October Wrap Up

And now to wrap up October!

What are these four kiddos doing??

Watching General Conference!!

This year I got Lucky charms Cereal.  Oh my.  Everyone loved that sugary cereal.  The big kids played bingo for at least an hour of each session.  I was proud of them.  The babies took turns snuggling with me.

When I wasn't holding a baby I worked on crocheting a pink hat for Kira.  There was a big announcement made in General Conference this time.  Church will now be for two hours on Sunday instead of three!  Also, President Nelson's invitation to the women to read the scriptures and do a social media fast was great.  I got started on both right away.  Yay!

This is what our kindergarten schedule/calendar looks like.  Isn't it cute and fun.  Mrs. Spence uses pictures to show what the kids will be doing each day. Kira and Isak look at it everyday so they know what to expect.  It's great.

As mentioned in the Halloween post...these are the paper dolls that we made costumes for.  Isak made Woody.

Kira made a ballerina princess.

They had fun creating them with me.  I enjoyed the one on one time with each of them.

I just thought my kids were cute on this day and we were actually early for the bus...so picture time.  :)

The babies jumped in a little bit too.

Isak is a lego master.  He loves them so much.  He made this bridge all by himself.

And this dude.

Lots of steps and pieces.  He follows the instructions and finds the pieces.

Little Noah playing the piano.

He's so tiny.  :)

Sisters!  Matching unicorn pj's and slippers.

Playing with magnets on the fridge.

A Kira drawing...

Just enjoying pancakes.

I was prepping for my parents visit and set the bed up.  The kids played for an hour or two pretending to "go to bed."  Noah is in the middle of a laugh not a cry.  😀

Library day.  I love taking the kids to the library.  There's something for each of them to do that they enjoy.

This time there was a science lab pretend play set up.  Isak made friends with this boy and they had a great time making potions.

Kira just kept to herself and played with the bristle blocks.

Noah did puzzles and the train set that is there.

And Sofie colored and visited Kira, Isak and Noah.

All done!  Noah is so funny sometimes.

Noah needs a haircut.  But daddy and Isak look cute together.

Noah was super good for his haircut.  I waited too long to take the pic...this was after the blow dryer and he got scared of it.  But he really was happy and good for his haircut!

Oh man!  So this pic happened.  We can laugh about it now.  We ate two delicious chicken breasts and left the other two on the grill to finish cooking.  And we forgot about them...

Happy Birthday to Nels!!!  We were all excited to celebrate Nels.  He took the day off and had a pretty good day.  The kids colored and drew him pictures.  Isak colored Yoda.  Kira drew him a color by number and then later they colored it together.

Nels gave me socks for my birthday, so I bought Nels some socks for his birthday.  haha.  I also got him a Dad's joke book, an iPhone charger and a new alarm clock.

We went to Costco.  Nels really wanted the apple cider donuts they had there and the macaroni and cheese.  Nels went to the gym.  Then we made some burgers for dinner.  We put candles in cake.  Everyone got to blow out some candles.   We love you Nels!!

We made jack o lantern and ghost wind socks.

Isak and Kira loved this activity and did most of it by themselves.

We also did window clings...

Reading together.  💕

First snow!!

That's all the pictures.  A few other things that happened this month:

• The first week of the month Kira was super sick.  She had an upper respiratory infection and a little pneumonia.  Her cough was loud and terrible.  Thankfully, the medicine helped and she recovered.
• While we were making cookies, Sofie broke my favorite pink mixing bowl.  😢
• I started a book on Shutterfly.  It's a book that will have pictures of the houses we have lived in and then kind of a comparison picture...holidays from year to year so it's easy to see how the kids grew and changed over the last five years.
• I love when I play the piano and Kira will come and sit quietly and listen.  Then she says, "that's beautiful."  She likes to make up her own songs.  So cute.
• Isak and Kira like to play hide and seek and tag.
• Sometimes we all play ring around the rosie.  The babies love it.  The babies will do it by themselves to, which is adorable!
• I completed the 10 day media fast.  
• I went to the temple.  Yay!  
• Nels and I went on a date.  We went to Outback Steakhouse and then ice cream at Baskin Robins.  Great food and conversation.
• Sofie Linnea climbed out of her crib twice!  I'm not ready for this!  It's been a month since this happened and thankfully, she hasn't done it again.  But soon we will have to transition out of the crib.  I'm hoping to wait until they are three though!  🤞
• Sofie changes her clothes every two minutes it seems.  
• Kira continues to draw and loves to play the piano-making up her own songs.
• Isak is sweet and watches out for others.  He loves his legos and builds and rebuilds all of the time.  
• I worked on my coding projects. 
• One morning I had all four kids playing play dough.  It was Sofie and Noah's first time doing it.  They loved it and were supervised pretty well by Isak and Kira who taught them how to do things.  Kira taught Sofie how to roll a snake, smash the play dough, and how to cut it.
• Isak and Kira painted little wooden Halloween puzzles.
• Another morning the kids all did stickers and coloring.
• Noah has been waking up way to early!  Sometimes 5, 5:30 or 6.  Yuck!
• Nels made orange pancakes one morning.
• We had the primary program.  Isak and Kira did great. 
• I wrote this down in my journal on Oct. 30th..."I've had this thought a couple of times about this stage of life.  Especially about our twin two year olds.  "This is the best!  Look how cute/funny/sweet they are!" and the next moment...ten seconds later..."This is the worst!  Look at that tantrum/mess/fighting!"  The best of times and the worst of times.  "I'm living my dream.  It's awesome!"  and the next moment..."I'm living a nightmare!  This is awful!"  These ups and downs happen several times a day.  And that's life right now. 😊

And that wraps up October.  A great visit from my parents, a birthday for Nels and a fun Halloween holiday.  

