Sock Puppets and Jack-o-Lanterns

This post has been waiting in the wings all week. This past weekend Geoff, Colette, and Alex came over to go pumpkin hunting with us - at least that was the plan. Our first snows of the season kind of "rained" on our parade. Rather than trudge through the muddy fields of the pumpkin patch, we decided to trudge through the aisles of Albertson's for our pumpkins. Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. Since we new that hunting pumpkins at Albertson's wouldn't be nearly as time consuming as picking them out of a field, we thought we'd need some other activities to fill our afternoon.

We opted to make sock puppets with the kids. Over the last few weeks, Marielle has been obsessed with putting her socks on her hands. It's pretty funny. First she'll pull the socks off of her feet. Then, she tries her hardest to pull them onto her hands. She manages to get her fingers into the sock on her first hand, but she usually needs help from there. I thought that if she really wants to put the socks on her hands, they should at least be entertaining. Making sock puppets sounds easy, but believe me when I say there are a few things to keep in mind. Like the fact that sock puppets need lips but not mouths. Or the fact that poorly-drawn noses will look like mouths which we just learned are unnecessary. After a little trial and error, we all managed to crank out 5 or 6 pretty cool sock puppets. Geoff cranked out a decent ant-eater puppet, and I had a pretty scary looking puppet with fangs (it seemed appropriate given the upcoming holiday).

Later we got to work on decorating our pumpkins. I say decorating because we didn't carve pumpkins. In previous year we have, but it just seemed a bit too messy to tackle with the kiddos. Instead, we found these nifty little kits containing Mr. Potato Head parts to attach to the pumpkins. Marielle and Alex were able to help connect all the parts to their pumpkins. And they seemed pretty excited about their finished creations.

Altogether, we had a lot of fun. Watching Marielle and Alex playing is always fun. We always end up breaking out our cameras to capture something funny that they are doing. We always joke about how they play together. This is mainly due to the fact that they spend the majority of their time merely playing next to each other. It's typically near the end of their get togethers where they start interacting and playing with each other. On this particular day they hit their stride by casing each other back and forth from our kitchen through to the living room. Each time they got to the back of the kitchen, they would take turns pounding on our trash can. Then, they'd chase each other back into the living room where the'd pound on the coffee table.

First Snow and Gearing Up for Halloween

This past week brought us our first snow of the season! I love the snow. Any afternoon news cast that predicts snow later that night will have me constantly checking the windows for approaching clouds. I get sooo excited for the clouds to roll in and love the sounds of the snow tinking off the windows in our bedroom. I always get bummed that the snow may have moved out by morning. This week, this was not the case. The snow came in early while I was still at work, so I constantly found myself looking out of the window at work. It snowed through the night and didn't lift until late the next morning. Later in the week we got our second helping.

As we all know, Halloween is fast approaching and Marielle is getting anxious to give her mouse costume another try this year. Last year, for her first Halloween, my Mom made her the cutest mouse costume. Sadly, the fabric store didn't have patterns small enough for our little one, and my Mom had a hard time scaling it down. It was awesome, yet a little big. This year, we think we are in business. We will save the mouse pictures for the 31st, but to get you in the spirit, here's our little devil.

Sick and Running out of Kleenex

We have all been sick. Marielle is sick, I am sick, and Vivian is just getting over being sick. The only one of us that didn't get sick was Sophie. By the way, why is that? How come our dogs don't catch our colds? This dog has spent the whole week eating bits of food that Marielle had dropped, licking her runny nose, and chewing up the occasional kleenex that we forget to snatch up. You would think she would have some sort of mutant mega cold from all three of us.

Anyway, us being sick is not the excuse for us blogging, but rather the subject of this blog (until I shoot off onto another tangent . . . wait for it). We think Marielle caught her cold last weekend at a gymnastics class we checked out. Although we haven't let this fact reflect negatively on the experience. She had an awesome time checking out the class, and it's definitely something we want to explore with her further. She enjoyed learned somersaults and climbing across the mats and blocks. The gym also had a large inflated mat the her and the other children could jump and tumble on. When they finished with that portion of the session, the kids sat with glee as the mat was deflated out from under them. The high point of the class was Marielle learning to hang from a bar for the first time. Teaching her the concept was quite amusing. The first four or five times we brought her hands up to the bar, she would only pretend to really grab it. This became apparent each time we'd go to let go of her, and her hands would just slide off the bar. After a few more tries, I tried wrapping her hands around the bar and holding them there. When Viv started to let go, Marielle instantly realized what she needed to do. She was totally amazed with herself! There she was hanging by her hands on her own. The look on her face as it was scrunched between her two arms stretched above her head was hilarious. Just a complete look of awe and accomplishment.

