Still Here

We are still here!  We're just plugging along through residency interviews.  We've really loved some and really hated others, surprisingly.  We've got one more to go and can't wait to find out where we will match in March!

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving with both families (on separate days...hooray!) and are looking forward to Christmas.  I will update with pictures later since my parents' computer doesn't have the correct software for my camera.

By the way, we're missing our buddies in Columbus.

Halloween 2011

 We started the morning out right by carving pumpkins with Daddy.  We meant to do it earlier, but never got around to it, and since he's off for interviews, we took advantage!

 Being nervous about pumpkin guts.

 I told him to smile because it is Halloween and this is what I got.

She was a fan of sticking her fingers in the jack-o-lantern face

Ben was the mastermind behind the family of four pumpkin, and I did the wiggly mouth one and the sad face one per E's request.

Ready to go trick-or-treating!  We've been waiting all month!

 Luckily he doesn't look awkward or anything...

 Our trick-or-treating buddies.  E and Mathis were both tractors, Taylee was a cowgirl, and Sammi was a mermaid.

 The kids with some of their neighborhood friends: Mira, Ben, E, Mathis, Sammi, and Taylee

 Sammi got to ride in the wagon with her boyfriend Miles.  He looks like he's about ready to put the moves on her.  He likes to give her kisses at church and he even shared his candy with her.  (As in, the same piece of candy.)

 Looking confused...

I think Halloween lived up to all of our expectations!  So glad it finally came.  I was tired of answering the question, "Is it Halloween today!?" every day.  I'm glad the little guy was so excited though.  He was a trooper in that huge costume.  Sammi thought she was one of the big kids and wanted to walk everywhere until she got tired.  Then we just had to strap her into the stroller until her boyfriend rolled up with his Radioflyer.  One thing is for sure--we got WAY too much candy!

Spooky Dinner 2011

 We had our traditional spooky dinner this year with the original crowd.

The kids

The adults (with Sammi peeking out from behind Ben)

And me with dessert.

Makes Me Laugh, Emerson Edition

 And, continuing on with my silly kids...

E's little sense of humor has been developing rapidly.  He makes jokes because he knows they are funny, but he still just says things in a unique way that makes me laugh too.

-It's been so fun anticipating Halloween this year because he asks me literally every day if today is Halloween.  I hope it lives up to all of his expectations.  He learned a cute poem at school and made a grotesque little jack-o-lantern on a stick to go with it.  It goes:

Pumpkin, pumpkin,

Big and fat,

Turn into a jack-o-lantern

Just like that!

He also has loved learning little Halloween songs like I'm a Mean Old Witch With a Hat and Halloween, Halloween.

-He was sitting in a laundry basket of clothes and crouched down and said, "Look Mom!  I'm being a clo."  (Clearly the singular form of clothes.)

-I asked him what he wanted for breakfast this morning and he yelled "CHEESE!"

-Anytime he's trying to dink around to avoid doing something he says, "Mom, I have one more question for you."

-If someone does something that he thinks is mean, after initially getting mad he will then accept their apology by saying, "That's ok, we're still pals."

-He has absolutely loved preschool.  He tells me that Miss Cindy is his favorite.  I think she loves E a lot after bonding over the initial falling-in-the-urinal experience.  I would give anything to be a fly on the wall at preschool to watch his interactions and see if he is good at minding.

-They went to a pumpkin patch for a preschool field trip and E brought home a pumpkin so big that the mom driving carpool had to carry it in.  I wasn't really surprised.  I think it was a way to prove his manhood.  I'm hoping all the other kids didn't have little reasonably-sized pumpkins.  E told me that he and Tucker got lost in a corn maze and that Miss Cindy and Miss Carleen had to come find them.

-Here are some pictures from their Halloween party at Preschool:

Tucker as Jake from the Neverland Pirates, Aaron as Darth Vader, and E as a John Deere tractor

Did I mention he struggles with looking at the camera?  On the side of the picture above, you can see his friend Nick who was a Transformer for Halloween.  E has no idea what that is, so he just kind of felt bad for Nick because he thought he wasn't being anything for Halloween.

I can't count the number of times Ben and I lay in bed laughing over what our kids have done or said that day.  It's the best.

Makes Me Laugh, Sammi Edition

Lately I've been feeling like my kids' ages are pretty good for the most part.  I think it will be nice when Sammi's just a little older and in nursery, but this age is just adorable.  I love how they pick up so many words and are such little copycats.  I feel like sometimes I forget to document silly things they say or do.

-In case you couldn't tell, she loves wearing E's John Deere hat.  My favorite is when she pulls it off and her pigtails spring up back to life.

-She loves all books.  She will pull them off the shelf and sit quietly carefully flipping through them.  She has memorized What's Wrong, Little Pookie? and responds "no" in all the right places and laughs at the appropriate parts.

-She loves trains.  I think she's trying to get an in with Emerson, but sadly it isn't working.  Sometimes he is just outright mean to her.  But she knows how to drive them and make their sound effects, and she recognizes Thomas.

-She still loves animals with all her heart.  She started making her "ooooh!" noise with her round mouth when she saw a boy dressed as a puppy at Boo at the Zoo today.

-She worships shoes.  She went down the shoe aisle with Ben at Target and he said her eyes got huge and her hands couldn't help but reach.  She bawled and bawled after he let her try on shoes and then put them back in the box on the shelf.  How dare he not buy ALL of them for her.

-She loves her babies and stuffed animals and will walk around patting them and rocking them.  She sometimes pats my back when she gives me a hug.  Melts my heart.

-She loves to fold her arms for prayers and then babbles quietly and makes some exclamation at the end which I'm assuming means "Amen".