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween!  My kids love Halloween, which helps me to enjoy it too.  This year Kira wanted to be a ballerina unicorn.  She hadn't had a new costume in two years so we found one that worked.  I decided to match her.  😀🦄

Isn't she a cute ballerina unicorn??

I painted her fingernails hot pink and she showed everyone her nails.  We curled her hair too.  She was pretty happy about all the pampering.

Isak was a firefighter again.  Noah was batman.  He wouldn't put the cape on; I was lucky to get the shirt on him!  Then Sofie was a little Bee.  Kira and Isak wore those costumes when they were 2 or 3. And the bee costume came from my sister Kari's daughter Sadie.  So we reused three costumes this year.  But it worked and everyone was happy.

Noah was super cute and wanted to smile and be in the pictures!!

Nels was batman too.

Oct. 27th - Saturday.
We all went to the Geneva Park District Halloween Party.  It was $5/kid and totally worth it.  So fun for the kids.  The kids played carnival games like toss the spider and spin the wheel.

There was music playing and Noah totally started to dance and groove.  Cutest thing ever!  Sofie joined him with cute twirls.  Probably my favorite part was just watching these two year olds dance.

We did an egg hunt.  Sofie and Noah got 0 eggs.  And they were okay with that.  Isak and Kira each got about six eggs and did it all by themselves.

We got a family picture.

We went on a little hayride...a tractor pulled us around the parking lot in a trailer.

Lots of candy was eaten and received.

We did some coloring.

Nels and I raced  doing the word scramble.  Can you guess who won by the picture? hee hee.

We watched some mad scientists do dry ice and slime experiments.

Then we went to the entertainment show.  Mr. Steve did balloon animals, songs, a little magic and threw some toys and tootsie rolls.

Isak got picked to go up.  Mr. Steve asked him how long he had been a firefighter.  Isak replied 2 years.  😀  He was super cute up there.

The party was 10-1 p.m.  We left about 12:55 p.m.  Pretty good!!

We came home and ate lunch.  I made frosting for the pumpkin bars.  Then we got ready again and left for the ward party from 3-5 p.m.  It was fun!  The kids loved the park.  There was yummy food too.

The Bishop of our ward was Batman too!  So I had to get a pic!

Another girl was a unicorn too!

This is Brynnley.  She is our neighbor and friend.

It started to sprinkle a little but wasn't bad.  Brynnley and Kira played together the whole time and did the trunk or treat together by themselves.  I took Sofie and Isak around to the trunks.  Noah stayed with Nels and passed out candy.  There were also a couple of games.  Kira rocked the bean bag toss and knocked over all of the cans!

When we got in the car, Sofie would not let her candy out of her sight.  

We were all exhausted when we got home.  We put babies to bed at 7:30 p.m. and big kids were in bed by 8:30 p.m.

It was a great day!

Oct. 31 - Halloween Day!

I tried to make it special...I made them spider sandwiches like last year, but I didn't have pretzels.  So we used veggie straws for the legs instead.  The kids loved them anyways!  Yay!

Isak and Kira wore their costumes to school.  Sofie and Noah were so excited watching Isak and Kira get ready that they insisted on having me put their costumes on too!  Even Noah wanted his batman shirt on!

Isak and Kira gave their special treat bags that they made with grandma to the bus driver and their teacher.

You can kind of see the cute treat bags in this picture.

Then the bus came and we waved good bye...

Then I took Sofie and Noah to school for the Halloween parade at 2:15 p.m.  We made it just in time to see Isak and Kira walking around.

We went inside the school for a minute to see the paper doll costumes the kids had made for Halloween.  Then home for naps!  Isak and Kira had a party at school.  I think they had a great time.

When they got home I took all four kids trick or treating in our neighborhood by myself.  Sadly, Nels had to work late.

Noah was a bit grumpy at the beginning because of his short nap.  But Sofie was all smiles and ready to go!

See Noah yawning...so cute!

And the folded arms. haha...

Noah was a little hesitant.

But once he realized candy was being handed out he got right into it!

Here's my crew walking on ahead.

Noah stayed close by me at all times, except to get the candy at the door.

Isak and Kira fought over who got to ring the doorbell.  So we tried to implement turns.  They got lots of candy.  The dogs scared Sofie.  I FaceTimed at our friend's house so he could see how it was going and be apart of it.  We went from 4:30-5:30.  It was probably 50 degrees outside with no rain or wind.  No coats, except for me.  :)  It was a fun time.

We recovered with a show and dinner.

The bus driver gave Isak and Kira a little goodie bag.  Inside was a glow in the dark glove.  I chased the kids around the house with the gloves on.  haha.  That was fun!

After I put the babies to bed, Isak and Kira sorted their candy.

We just dumped it all in one big bowl and we share the candy.  Everyone usually gets one or two pieces a day.  Next year I'm going to try and give it to the dentist or candy for soldiers charity.  Four kids' candy is a lot!

So that was our Halloween celebration.  Great time and great memories.