November

We spent many afternoons in November playing in the leaves of our neighbor, Jan's, huge maple tree. Its the only bit of Autumn we get on our street and we love watching the leaves change on her tree.

Who needs baby dolls when you have a real live baby to play with? She's so much more fun.

We spent a day at the LA zoo watching the baby hippo and baby chimps. Lots of cool animals!

Love my days with this Clara girl. We love to have picnics in the backyard, she makes messes in the kitchen while I cook and waits for big sisters to come home in the front yard.

Finally some rain! Gwen couldn't resist going out to play on a Sunday afternoon. What fun.

Thanksgiving Week

We were lucky to have the Nelson's come visit us for Thanksgiving week. It's our third Thanksgiving we've spent with them and we all had so much fun. We started the week off with a trip to Palm Springs. We stopped at Hadley's along the way for our favorite date milkshakes.

We spent an afternoon at the Living Desert where Kate fed a giraffe and Kate and Gwen rode a camel! Clara had fun petting the goats and walked around pointing and repeating "ba-ba, ba-ba", her word for all animals.

The big girls had a tennis lesson from Paul and Skyler. Clara had fun chasing balls around. Paul and the big girls spent lots of time at the pool and lazy river in the mornings while Clara napped and I read on the balcony with this view. It was beautiful!

Another afternoon we rode the Palm Springs Aerial Tram up the mountain to 9000 feet. The kids loved it and it was an adventure. We went for a nature walk at the top of the mountain and found a fallen down tree that the kids loved climbing around. It was chilly and beautiful.

We came back Wednesday to prepare for Thanksgiving. The Nelsons shared their tradition of the kids putting together a Thanksgiving candy tray. We baked and cooked and feasted. It was delicious!

The kids had fun Thanksgiving morning watching Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and playing at the park.

After Thanksgiving supper we went exploring at the tide pools in Corona del Mar and got to see the sunset. It was a beautiful spot for an after dinner walk. 

We loved having them visit and hope to make the trip to Washington soon! 

October

Isn't it still October? The weather here is finally cooling off--I can't believe we are already half way through November! October seemed a bit more like summer to us. We kept the General Conference tradition going this year and went apple picking on Saturday. We met friends there and had fun picking apples, pressing cider and picnicking with them. We enjoyed listening to conference in the car on the drive to and back.

For one of our Thursday field trips we went to Wonderland Bakery to look around and pick out a treat. Kate took notes for inspiration for her "cupcake club" she wants to start with her friends. The floor of this bakery was all glitter--every little girls dream. 

We took our treats for a picnic at the Newport Beach temple. It was a beautiful afternoon and we loved running into my cousin Melanie's family visiting from Utah. Here are all the kids together. Clara and Megan are born on the same day!

Gwen has been my sous chef a lot lately. She does a great job and is proud of herself for being able to use a sharp knife. I love having her in the kitchen--she's great company and is really helpful!

A few other random photos from October... reverse trick or treating at a nursing home. This is the second year we've done this and I was so glad we did it again. The girls loved it. The kids were so sweet passing out flowers to the elderly residents and wishing them a Happy Halloween. A friends caramel apple party is another tradition we look forward to every October. And Kate excited about her "Tanner-opoly" prize she saved enough "money" to buy--a lego set. We are all individually doing the Book of Mormon challenge--trying to finish the Book of Mormon before Kate's baptism. Kate is listening to it and Gwen is reading the illustrated version. We copied a friend's idea to make a Monopoly board with incentives for reading. The girls earn play money for reading each chapter and can choose to spend it at the "family store" once a week. It's been a great motivator for the kids and lots of fun. I'm so proud of them and their hard work!

Halloween festivities! We celebrated with cousins and family and my parents Halloween party. We went to a church trunk or treat, a school parade, a Disneyland Halloween party and trick or treating on Halloween night. By then I was ready for it all to be done!

Cutest little ladybug.

