Maricopa Halloween Party

The first party was put on by the city of Maricopa. They always do a nice job making it fun for everyone. Daniel just loved the games.

These are little hard to see because it got dark but you can see how fun it was for Daniel.

Halloween costumes evening

So in the evening Daniel got to go to two more parties, one put on by the city and one by our Ward. He decided to change his costume so he became Buzz Lightyear. Not to be outdone, Rylie changed her costume to become a butterfly.

Daniel raked in the spoils. The candy bounty from the first party was so big that it mysteriously disappeared at the Ward party. Rumor has it that it was donated to other kids. He'll never know.

Candy is like a narcotic to Daniel. Once he gets a sugar high there is no stopping him. He topped everything off with rootbeer - mmmm liquid sugar. I don't think there is a faster way to get sugar in the blood except by injection.



Rylie wasn't quite as into it as Daniel. I think she was content just to have so much attention from people googling at her. It was a lot of work looking cute, she had to take a quick beauty siesta.





Showing Daniel how to properly boast. Look at that monster bag! And that was from the first party. Sadly, that was the bag that got donated to a much better cause.


This is a weird picture, but it's kind of cool so I posted it anyway. Heidi said she had the camera on the night setting but it was still daylight so I guess it just came out looking like this. What do I know.

Rylie crawling part 3

Here she is again! Bored yet of all the baby videos!??

I'm so proud of my little girl... (sniff..!)

Halloween costumes morning

In the morning Heidi had a small Halloween party for her preschool kids. Rylie was a ballerina and Daniel was Charlie the choo choo train. This was the costume that Daniel didn't want to take off so he ended up taking a nap in it too.










Sorry about the sideways, does anyone know how to rotate a video?

Pumpkin carving

I love Halloween. I think it's my favorite holiday. I don't know why we don't get work off that day. Candy, costumes, parties, a month of horror movies and of course carving pumpkins. Daniel loved carving the pumpkin this year because he was old enough to help slice and dice it. When Heidi took the top off and all the gooey strings came out he just kept saying "eewww!!" "eewww!" but he loved it.

We pulled all the seeds out and roasted them. I guess he likes them because he eat nearly all of them. We were rewarded with a 3:00am throw up.

When he was eating them though he put them all in the trunk compartment of his toy scooter that he can scoot around on in the house. I came home from work and he pulled up next to me on the scooter and reached in the trunk and pulled out 1 pumpkin seed and shared with me. He was so generous.

Rylie crawling part 2

In a matter of just a week you can see how strong she is getting, she nearly has it.

Lazers! phzew! phzew!

Daniel is such a boy. I love it when he gets excited over guy stuff. He loves big trucks. He will always cheer and wave to the garbage truck as it goes by each week. And he loves motorcycles. If there is a puddle he will jump and splash in it. If there is water anywhere he will have it all over himself in seconds. He loves dinosaurs and lions and tigers and will always make the angry growl sound when he sees one.

Lately he's discovered laser guns. He will hold his finger up near his eye and point at what ever he is shooting and make laser shooting sounds like phzew phzew! I think he learned that from watching Toy Story. He was Buz Lightyear this year for Halloween.



Here he is while we were watching conference, I think he was a little bored and looking for attention.

Swing time

Daniel loves his little sister and I think the feeling is mutual. He will often lay down next to her and try to play with her. Granted she's not quite big enough to take a couch pillow to the body yet, but he can't wait for her to be a little bigger.

He will even sometimes share his blanket with her, if only for 10 seconds. She doesn't seem to mind though, she loves interacting with Daniel and loves all the attention he will give to her. He can do a better job at consoling her than I can most of the time.



Rylie is so fun to play with, she's so ticklish. Touching her belly results in an involuntary jerk of her legs. It's funny. Then she'll laugh and stick her tongue out.

Rylie crawling

Rylie sure has been in a hurry to start crawling. I'm not sure what her motivation is except to just see the world around her.

I think she learned how to roll over by accident simply by lifting her legs in the air then letting them fall sideways. Her whole body just kind of flopped over with her. Then she will push up with one hand and roll again sideways the same direction. In this manner she can steam roll her way around the room.

Here is Rylie trying to crawl, the toy being used as bait of course.

Best Friends

One day Daniel's cousin Orson came over to hang out. Can you tell they're best friends? Orson found Rylie's swim diapers and put on his head, so Daniel of course followed suite.

