Halloween

This year halloween was pretty fun. We had dinner with a group of friends then walked around their neighborhood to knock on the doors of strangers and threaten to trick them if we didn't get a treat. Well, fortunately the neighbors were all prepared and had loads of sugar waiting for kids dressed in cute costumes.

Here's what our hooligans looked like..

I mean really...if they hadn't gotten a treat, what would their trick have been?

Well, thankfully, there was no need to find out.

After returning to the house we snacked and began the next phase of the night..passing out candy to the big kids..

Tyson the Football Player and Jalen the Pirate set up post at the door while Emery supervised the handing out of candy. They all had a good time and we hope that this will become our annual family tradition! Thanks Clarks for hosting us!!

It's so good to have good friends...

And the boys went camping...

I went fishing with my daddy and I caught some fish and then I went to the camping spot. We ate the fish and after that we ate s'mores and put out the fire. I got hot water and poured it on the fire to put it out. And..then it got dark and we went to sleep. And that's my story.

-Tyson age 4

Whoa..

Wow! I didn't realize it had been so long since I've posted.. here's a look back over the summer..

a football game

fun with friends

a trip to the beach

running in the ocean

and a train ride on Thomas the Tank Engine

winter harvest

While I'm not usually in the mood to go all the way back to February and talk about what we were doing then, you might find that I do in the next few posts. You see, we took a trip out to the coast for a few days, it was amazingly sunny and somewhat warm, so we took a lot of video with our camcorder and pictures with our camera. Unfortunately, after that trip, both the camera and camcorder quit working, both with lens errors. It seems they don't enjoy the sand and beach as much as we did. So, for awhile we weren't able to download or even take any photos. Now that the camera has been repaired it's been fun getting back to those photos we took a few months ago.

Here is a photo of our winter harvest...Last fall we built garden beds and planted onions, garlic, lettuce and carrots to grow over winter. In February the lettuce was ready for harvest and the onions were needing to be thinned, so we had a few small salads made from our very own lettuce and 'scallions'. I will for sure do a winter garden again. It was pretty foolproof and I really liked that I never had to water it..just a few sprays to keep it moist at the beginning and then it did all the rest by itself. I probably could have covered it when it snowed, but with the hardy crop I had it didn't seem to bother it that it wasn't covered...my kind of gardening!

Brotherly Love

Tyson has enjoyed playing board games for awhile, and now Kaiya is starting to join in the fun. She really enjoys flipping the cards and will move her piece around the board for a bit, but usually loses interest half way through the game. With some games we just have her flip the cards for each of us, and that way she stays engaged but not destructive. On one of these occasions we were playing Candyland and Kaiya was trying to take over the card stack. I told her that she could be my helper and flip my cards for me. Tyson was on the verge of being frustrated with her, but then suddenly his demeanor changed and he said, "Kaiya, will you flip my cards for me?" (this isn't the first time he's done that)

Me: "Kaiya, you have the best brother. He wants to have you help him!"

Tyson quickly responded with, "But Mama, I have the best sister!"

It's true..he does..and sometimes I forget to emphasize that. But thankfully, he's quick to remember and hopefully these two will continue to grow as good friends!

Distracted..

It sure has been a busy couple of months. We have each been sick with varying degrees of illness, ranging from colds to strep and ear infections with a good dose of pink eye all around!

Tyson enjoys preschool, he is learning well and enjoying his class of friends. I do notice though, if we see someone outside of classtime he is still a little shy, but we've noticed him opening up and being more social with other kids his age in different settings.

Kaiya is growing and changing so quickly right now. She is mastering new skills nearly everyday...it sure helps having a big brother to teach her! Her newest interest is the potty. She has gone a couple of times on it, but still hasn't gotten the timing quite right. We didn't initiate it, but when she talks about going 'peep' or 'boop' she'll sometimes ask to go sit on the potty. She usually does go sit, then goes in her diaper and tells us she's done. She's earned a couple of stickers and she's really proud of them!

And to brag on Jason for a minute..he just ran his first half marathon! He planned it, trained for it and completed it, meeting his goals in pace and overall time! It was pretty cool to see him go for it and finish it! He says that was the only one he wants to do, that he's not going to become a marathon runner or anything..we'll see...

Now that we are getting healthier..relatively...the kids have a cold and Tenisha has 'swimmer's ear' in both ears..we'll try to keep up on the blog again. The next few may not have pictures as both our camera and camcorder are currently inoperable. Go figure...

