These are the Days!

We've had a busy couple of weeks taking care of my brother Duke after his tonsillectomy and septum repair. Mom and Dad came down to spend a few days with us, too, and since they were here, Brooke and Jared thought, what the heck, we'll toss our air mattress in the trunk and join the party! Sorry Jake and Rach, Darcy and Perry. You missed out on some pumpkin gut slinging. Mom helped me get Leslie's costume ready to go. She insisted that she wanted to be a "Smarty Pants" (since she is one...). So they stuck smarty candies all over her jeans. We were worried that those wouldn't show up very well, so we also made her a "thinking" cap. I was so relieved that Boston stuck with the ghost idea--he'd been pretty hard to pin down and I had so much fun putting together his costume. Macy was a bright-eyed ladybug and Cooper was a cowboy, pony and all. (This is for our neighborhood party--we'll still trick or treat tomorrow.) We were laughing at Cooper because he has been insistent for atleast the last two months that for Halloween, he was going to be a "Cowboy hack!" Translation: cowboy hat. We have a couple of battered hats in our dress up box and his favorite thing is to put one on and beg for me to turn on the Cowboy Song (Translation: Garth Brooks' "Ain't Goin' Down til the Sun Comes Up") so he can dance like crazy. I know, I'm a bad mom. I let my two year old listen to a song ad nauseum about sneaking out of the house and making out in someone's truck. It doesn't help that the next track on that CD is "Rodeo", so he almost always hears that one, too, to help with his cowboy vocabulary.
Anyway, these dress up hats were not really cowboy hats, so we went to the dollar store to pick him up the real thing, kid sized. He was so excited.
When it was time to get ready for the big party, we had him all dressed. I was adding spots to my face for my "sick" costume" (Mark was "tired" with a tire around his neck). I said, "Cooper, would you like me to draw you a mustache? Oooh. Yes he would. So he got a handsome droopy stache, ala brown wet'n'wild eyeliner. He admired himself in the mirror and slowly reached up for his hat. And lifted it off. And threw it on the ground. "I don't need this anymore!"
Cooper has also made a big leap in his speech skills. Macy started saying "Dadadada", and so we've been having him "help" her say it. This was exciting enough for him to try and do it properly, so this week we've been coaxing him to say all kinds of "d" words.
Macy also said her first word that she knew was really a word. She waves and twists her fingers very slowly and deliberately and says, "Iiii." (Hi.) Sometimes it's hi. So stinking cute.

We actually went on a family vacation to a vacation destination! Yay, us! Thanks to our friends the Sorensons for giving us all the insider tips for families with small children, and a huge thanks to Brooke and Jared for keeping all of my children from falling off the cliff, etc.
I've decided I like camping in the desert. I miss the lovely smell of the pines, but really liked how quiet it was at night, and also that I didn't have to take off my shoes every time I entered the tent. (No pine needles and/or mud to track in.)
We went on two family hikes, one that was about a mile around the windows arches at sunset, SO fun. We also hiked up to Delicate Arch, about three miles. Cooper struggled a bit with that one since it was uphill and he walked clear to the top, but we took lots of rests and he zonked out on Mark's or Jared's shoulders the whole way down. Boston, although only a couple inches taller than Cooper, was surprisingly good at hiking, actually causing some safety problems for us because he always wanted to be in front, running. We made Jared be his hiking buddy. He kept saying to us emphatically, "I WON'T quit, Mom!"
Besides Cooper, I was actually the biggest wuss on that hike. I did carry Macy the whole way and felt like superwoman because of it, but I hadn't realized, even after seeing pictures of Delicate Arch like, every day on the Utah license plate and everywhere else you can think of, that it is on the top of a mountain and that to see it, you have to perch on a skinny little cliff with the wind whistling around you and great big black birds of prey hopping greedily around you and your children. Yes it was gorgeous and fresh and surprising, but it took my breath away in more ways than one. I wanted to be a lead-footed octopus and wrap two arms around each of my babies and slowly inch my way back down the trail. The backs of my legs were twitching with freaked-out adrenaline and Mark was a little frustrated that I didn't want to get closer to the arch. I wouldn't even let him take a picture because I couldn't handle seeing him let go of Cooper, who was likely to go chasing the birds right over the edge. So Brooke had to do it. (She was Leslie's hiking buddy.) Leslie was mad at me because I wouldn't even let her stand up. She's a clumsy little girly like her mama and likely to trip. I gritted my teeth for the camera and then proclaimed "I'm SO outta here." I'm sure the little old ladies that I crossed on my way back down didn't mind that I took the right of way so I could have one hand on the rock wall, away from the edge. I was carrying a baby, after all.

Here are some fun fall pictures. September was such a beautiful month. We got permission to pick from a neighboring abandoned orchard and Mark found this whopper. I'm holding it in my hand in this top picture, and then it is next to a smallish apple with Macy. Leslie took to to school for show and tell. After that, Mark peeled it with a potato peeler because it was so bruised up from Leslie's backpack and took a few bites, just to say he ate it. He said it was good!
Brooke and I canned some of the apples on Saturday to apple pie filling. I'm excited to have some since we didn't do apples last year.
I also love these pictures I took of my homebound children while Leslie was at school. I think Boston and Macy look so very alike in that picture of just the two of them. Macy and I have been battling it out lately with the sleep thing. She's been waking up a lot and also not wanting to nap, mostly because she doesn't like falling asleep on her own. She just wishes she could be a tattoo on my arm I think. So, she's had to cry it out a few times this week and teach herself how to go to sleep. I think we are making progress. Last night she skipped the midnight waking completely and went until 4:00. Now if I can just get her past the wanting to sleep in my bed at 6:00 A.M. thing. Anyway, I've been a little out of it, but I think I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We also just started the extremely fun and even more messy I-can-feed-myself-a-cracker stage.
Everyone else is doing fine. We enjoyed General Conference (so cute...Boston called it "Gentlemen's Conference...and indeed it was) and are trying to teach a little more about service, in line with Pres. Monson's message. So, the kids are memorizing Mosiah 2:17 this month. I actually have a recording of this one from someone else because the teenagers learn it for seminary.