-She understands tons and will answer "yeah" to things you ask her.  She is very good at following directions.

-She loves to do her own hair and likes to help comb Emerson's hair.

Don't know what we'd do without her!

Halloween Preview

I thought I would go crazy trying to finish these costumes, but here they are.  The tractor sustained a minor injury during our 30 second photo shoot though, so back to the hot glue gun we go!

It all started when E announced he was going to be a John Deere tractor for Halloween, and it was up to me to make it happen.  I love the little guy, so I delivered the best I could (with lots of help from Ben).

 Then I saw the cutest idea on Pinterest for a mermaid costume, but I don't like bare skin even on little girls, plus it'll be freezing, so I came up with something different.  The seashells make us giggle though because there isn't much that needs to be covered. :)

 I told Ben to take away the bag of candy corn for a sec, and that was a bad choice.  She felt so betrayed.

Then felt very guilty that she got her way.

Happy Halloween!

Lil' Orange Girl

She got a hold of an orange and decided to try it out.  Apparently it wasn't too revolting.

Copy Cat

We sure love this little copy cat.  It scares me a little how much she watches and copies.  She pronounces the word "no" with such clarity and feeling that I just don't know what to do about it. 

Here she is copying E with a Pooh Bear.  But E would say this is not the Pooh Bear with the "right nose".

She adores shoes.  Notice that both of her feet are already shod, and she's holding up another boot for me to put on.  I think they go perfectly with her jammies.

 The only thing about shoes is that it covers up these beauties.  She sat really still on my lap for the first time so I could paint them.  Before this, I had to do it while she was in the highchair so she couldn't see or touch what I was doing.

Here she is copying me with my dangly earrings.  She was playing with mine after church, so I thought she would really love if she had "earrings" of her own.  She did love it and had this little pleased look on her face as she walked carefully around so as not to lose her big-girl dangly earring.

Pretty big stuff.

Scavenger Hunt

 With Ben's crazy Emergency Medicine schedule, he's been home and at work at odd times of the day.  Last week he was home until 2:30 p.m. on some of the days and then some days he was here until 10:00 p.m. and then some of the days he was gone at 7:00 a.m.  It's hard to maintain a regular schedule with the kids with his work schedule, and even though it sort of drives me crazy, I decided to just throw my expectations out the window and just go with it.  I didn't have a choice.  And yes, I felt like the house really needed to be cleaned, but I just had to wait until Friday night when Ben was out of town for the weekend on a pre-interview trip in Indiana.  There's nothing like vacuuming and scrubbing toilets until 11:00 p.m. on a Friday night.  Bet you're jealous of my party-house.  But man, it sure is nice to wake up on Saturday to a clean house.

On a side note, does anyone else think it really stinks to cook just for yourself?  I feel like I've had meals planned for the week that I just haven't made because, let's be honest, I'm not going to grill an entire flank steak for myself.  So I've exhausted all Tier 1 cop-out meals which include: grilled cheese, canned soup, cereal, pancakes, toast and scrambled eggs.  Am I missing any?  I didn't include Kraft Mac n' cheese because we had that for lunch one day.  Tier 2 cop-outs would include spaghetti, grilled cheese WITH soup, and a full breakfast...possibly with something mixed in to the pancakes.  Any more ideas or suggestions?

Anyway, on one of our crazy no-schedule days, we dropped the little man off at preschool and took Girl with us to the tractor supply store because we're in the midst of creating a John Deere tractor costume for Halloween, per E's declaration.  Ben just couldn't not buy this cute little truck and horse trailer for the little man, and couldn't wait for him to come home from preschool.  To make things more exciting, we created a little scavenger hunt for him.  Ben drew pictures of places in our house E would recognize and he hid probably 8 of them to lead E to the ultimate surprise.

Pardon the boxes...as I said, we're in the midst of tractor construction here.  This little moment melted my heart.  It was also in quite a drippy state when I could hear them driving around the little truck and tractor together coming up with little play scenarios.  I'm glad they are buddies.

28 Is Pretty Much 30

While my mom was here, Ben had his 28th birthday!  It was so weird/refreshing to have a family babysitter and to not have to bug someone from the ward.  (Thanks Mom!)

I'm not sure how exciting of a birthday it was for Ben, because the majority of it was practical stuff.

 Like his favorite Disney movie as a child, "The Great Mouse Detective".  Now I could answer anything about it while playing Disney Trivial Pursuit.

 ...Also a new drawstring for his pajama pants.  Our sucky old dryer somehow caught the drawstring and broke it off, so one night there was a very panicked Ben when he was trying to cinch up his pajama pants and the string was suddenly very short.  It was missing a good 6 inches, but Ben was convinced he had just gained weight.  Poor guy.  We didn't discover what really happened until about 2 weeks later when I finally found the old drawstring pieces tangled up at the top of the door opening.  He was pretty relieved.

And probably the most important thing was a wedding ring.  Yeah, after 2 kids and 6 years together we finally decided to tie the knot.  No, this was actually a REPLACEMENT wedding ring because Ben lost his...probably at his mistress's house or something...(or the hospital).  Even though it stunk to spend the money for a new one, I decided it was a good investment because I don't want any of the nurses thinking he's available.  Not that he would encourage that kind of behavior, but that doesn't stop the creepy lady in our neighborhood.  But that is a story for another time.  Anywho, I'm glad he is a marked man again because I've invested too much into this medical career of his to get him snatched away. :)  I sure think he's cute, so why wouldn't someone else?

Those kids of ours sure love him.  Do you like that Sammi is on his lap in almost every picture with him?  She really doesn't leave his side once he walks through the door.

That girl is determined to have some of that chocolate cake.  She knows what's good.

Happy birthday my sweet Ben!