Later that day, we went on to music class. The class came with a CD for home that we use to learn the songs (we are all required to sing along in class). Marielle loves the class. She spends half the class participating by singing and dancing along, and the rest of the class is spent wandering and exploring the classroom. At home, she can't get enough of the CD. I ripped it to our Media PC, and she has started to realize that this CD, and her other favorites have been saved to the Media PC as well. She has taken to standing in the living room, pointng at the TV, and saying, "Music? Music?"

Later last weekend, on Sunday, the runny nose started. We then proceeded to Geoff, Colette, and Alex's new house for playtime at the park and dinner. We warned them, but being the great frineds that they are, they did not turn us away. Although turning us away would have been OK. Afterall, we did this to a coworker of Viv's once.

So far, we have managed to pass the bug on to Colette, Alex, and my Mom. Our new nanny and her son seemed to have made it through last week unscathed. This week is looking better.

Dad's Weekend '06

Well, Geoff beat me to it. Check out the Pierz Blog for the first of our two posts about the 2nd Annual Dad's Weekend. Last year we inaugurated our Dad's Weekend tradition with a trip to Vedauwoo, WY. Vedauwoo is this great little nature area full of great rock formations and lots of aspen trees. The aspen trees are kind of key to the Dad's Weekend concept. Basically, the idea is to schedule it in the fall and camp someplace where the aspen leaves are turning. It gives us a chance to hang out, try some new beers, and grab some great fall photos. This year we camped back in the Poudre Valley, northwest of Fort Collins. As Geoff mentioned in his post, we were a little apprehensive about the weather, but everything turned out great. I think I will defer to Geoff's post in most respects and will just leave you all with a few more photos to round out the ones Geoff put up. He briefly mentioned the wood chopping that we spent part of Saturday doing, and I've got the photos to show why it took part of the day. By the way, Frank, we probably owe you a new hatchet.

A Day With Marielle

Marielle is a pretty busy girl. She has a full day filled with activities. Sometimes she goes for walks. She is a really strong girl too. She is so strong she almost pulled daddy over. She loves her daddy.








She even makes time in her busy day to cuddle with him.










She also makes time for baths. Every princess needs her spa time.


Then at the end of a busy day she gets a little beauty sleep. Oh the hard life she leads.

Marielle's First Haircut

When I heard that Alex got his first haircut it motivated me to actually go and get Marielle's haircut. She has sort of been sporting a mullet lately. I didn't want to cut it, because I know its not very long and I didn't want her to look like a boy. At the same time it was so uneven I knew it was time. Well turns out Marc and I took Marielle to the same haircut company that Geoff and Colette took Alex to. Anyway, Marielle did pretty well. She got to watch Dora the Explorer aka Dori. Dori and my keys kept Marielle pretty occupied. She didn't have to deal with the razor like poor little Alex did. Marc and I were pretty happy about the haircut. The lady made Marielle's hair even and got rid of the mullet. Hopefully now it will grow nice and long so I can put it in pigtails.

O - R - E - O

Like so many of our posts, we've been meaning to mention this for a few days now. As you can see from the Photo, Marielle has dunked her first Oreo! It was hilarious. I just can't get over how quick our little ones absorb new concepts. Marielle stood in front of me and watched me dunk one or two cookies before she realized she wanted one. After handing her the cookie, she came around the corner of the table, climbed into my lap, and carefully dipped it in the glass.

She's been discovering all sorts of things like this lately and doing them for herself. When she goes up to Oma's house and plays with her Little Tikes kitchen, she puts all of the dishes in the sink and moves them around like she's rinsing them. She gets pretty upset that the water doesn't actually flow. She also sets the dishes out on her play table and sets a place for Oma. I think I'm seeing the beginnings of a first tea party.