Halloween Fun

Tara was little miss Tinkerbell and Michael was a crawling tiger. They had fun chasing each other in their costumes around the house before we went out. We did a little trick-or-treating around our cultisac and then headed for the carnival at the church. Ryan and I are still enjoying Tara's hard earned candy! Ryan especially. She has some here and there too.

Tara likes to dance in our living room, or run in circles, or gallop, hop or jump.

Tara loves the bounce house, that's all she wanted to do. And this one had a slide attached.

Michael's pumpkin is on the left, with two little baby teeth. Tara's is in the middle, she wanted circle eyes, a diamond nose, and a scary mouth, and don't forget eyebrows and eyelashes (drawn on). My pumpkin is on the right, and Ryan's is on the far right uncarved. We procrastinated carving them until Halloween morning, and Ryan had class that morning.

My new hair-color! I love it! I had highlights that were grown out a couple of inches so I needed a new color. I decided to go all one-color that's close to my natural color. So this is just a shade lighter. It took like 2 hours to do because I have so much hair! We didn't have time for a cut. This picture was taken right before we left for family pictures. We all wore white tops with jeans. We haven't taken a family picture since Tara was like 6 months old!

Recent Events

My future MVP, hopefully in baseball or basketball. Ignore the silver ribbon near his head, ha!

My pretty Tara in her "I'm just so BOO-tiful" shirt.

I asked Tara to smile and she made this face, Ha.

This is Tara's preschool class minus a few kids at the pumpkin patch. We got to go twice that week, also for a birthday party.

The pumpkin patch.

Looking at the farm animals with some friends.

Playing on the tracter display with a friend from the birthday party. Even though it was the same week the weather was really hot on that day and it was cool on the day that her preschool went.

Tara loved this ride and went on it a few times. A tractor pulled lots of kids in barrels like a train.

AWESOME. Tara's got some hops. She was jumping with all the boys in the bounce house. Check out how bouncy and wavy her hair looks as she's jumping. Her hair is really getting long.

This was at the "Bob the Builder" display at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum. There were lots of cool projects for kids to work on. We went on a FREE day, yay!

Tara's new cooking outfit! She loves to help cook homeade pizza or cookies with mom or dad.

Tara all cute and ready for preschool! She goes twice a week for a couple of hours each time. She LOVES preschool! She has a very social personality and loves playing with her friends

I caught both kids asleep in the car after a long day so I captured a picture of each.

The kids play in the kitchen cupboards like 10+ times a day, so I'm constantly putting stuff back in the cupboards, but they love it.

HAPPY FALL Y'ALL

The Half-n-Half Stroller

Yes, it's true, Michael has been using a PINK stroller the first 9 months of his life until now - using the half-n-half stroller. I couldn't really justify buying a brand new stroller when we had one that worked perfectly well, and we had already purchased an expensive double-stroller. We still use the double-stroller a lot for walks, but when we go out somewhere we use the single stroller. NO-One has mistakenly thought he was a girl, Michael is definitely all boy looking. But still I felt bad using a pink stroller on my baby boy. Lots of laughs when he's older!


So I tried to order new material for my stroller through the Graco website only to find out that my model stroller is too old to order materials for! Ugh. So my friend and I went to Babies R Us to compare my stroller to the newer model and whala, they are exactly the same except for the undercarriage part - which I don't need anyway... so about ordering replacements... I just wrote down the Model # & Serial # of the stroller in Babies R Us. Very sneaky. Alas I was able to purchase materials for my stroller in Blue.
Only half of my order came though! So I put on the canopy part and called about the seat. It is on back order and should arrive in about a week, hopefully. So Michael will have used the half-n-half stroller for about a month. Pink seat, blue canopy. Too funny, I bet you've never seen a stroller like this before.
My last cool purchase was new shoes for Michael for Free from Kohls. We got a $10 voucher in the mail from Kohl's and used it on shoes for Michael for $9.99. Cool deal - free first pair of shoes for Michael. We've been finding lots of cool deals and finding ways to make our money stretch and last.


