Last week and weekend and a little of this week...

Lindsay was sick and missed 2 days of school and soccer. Bummer but she is pretty much on the mend. Fever, headaches, that sort of thing. I actually enjoyed having her home and snuggling a little with her. Caroline was so sweet - she donned an apron and served her sister "like at a restaurant" she said. Several times I meant to grab my camera but didn't. Just imagine Caroline in an apron with the pocket filled with silverware, straws, a notepad for order taking ("I can't write what she asks for but I can write my name so I will do that" she said.) Oh, it was just precious. Refilling her water. Bringing her snacks. There is hope for kindness between sisters!

How many band aids can 4 kids LEGITIMATELY go through in 2 hours? A lot.

While Molly and Andy went to her fancy pants gala (and here's a little shout out to my Bro in Law who has lost 100 lbs!) we watched the kiddos. I love having the cousins all together -they really are the best of friends and play so well together and we are together enough that we can holler at each other's kids as if they were our own. Anyway, a few things that made that evening memorable:

Everyone got a band aid. Or two. All were injured/scraped/poked/scratched enough to warrant a band aid. It was weird. After the second kid, I just left out a first aid kit on the counter. It was crazy.

Bryn playing in the grey sand. "We don't have any grey sand, Hayden" I said after he told me Bryn was making a mess in the grey sand outside. Well, I checked on it and I guess you could call ashes and soot hand scooped out of our fire pit by one Brynley Ashton grey sand! They all looked like they were covered in volcanic ash! Ugh...

Feeding the cousin twinners

My friend was passing on the rest of her baby stuff and asked if I needed anything. Well, this folding booster/high chair was delivered to my house just in time for me to spoon feed both babies their peaches and rice cereal. It went pretty well, actually. Adrienne , my favorite mama of twins - it's not so hard! :) Just kidding.

Kate starting to laugh. It is so cute - we can get her going a little and she starts to chuckle a little but it sort of muddles into a cry. She will get the hang of it. She has this great move I call her "mute scream" where she opens her mouth wide like she wants to squeal and shout with joy and her eyes get all wrinkled up but no sound comes out. Love this little lady!

Taking the Ashton kiddos home to their house to go to bed and deciding I had a long day and needed a little treat for myself. I decided to go thru the sonic drive thru and get a milkshake. The kids said they were thirsty too. I got them a water. The shake was for me! I was going to go and stay up until 2am waiting for their parents to come home from fancy pants gala and make the tags for my velvet pumpkins for my upcoming HFPE night. I needed the sustanance.

Grandpa Mike stopped by Molly's house today during Tuesdays with Molly (New projects almost ready to post - we had a great day today!) Kate was a little uncooperative in the facial expressions today but I think this is great of grandpa with the babes. Dad and Debbie said they have really lucked out with great grandkids. I couldn't agree more.

Velvet pumpkins...

On thursday, I am putting on my first quarterly HFPE meeting since being released from primary and called to be the HFPE leader and I am so excited! Our theme is gratitude and we have 3 women speaking from different stages of womanhood/motherhood (young new mom/mom of teens/empty nester) and they are speaking on the lessons they have learned in their stage of life, how they teach their family, how they strive for gratitude in their own lives. We are having a great dinner and music. I found some velvet pumpkins that sell in boutiques for $14-$40 a piece and thought they would be a fun gift for the ladies so I got the RS presidency on board to make them. I have been collecting discarded/broken pumpkin stems from the little pumpkin patches and pumpkin stands and buying remnants of velvet/corduroy fabrics to make the pumpkins. A perfect take home sentiment to remember the evening celebrating gratitude and as a reminder to "Live in Thanksgiving Daily." I had three of my peeps over tonight and we spent about 3 1/2 hours cutting, hand stitching, filling with beans, cinching closed, hot gluing real pumpkin stems, tying on the tags I made. they are beautiful and sure to be a hit with the ladies. We are not having a big Christmas event this year so this is our big night and we wanted to make it a great one.

My bar lined up with 65 of the cutest pumpkins I ever did see!