Hope you are all healthy and enjoying the beginning of spring..summer isn't far off...

Bowl of Crackers

I know that if I try to turn the camera on and get a video of this either Tyson or Kaiya will hear it come on and then ham it up for the camera..so I'll try to describe what is happening.

I just gave the kids some snack, crackers in a small custard type bowl. Kaiya carried hers, as well as her cup of water into the living room and has sat down on her small rocking chair. As she leaned forward to sit down the crackers slid out onto the floor in front of her.

Now this is where it gets good...

She is sitting on the chair and leaning forward to pick up her crackers.
As she picks up each cracker and places it in her bowl it slides back out since she is still leaning forward.
She continues to pick them up one by one and place them in her bowl.

I can see this continuing for awhile...

Update: She did figure out how to get them all in the bowl and then a few mintues later dropped the bowl and all of its contents. Now she is just eating them off the floor.

Tyson the Firefighter

Today we went to the Hawthorne area of Portland. There's a bookstore there I needed to go to, so after soccer/basketball class we headed into town. Of course we needed to have a snack so we pulled into Station 9 to see if we could have snack with Jason and the crew. As we were pulling in, they were pulling out, with Jason driving. I knew where they were headed as I saw their huge Comm Van just down the street staged in a parking lot. We decided to eat snack in the car then walked around the corner to the bookstore. It was really a nice day today, about 50 degrees and sunny!! It was nice for January anyway.

We went to the bookstore, looked around and as we were heading back we decided to walk down to where they were doing their practice/set up stuff. We got there just as they were finishing, so we got a chance to talk to them for a few minutes. We all needed to head back to the fire station and as they had to take the fire engine as well as the van back there were extra seats in the fire engine. Jason asked Tyson if he wanted to ride back to the station in the fire engine!!!!

At first Tyson was kinda shy...he wanted to know if Kaiya and I were going too..but we couldn't since we had the stroller. So if he wanted to go, he would have to go by himself, with daddy driving the fire engine!

He looked a little shy...was a little red from embarrassment...and then said Yes!

Jason lifted him up to the back seat and buckled him in. He had such a big grin on his face!!

Once the door was closed you could barely see his face smiling in the window..

This is what he had to say about it:

M: So, what did you think of getting to ride in the fire engine?
T: "It was fun! Um...I could see some lights on top of the fire engine. Kaiya didn't get to ride in the fire engine."

He rode down the block to the station. I'm sure he didn't stop smiling the entire time he was in the seat. He was still smiling when he was lifted out.

He smiles when you ask him about. Now he wants to be a firefighter.

I wish I had had my camera on me.

18 months...

Her favorite words to say are "No" and "Stop".

She also knows how to say Kaiya (yai-ya), Mama, Dada, Papa, Tyson(yai-yai), Jada(yay-ya), bye-bye, hi, book(buh), ball(bah), diaper(bye-per) and on and on...

If she is asked to do something she immediately throws her hands up in the air, arches her back, shakes her curls and screams/cries. Then she throws herself to the ground and lays her cheek against the floor, sticks her thumb in her mouth and lies there for...awhile...



Even when everyone else is inside the house.

And it's 35 degrees outside.

And the wood on the deck is still somewhat icy.

Just because she's 18 months old.

Today this curly haired beauty had her 18 month checkup. She's got a huge noggin it seems. The medical assistant took the measurement 3 times to make sure she got it right. At her last appt it was in the 75th percentile. This appt's measurement put her in the 90th percentile! Her weight is a little over 24 lbs, and her heighth is 2'8.5". For those interested in percentiles, her weight is around 50% and her height 75%. So it seems she is growing well. As for the rest of her checkup she was fine all around. I was a little surprised when the doctor was looking in her mouth though..

Me: We think she's cutting 3 teeth right now.
Dr: Oh yeah, and there's 4 and 5 coming in too..and another eye tooth looks like it's getting ready to poke through.

So, for the record, 2 bottom molars + 3 eye teeth, and 1 that looks to make it's appearance soon.

I guess I really can't blame her for laying on the frozen deck...it must have felt good!

An Illusion??

We were looking through the Christmas photos and found this one...hmmm...

So what do you think?

Did Jason catch me in a 'being silly' moment?

Or is it all an illusion...

To family and friends...

Love,

The Howlands