I don't know what they were playing, maybe pirates or maybe synchronized swimming, who knows.

October conference

We went up to my parents cabin in Strawberry AZ to watch General Conference. It was a nice little getaway for the weekend. We alternated who was entertaining Daniel so we got to alternate conference sessions. Saturday a storm from came through so the temperature dropped about 20 degrees. It was a bit chilly but luckily Wal-Mart wasn't too far away so we got Rylie and Daniel some mittens and long sleeve stuff.

Here is Rylie just kicking it, practicing her crawl. She can't wait to be moving.





Here she is again listening to conference.



She didn't make it very long.

Daniel's bed part 2

In a previous post I mentioned how Daniel puts everything on his bed that he can fit. Here is another example. It's funny to see this big mountain of stuff piled high on his bed then find Daniel tucked in the corner or sprawled out on top of it all.

Daniel crashed

We haven't had many posts lately but luckily we've been taking pictures. And the kids are finally sleeping (or at least in his room out of my hair) so I have time to sit down and make a few posts. So here are a few sets I'd thought I post and try to meet my October blog quota.

Here are a few pictures of Daniel when he has just crashed someplace.
I think this one was when he was trying to not take a nap and just playing around outside his bedroom door but Heidi said that he suddenly got quiet and she didn't know if that was a good quiet or bad quiet so she checked on him and found him crashed on the floor in the hallway. I guess that's a good quiet.



I think he spent his whole nap time just sleeping on the floor.


Here he is on a different day. I was working from home and he came walking into my room and just plopped down on Rylie's blanket and zonked out.


Today he put on his Thomas the Train costume for Halloween (pictures in a subsequent post) and Heidi said that he refused to take it off and took his nap wearing it. She forgot to get a picture of him napping with his costume on but you can imagine.

Yea computer!

This month seems to be a little slow for blogging, not that the kids don't keep things exciting... but I think we get mentally stuck in our day to day routines and forget to update.

I've been trying to get our internet fixed for a while now, several months. We've had a slow connection problem. We're supposed to be getting 8mbps, but we get anywhere between 256K and 800K.

Level one tech support is worthless. I think they only exist to screen people who don't know how to talk back to them. I explain the problem to them in detail and explain the steps I've already taken to try and fix it. The first thing they say is "that's normal, it's going to slow down during peak times of the day." Then I say, how would you like to pay $50 for a tank of gas but only actually get about $3 worth. Is that normal? Because unless I'm going to get a 98% discount on my next bill I'd just assume get what I'm paying for.

Then they take you through the same bunch of steps that I told them I've already taken before I called them because they can't take my word for it.

"Did you turn off your firewall? Did you bypass your router? Ok, then just restart your computer, wait an hour and if it's still slow then call us back." That's code talk for "I don't have a clue what's wrong with your internet connection but I get off work in a few minutes so I can't talk to you any longer."

No matter how many times you call back they force you to go through the same bunch of steps that didn't work before, hoping that it will, for some dumb reason, work this time. Unplug the router, power cycle the modem... and some girl actually tries to convince me that I probably have spyware on my computer and tries to go into detail about why automatic scanners don't work. My BS flag goes up and my patience goes down.

Ok, lets back up a second. This is what I've done, BEFORE I called you: I scanned my computer, it's clean. I bypassed my router, I restarted my computer, power cycled the modem, changed ethernet cables, changed ethernet ports, changed the coaxial cable to the modem, tested from a different coaxial jack in the house. I also ran all the same tests using my laptop from work. I get all the same results.

Can you transfer me to level 2 please?

So, a longer story shortened, they finally sent a tech out who identified a problem with the filter in the cable box outside. Problem solved. We are surfing at maximum velocity.

Daniel was facinated with the tech, I could hardly get him to back up enough to give the tech guy some breathing room. Once the tech guy stood up and said Alright, you're good now; Daniel started clapping his hands and exclaimed YEA COMPUTER!

Well said.

Ain't she sweet?

I was given this headband when Rylie was a newborn-- I finally tried it out and although it is huge, I do have to say she is adorable.

Rylie is growing so big-- she is just on the verge of crawling and is completely aware of the world around her. She just started eating rice cereal and she is a huge fan (although I did discover she hates the taste of formula). She tries to be so helpful and sticks her fingers in her mouth and grabs the spoon whenever possible.

