For Allison's eyes

This is the picture where Abby said, "I look like Alli!"

Abby-isms

If Ashley is our Drama Queen, Abby is our Queen of Opposites. If you say it's wet, she says it's dry. If you say we're late, she says we're early. And there is no point arguing with her either. We were at the dinner table the other night and Ashley was fretting about how she was going to have to move out one day and where was she supposed to live and she didn't even want to go to college anyway. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Andy said - "well, you can live at home while you go to college. You can even live at home for awhile after you go to college." I was starting to get uneasy at this point. I am in no way anxious for my kids to move out, but just HOW LONG after college was he thinking it's ok to live at home still?? I was in the midst of this thought process when Abby spoke up and said, "When I grow up, I'm going to live far, far away." Of course.

On another day, I was trying to tell Ashley that she was going to have to take the bus to school since I had an early dr's appt. She is actually ok with taking the bus in the afternoons, but she can't have something new sprung on her. She needs details and time to process everything. It was after this conversation that Abby said to me (who is also the Queen of Make Believe) - "mama, they put a new note up on our door at school." I asked her what the note said, to which she replied, "It says - no more picking kids up at school. They can only take the bus." Thankfully they don't offer a bus at her school or she'd probably ride it "far, far away!"

Bats say - bock bock??

This is just a random video that we took before Halloween. I laugh every time I watch it. Not sure why. Maybe because Andy is yelling "bock bock" even though Charlie is dressed up as a bat. I'm sure Charlie will look at it one day and laugh too. Or maybe not.

How can it be?

I was recently thinking - I can't believe Charlie is 11 months old already. What I didn't realize until just now - is that means he's going to be a year old soon!! Yikes. How did that happen? My tiny little baby who I still swaddle to sleep is maybe not such a tiny little baby anymore! I had lots of pictures and videos to post about new things that Charlie was doing, but because of lack of time or denial, those posts never happened. He started doing some worm crawl type thing about a month ago which got him slow access to anything within a small radius. It looked like this:

Two days before our trip to Virginia, he started full-on crawling. I can't complain holding him off for 11 months, I mean, I didn't hold him off, that's just when he naturally began crawling of course, nevermind that. Anyway, it is a different story with him crawling now. He is everywhere, but fortunately he has 2 older sisters that LOVE to remind him what he can and cannot grab. Also, just yesterday he started dancing. Not sure where that came from. He definitely gets his moves from Andy.

Trick or Treat!

It was nice having Halloween fall on a Saturday this year. No racing home from work, trying to get the kids to eat some sort of a healthy dinner so they can get dressed up and fill themselves up with sugar. We had all day to do that now!!! Ashley and I went to a party in the afternoon which was actually pretty fun - if you're into Halloween stuff. The snack table was enough to send anyone into a diabetic coma. Of course Ashley had to sample one of everything. We then went to the mall where each store was handing out candy. After that we came home and got the little ones up from their naps, ate dinner, and let the fun begin. Charlie was ready first so he had time for a little pre-trick-or-treating stretch:

Yes, his shoes were too big, but you can't very well be a football player without shoes!



Still waiting for sisters to get ready...

Finally the cheerleader emerges:

Charlie is starting to be done with Halloween at this point:


This is the ONLY picture I got of Ashley (she was Jasmine). I got 2 total of Abby and about 147 of Charlie.

The gang of trick-or-treaters (we went with a few of Ashley's friends from school). You can see Ashley and Abby - they are the only ones not dressed in black. And Abby is bringing up the rear.

This is the way to trick-or-treat!

Checking out his loot. Between all of them, we had at least 7 full size candy bars! Score.

The bartering begins. Ashley definitely won this year. One of her trades to Abby was 2 peppermint discs for a candy bar. Abby was so thrilled because she got 2 things but only had to give away 1. We let Ashley win because something tells me it will come back to get her!

Charlie got all of the glow-in-the-dark bracelets seeing how he's not even eating food, let alone candy! I mean, of course he's eating food, just not candy.