Carving pumpkins. The girls got to do most of it themselves this year. Gwen's carving session ended in tears that lasted for an hour after accidentally sawing off a tooth in her jack o lanterns mouth. She was so upset that her jack o lantern now looked nice instead of spooky and it was all ruined! So much sadness and drama. Later that evening she exclaimed that it was a good thing after all, because now her jack o lantern lost a tooth just like she had!

Clara loved looking at all the sights at Disneyland. She had her mouth in this "oh" shape and kept saying that over and over. She loved the jungle cruise ride and pointing at all the animals she calls "ba-ba's". 

Our neighborhood is a lot of fun on Halloween. We get a lot of trick or treaters. Gwen was finished trick or treating early and came home to pass out candy. I think she liked passing out the candy better than getting it herself. She even started passing out candy of her own after we ran out of candy. Clara was cute to watch as she would sit by the candy bowl digging her hands through the candy saying "mmm. mmm." over and over. How does she already know that's the good stuff?? After we put Clara to bed and Paul and I got to sit on the porch drinking tea and watching Gwen pass out candy. We chatted with friends and neighbors who came by and mentioned how our hot weather in October might be worth the beautiful 65 degree evening we had on Halloween night. It was really nice! Kate got to stay out a little later with friends and then the girls had fun sorting all of their candy. The best part!

Clara

Clara is 15 months and we are all loving this age. A few things I want to remember about her...

She now prefers walking to crawling. She took her first steps around 14 months but it took her awhile to get very fast on her feet. She's getting better and looks so cute toddling around.

She is such a great sleeper and napper. She is so easy to put to bed--it's wonderful! Just give her her paci, which she calls her "night-night" and her blanket and rarely does she fuss! She still takes 2 naps and wakes up happy.

Her favorite toy is her baby doll. She gets excited and says "baby, baby, baby" when she seems them. She will carry them around and put them in the stroller. She loves her baby dolls.

Kate has a horse for her American Girl doll that she rarely plays with. Thankfully Clara loves it! She loves to go into the girls room where it is and calls it a "baba". She pets it's hair and points to it's nose. Saying "baba, baba, baba". She also likes to open and close the Rebecca dolls eyes. 

She loves to brush her hair and play in the bathroom drawers with the hairbows and brushes.

She loves her baths and doesn't like to get out.

She is learning new words every day. The ones she says the most are "ball, book, cracker, more, all done, mama, dada, baba, baby and hi".

She loves to read books, although she moves around a lot while we are reading. She likes to point to the pictures. All the animals make the same sound to her. She points and grunts "uhhh". That's a growl sound to her.

She folds her arms during the prayer and is so proud of herself with she does it. It's the cutest.

Her favorite foods are scrambled eggs, any kind of fruit, salmon, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sweet potatoes and broccoli. We try not to give her sweets, but with two loving big sisters who share with her, she ends up eating sugar. She always says "mmmm" over and over whenever she has a sweet treat.

When you ask her "Where is Clara's nose?" she points to her nose and then points to yours. It's one of her favorite games.

She likes when we sing "If you're happy and you know it" and clicks her tongue as one of the actions.

She loves to make an "o" shape with her mouth like this.

Clara brings such joy into our homes. Gwen and Kate love her so much and look forward to seeing her every day after school. Gwen loves taking baths with Clare-bear and fetching her toys. Kate is so helpful to get her out of the highchair when she is done eating. We love our girls.

Will fly for Autumn

I love Autumn. The colors, the changing leaves, the crisp weather that makes you want to go inside and bake delicious treats and drink tea, the fall clothes, the pumpkin everything, apple season, the anticipation of the holidays coming. I love it all. And we don't get fall in Southern California. We have a hot, Indian Summer and sweat our way through September and most of October. Pumpkin patches are in parking lots and it can be too hot to turn on the oven. We go swimming to make up for it, but when Paul's 5 yr Yale reunion came up I begged him to take us with him.

We left Clara at home with grandma (thank you!!) and just took the big girls, who were so excited to go back and visit the places they were born. They were a dream to travel with. Content to watch tv and eat snacks for 5 hrs while I read my book. We all missed Clara a lot, but not on the plane flight!