Trouble Maker

Lately Daniel has been living up to the notoriety of being a 2 year old. Despite my best efforts, he always seems to be one step ahead of me. This week he has been on a roll.

One day Daniel decided to use the potty all by himself. I was taking a shower and when I realized he wasn't where I thought he was I rushed downstairs and walked into this. (sorry it may not be the most appropriate of pictures, and it is quite disgusting, but I had to share)


Yesterday while I was eating and watching the top of his head over the couch I had the thought-- wouldn't that be funny if he was doing something horrible and here I am watching him thinking he is just watching a movie. So with that thought I told Daniel to turn around and this is what I saw.

I had accidentally left our Aquafor (a vaseline type lotion) on the couch after changing Rylie and he helped himself. The worst part is the stuff is impossible to get out-- so I got to wash Daniel's hair 3 times, spent almost an hour cleaning the couch and despite my best efforts, the signs of this day will always remain. What a stinker.

We have also realized that we are going to need additional child locks for our upper cabinets in the kitchen. I have been letting Daniel help me cook lately and now he is enthralled with our spices. I find him trying to get into the spice cabinet all the time (a few times he was faster than me and was able to make a beautiful mess before I got to him).

Lastly, Daniel has decided he is big enough for regular cups. He will find any that we accidentally left around and will rush to the fridge to fill it up. Luckily he is getting better at this and doesn't spill as often, but I do have to say our floors have been cleaner lately due to always having to clean up the water spills that he leaves behind.

You just have to love 2 year olds. As Darin said, "we need to enjoy this stage because this will probably be the last time he does horrible things in complete innocence." I do have to say he sure has a personality, keeps me on my toes and lights up my life!

Played like a piano

I just found out that Daniel can play the piano...metaphorically speaking anyway, if that piano is ME.

The other night we were trying to put Daniel down for bed and he didn't want to go to bed and was throwing out every reason he could think of to avoid going to bed.

First Heidi went through the normal bed routine with him: bath, reading, going potty, brushing teeth etc... But as soon as she said goodnight he threw a fit and cried and screamed. We let him scream for a few minutes then I went in to try to calm him down. I tried to talk with him to understand why he's so upset. He started out saying he wanted juice. I explain to him that there is no more juice tonight but he can have water. Screaming.

There's always some random reason: he wants juice, he wants to go potty again or brush his teeth again, he wants to take a book to bed with him, he noticed some crumbs on his floor and wants to vacuum it up - some random reason why he doesn't want to go to bed.

After a minute he calms down but wants to read another book. I really hate sending him to bed with any bad feelings so if that's all it will take for him to go to bed happy or content then fine, one more quick book isn't asking too much. I read another book with him. He wants to read another book. It's already late and Heidi has already read books to him too so I say no more tonight, we can read again tomorrow. Screaming.

After he calms down again he now says he has to go potty. He's already been potty but it seems like such a small effort if he will then be content to go to bed. So I take him potty again. He takes a long time and after I finally persuade him that he's done, he reluctantly goes back to his room. At the mere mention of "hop on your bed" - screaming.

Now he asks for juice again and I explain again that there is no juice, but he can have water. Screaming again. (Ok you see the pattern. And this happens every night it seems like.)

He then asks for mommy. He really has a convincing boo-hoo face on and I really feel concerned making him go to bed crying, I certainly don't want him to go to bed with hard feelings and inadvertantly be the cause of bad dreams. Then he throws in "mommy, hug" which I don't know the exact translation of because he says "hug" when he wants me to pick him up or carry him up or down the stairs, but he's so upset right now and he's asking for mommy so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he wanted mommy to give mommy a hug and say sorry and say goodnight so I go and get mom and let her take over.

Now I feel better that I was able to calm him down and make things right and he'll now go to bed feeling good. Less than a minute later I hear him screaming again. Mom comes out and I ask what happened? I thought he just wanted to give you a hug and say goodnight, and she says no, he wanted juice.

Suddenly Buggs Bunny is standing next to me holding up a picture of a sucker with an arrow pointing at me.

He didn't want any of those things, all he really wanted was to not go to bed and I obliged him for another 30 minutes. I fell for his ruse. I was deliberately manipulated by a 2 year old.

Why you little...! That conniving little...! I've been played. Ok, deep breath. If he is really that determined to get what he wants that he can convince others to unwittingly help him, then good for him. I hope he uses that power for good and really gets ahead in life.