During the summer we got the coolest deal ever. We went to a Monday night Fresno Grizzlies game (baseball - affiliate of SF Giants). For $22 we got 2 tickets to the game, 2 hotdogs, 2 sodas, 2 tickets to mini-golf at a local place in town, and 2 tickets to Wild Water park here in Fresno. So we had a lot of fun doing all those things during the summer.
Okay, this post was longer than I expected, but thanks for reading about my cool purchases!

Michael's 9month appt

Michael recently had his 9 month appointment. He didn't cry AT ALL for his shots! wow, the nurse was even impressed. He just layed there. He's such a happy baby, what a joy! We feel so blessed to have Michael in our family.

Weight: 20-7 50%

Height: 29 3/4 in 90%

Head: 18in 50%

He's our tall, skinny little guy. I looked back in Tara's baby book and at 9 months Michael is 2 inches taller and 3 pounds heavier! I knew he was a lot taller standing up next to our couch than Tara ever was. I think he'll be a lot taller than her when they grow up!

Tara's Birthday Party

Happy Birthday Tara. I can't believe my little girl is 3. We celebrated by having two parties. One for Ryan's family and one for her friends :) Grandma Wade gave Tara a princess cake for the family party and she got to open some princess presents. Then I gave Tara a Little Einsteins party on her actual birthday Sept 10th. She had lots of fun with her friends. We played some games 1) Pin the balloon on Annie's hand 2) fishing game with magnets 3) bubbles. Then they ate lunch of dino nuggets, cheese & crackers, and fruit. The adults also had pasta salad. We ate cake and Tara opened presents! She was really looking forward to the present part.






Yummy cake! If you look closely you can see her eyes are still a little black from her big bonk! You can read about it in an earlier post.

The afterparty: coloring ColorWonder with grandma Wade, and playing with other presents.

Afterparty 2: playing with a new Rocket toy in her princess tutu present.

We love you so much Tara.

Michael is crawling!

Michael is crawling, climbing, standing, and moving along the edge of the couch. He can stand up in his crib, and get into my kitchen cupboards, and the pantry. So he has had lots of falls and bumps but he gets back up and keeps going. He is a busy and happy little guy.

Tara's Big Bonk!

We were all ready to go to church last Sunday (Aug 30th). I was putting Michael in his carseat, Ryan was in bed after a long graveyard shift, and Tara was trying to climb onto our bed in her slick church shoes when BONK, followed by a loud screeching, painful cry :( Ryan gets up really fast and picks her up. I run into my bedroom and Tara's forehead is already huge, like a golfball bump on it, and it is continuing to get bigger and bigger. It was even pulsating. So I said to Ryan, "We're taking her in" and he agreed. She must've bonked her head on the end table, but neither of us saw it. I quickly got a bag of ice for her head, while Ryan was holding Tara trying to console her. Ryan quickly threw on some jeans and a t-shirt. So off we went to the Children's Hospital ER in our church clothes except Ryan. After a long wait, the doctor finally saw us and said she was fine unless she is not acting normally, or tired, dizzy or throws up repeatedly. So that was a costly way ($100 + 30% of whatever the doctor charges) to find out that she was okay. Here are some pretty pictures of Tara's big bump on her forehead.

DAY 1 - SUNDAY

DAY 2 - MONDAY


DAY 3 - TUESDAY (her eyes and nose were pretty swollen Mon/Tuesday, you can really see it here

DAY 5 - THURSDAY

DAY 7 - SATURDAY

So we've had to postpone family pictures last Saturday, and this Saturday.

On a lighter note we had a fun Labor Day weekend. A friend and her baby came to stay with me on Friday and Saturday. Then on Monday we went to Wild Waters with free tickets! :)

Tara turned 3 today!!! :) She had a Little Einsteins birthday party today with 4 of her friends and their moms, and grandma Wade. They played games, ate lunch and cake. Tara's eyes are still a lovely shade of greenish blue so the pictures from her party will be interesting. More to post later on Tara's birthday party.