We arrived into JFK on a Friday evening during rush hour and we found ourselves stuck in traffic in Jamaica Queens. We got off the freeway in search of dinner and found ourselves in the heart of a Caribbean neighborhood, surrounded by many different ethnicities and markets, the girls knew right away we weren't in the suburbs of Orange County anymore. We stopped for Caribbean food (of course) and while waiting at the restaurant for our dinner (surrounded by Caribbean/African Americans Gwen says really loudly "These Mexicans have really small tables". 

We made our way up to Sleepy Hollow, NY to take the girls to the great Jack o Lantern Blaze, and then made our way to New Haven for the night. It was a lot of driving, and the girls were excited to stay up until midnight eastern time!

Saturday Paul had meetings at school and the girls and I went by our old house and to one of our favorite parks. I have such happy memories of our time in Connecticut, it was almost emotional for me to drive down our old streets and favorite places. The girls loved seeing the animals and exploring in the woods. I loved our time here.

We got to meet Paul for lunch at a family bbq and check out Yale's fancy new campus. We both left wishing we could be students again.

We visited my favorite pumpkin patch and apple orchards with friends and got caught in a rainstorm trying to find other friends. (Still feeling bad about that, Tammy!)  Paul and I went to a class dinner that evening while the girls had a play date with some old friends. I think part of why my heart loves Connecticut so much is because of so many dear friends we had there. 

Sunday we visited our old church and took the girls around Yale College campus. They saw the Harry Potter hall and the cool libraries.

We made our way into New York City for the second half of our adventure. We walked through Central Park stopping at Belvedere Castle (and even found Rapunzel!) and fun playgrounds.

We saw Wicked and it was even better than I remembered. Kate already declared that she is dressing up as Elphaba next year for Halloween. We rode the subway, checked out Times Square, crossed the Statue of Liberty off the girls bucket list, visited our favorite pizza place, FAO Scwhartz, the Plaza Hotel to find Eloise and did lots and lots of walking. Gwen and Kate became really good at hailing taxi cabs. We had so much fun and loved traveling to experience a little bit of Autumn. Now we're back to 75 degrees, and I'm not complaining about that.

Today

Today I loved being a mother. I cleaned messy faces and kissed them. It's now late and my babes are sleeping and I'm tired. But I want to record my thoughts and happy moments from today.

A few moments of joy... Picking Gwen up from school I watched her run across the playground to me wearing a new hand me down outfit for the first time. I remember Kate wearing that outfit and all of a sudden Gwen looked so big and grown up running across that playground. She's taken some time to adjust to this whole day Kindergarten routine, and I don't blame her. It's a lot for these little people! 

She was full of emotion today. We ate lunch together and she was so eager to tell me all about her day. She told me about music time and carving pumpkins and sang me a song. She was so sweet and helpful with Clara, offering her chips and going in the kitchen to get a knife to cut her more grapes. She loves Clara so much and is always so thoughtful with her. She said "Mom! I know! For Clara's pumpkin let's carve a heart in it because we love her so much". We carved pumpkins together and she was so proud of herself to use the carving tools all by herself. And then so hard on herself, bursting into tears when her mouth didn't turn out as spooky as she had planned. Her emotions, happy and sad are always right on the surface.

Before getting in the bath, naked and all, she showed me her new yoga moves she had learned in class. I loved watching her little body do downward dog, warrior 1 and 2 and tree pose in the nude, with a huge grin on her face.

During storytime we all had belly laughs as Clara entertained us by sitting on the book and then bending down to lick the pages. Not sure what she was trying to do, but we all got a good laugh out of it.

We got the climbing tunnel out today and I waited for the big girls to get home from school so we could show it to Clara together for the first time. Gwen was so excited to play with Clara in it, and Clara did love it. 

The weather was beautiful today. I loved being at home with them and experiencing some of these moments. My house is still a mess but my heart is happy.