels of super-tall field corn that he stuck in our garden.  Only one plant actually came up, and it had a pretty slow start.  It was also less than ideal growing conditions along the edge of our garden.  Nevertheless, we ended up with a single corn stalk 10.5 feet tall (which is actually not that much taller than regular field corn).  It produced two ears of corn, but neither one filled out before the first killing frost.  It was a good conversation piece all summer, though.  The next question is how long it can survive an Iowa winter!

Employee of the Year

Austin was in Seattle most of this week for a company conference/meeting.  While there, Concur had an awards ceremony for fiscal year 2011 (which ends Sept. 30 for them).  Austin was recognized as Employee of the Year in his Business Development group of about 30 people.  Not bad for only being employed with Concur for 10 months!

Congratulations, Austin! 

Butterfly cookies

While Lincoln was finally napping again, Emily & I decorated butterfly cookies to bring to preschool as birthday treats.  Emily did a great job!  It was funny to watch her try to copy everything I did. :o)

A failed attempt

I have been wanting to completely eliminate Lincoln's pacifier for some time now.  For the most part, it has been confined to his crib since he was 12 months old, but it is still a pain to try and remember and keep track of it, not to mention the gross factor (which tends to bug me less the older he gets).  Plus, if you ever forget to put it up in the closet, Lincoln will find it and secretly skulk about his room or behind furniture sneaking sucks on it.  The last straw occurred last week when I spent 15 minutes at bedtime using to two bendy straws to try and extract both pacifiers from behind the radiator covers in the living room where he had secretly stashed them earlier in the day.

So I decided this week was going to be the week.  Austin was gone to a meeting/conference for work.  On Monday night I snipped the end off one of his pacifiers and told him it was broken.  He quickly confirmed that.  I told him he was a big boy and didn't need a pacifier.  He gave me a very sad look and said, "Okay" and laid down.  I thought, "That was easy!"  That was not the end of it, though.  He was still whimpering sadly when I checked on him 30 min. later.  It was rather heart-breaking.  I ended up rocking/cuddling/sitting in his room until 11:00pm.  It was actually kind of bittersweet, and I spent a long time reflecting on things.

The next day he ran to his crib for nap time until he remembered about the pacifier.  Then he refused to nap.  I soon gave up and we went outside to enjoy the last really nice day of fall.  He was up late again at night, but pure exhaustion took over by 9:00pm.

On Wednesday at nap time I knew he was really tired because he almost fell asleep in my lap reading books.  However, when I put him in bed he whimpered/cried for 30 min. and then played/chattered for 30 min.  No nap again.  By this time I'm scared that I might have ruined nap time for good.  I'm ready to give the pacifier back in return for naps again. 

I tried once more to go without the pacifier at night.  After 1 1/2 hours of on/off crying and him soaking two different pajamas with tears, snot and drool, I gave Lincoln the last pacifier back at 9:00pm.  He is coming down with a little cold, and we have company coming for Emily's birthday, so I decided it just wasn't worth it.  He slept until 7:30am and then took a 2 hour nap this afternoon.  It was the right decision.  I'm just going to call it a failed experiment.  And I'm going to get some new pacifiers the next time I'm at Target. ;o)

This is Lincoln napping peacefully after getting his pacifier back even though he doesn't necessarily use it when sleeping.

Fashionable vs. practical

I was feeling a bit fashionable today as I wore a knotted scarf for the first time ever (I know, I'm so on top of things!).  I got several compliments on it at MOPS this morning (that's probably because the program at our last meeting was all about fall fashions).  However, I decided that for as nice as fashion scarves look, they are terribly impractical.  If you're doing pretty much anything they just get in the way.  From preparing or serving food to cleaning up anything, not to mention any contact with kids.  I think I spent more time with it off than on today.  That or flung over my shoulder.  The only real plus is keeping your neck warm on a chilly day, which is still a toss-up for me because I don't like the "choking" feeling of stuff around my neck and sometimes have a hard time with turtlenecks.

Also, I suppose I have to document my super-cute head wound.  I had a little run-in with a plastic birdbath I was trying to install on the deck rail this weekend.  It is now scabbed over, itchy and looks like a sad attempt at a Halloween make-up job.  It does provide a fascinating social experiment, though.  I have had 30 minute face-to-face conversations with people who never mentioned a thing while others have blurted out, "What happened to you?!?" as soon as I set foot in the room.  It's interesting to see who falls into what category.  Some of them have been a bit surprising.

Farm scenery

Emily's preschool class is talking about farms this week.  They had some elaborate cardboard farm scenery at school, so today Emily decided she wanted to make her own.  Luckily, I had some perfect cardboard stashed away.  Emily even graciously (for the most part) allowed Lincoln to help decorate.  Then she dressed up herself and some stuffed animals and sang & danced to all kinds of farm songs.

I'm not sure how slippers and pom-poms fit in with the farm theme, but she had fun!

"Poodle" is looking snazzy in her sequined attire.

In this scene Emily is flying a kite next to some super tall corn.

This is the view out of the window.