Pumpkin Carving

We were so excited about how this turned out, I had to share. Mariska didn't like the sound of the little saw we used but once we got the seeds out and separated them from the goop she loved to put her hands in them. Kids are funny. We have never carved pumpkins before and we decided to do something fun with this one. Hope you all have a great Halloween. Be safe.

The things kids do and say

So I have been meaning to write some of this stuff down and I figured it would be fun to share. As Mariska is coming up on two her not so little personality is really starting to shine. She has done some really cute and funny things.
We have been teaching Mariska how to sign. I wasn't going to keep doing it but since that is what I am going to be doing at school I figure why stop. She is a pro at signing please (rubbing your hand on your chest in a circle.) She has even started to say please. Gail (John's mom) has a bag of chocolate chips in her office. Mariska every day goes in and says please to grandma who then puts her on the desk and gives her two chocolate chips. Mariska then gives Gail a hug and a kiss. It is really cute. The other day she went in and Gail was working. Mariska tugged on the chair and when Gail turned around to pick her up she asked her "What do you say?" Her hands were under Mariska's armpits so when Mariska went to sign please she couldn't quite reach her chest so in stead she reached out and rubbed Gail's chest and said please. At least she is being polite.
Sunday I was in the bedroom laying down. John was in the living room and Mariska was being really quiet in the kitchen. John asked her what she was doing. She walked into the living room and lifted up her shirt and said "OHHHH" (something we say when we are talking about something pretty.) She had taken a pen to her belly. The funny thing is that it's all my fault. John is going to be Popeye for Halloween and I wanted to see if my eyeliner would work for drawing a tattoo on his arm. Mariska watched this and wanted me to draw on her arm. I know I know, not to smart on my part.
Riska loves her baby dolls and can be found with them all the time. She has started something new though. She likes to throw them on the ground. The first time she did I told her that's not nice. To my surprise she repeated me word for word and it was incredibly clear. The funny part now she throws the dolls on the floor just say afterward "That's not nice."
Holly (John's sister) and her girls were over a couple days ago. they were trying to get Mariska to say there names. Allie who is 14 (I think) asked Mariska to say her name and Mariska insisted on calling her mom. I thought it was funny how insistent Mariska was. Anytime Allie would say, "No I am Allie" Mariska would look at her and say mom.
I have two more funny kid things but it comes from my nephew's and niece's. Joshua (my sister's oldest) would call me up on the phone just to tell my that I was a goober. I would insist that he was the goober and it would go from there. Jimmy (John's brother's oldest) has taken to telling me that I am a Hoot every time I see him. At the last family get together he called Allie a Hulahoot, which to me is super funny. I think the next time I see him i will call him an Uber hoot and see how that goes.
Again Holly and the girls were over and John came down stairs where Livie(8) and Maddie(10 I think) were. As he walked through the door he asked Livie "What's up chicken Butt?"Livie didn't particularly like the name chicken butt so she started to call John "Johnny-thong." The first time she did it I about fell out of my chair I thought it was so funny. John didn't like his name either so they made a truce that they would no longer call each other those names.
Kids You got to love them. If you have any funny kid stories put them down.

Grandparents

Yesterday I was working in the kitchen and Mariska was with me playing and doing her thing. I gave her a bottled water and went back to the bread I was making. As soon as I turned my back she did what I suppose any two year old would do and dumped the entire water bottle on the floor. Since this is not the first time this has happened (you think I would learn) I told Mariska to go to time out. She marched right to the corner and stood there for all of two seconds and then came back out and down the hall. I wanted her to stay there until I got the water cleaned up and I could talk with her about it. I told her again to go to time out and she did the same thing walked there stood in the corner two seconds and started down the hall. I finally got everything cleaned up (while telling her over and over again to go to time out with the same reaction from her) and had my little chat with her about pouring water on the floor. Bet you are wondering were I am going with this. Last night while we sitting at the dinner table Jim (my father-in-law) came and told me that he found the whole water and timeout situation so funny he actually had to walk away from the hall so Mariska (or I for that matter) didn't see him laughing. So I guess my question to you is why is everything so darn funny to our parents when it is not that funny to us? Is it because they have already experienced it and know what it feels like? I have called my mom several times asking her to remind me that we are supposed to love our children no matter what they have done to my wall, or my couch, or my brand new shirt, or my Piano bench. She will ask what Mariska had done and after I tell her what my wonderful daughter did she laughs and laughs. I know that some things I will look back on and think "hey that was funny" even if it is not funny now because it has already started to happen. I know this probably sounds like I am complaining, I'm not. I find it funny myself and am wondering if everyone's parents are like this or is it just mine and my husbands.

Blog Safety

So, I was checking out the new posts of my fellow blogger and my sister-in-law posted something very interesting. A friend of hers has run into troubles with her blog and wrote a post about blog safety. This is an excellent post and worth reading. After reading it I became a Little weary about the information that I had on my blog. I am changing the e-mail and I am also dropping my blog list to protect my family and friends who's blogs I follow. I have set up a new followers list and will be able to view your blogs from my dashboard. We changed the name of our blog so as not to be using our last name. I hope this doesn't sound pushy but it would be a great favor to us if you have our name on your blog rolls to use only our first names. The post was great and made me realize that people you don't know can get onto your blog.

Fun day at the Zoo

We had to take a trip to Seattle at the beginning of September to see Mariska's Orthopedic Surgeon. Mariska has whats called Camptodactyle in her right hand. That is just a fancy word for bent finger. Her pinkie is bent and wont unbend when she stretches out her fingers. We first saw Doctor Parker back in April. She gave us a brace for Mariska to wear every night when she slept. Apparently this is something we will be dealing with until Mariska has finished growing. Doctor Parker said that if we are diligent in using the brace Surgery will not be necessary later on. So our second appointment was on September 2. We got to the hospital late and we were called back even before I had started to fill out the paperwork. The nurse took us to the room and said the doc would be right with us. Literally two seconds later Doctor Parker walked in. She examined Mariska's hands and said that they are stretching out nicely. She no longer has to wear the brace and we do not have to go back until Mariska is about 5. That was it. We were at the hospital for about 7 minutes. I told John I was glad we decided to go to the zoo that day because it would have really stunk if we drove over to Seattle for a 7 minute appointment. Mariska loved the zoo. Point Defiance is so different than Woodland Park. We loved the water exhibits. It took us a total of three hours to walk through the whole zoo and that was with stopping at two presentations and making it to the end of a third. We also let Mariska play on the playground there for a while before we left. I was glad to have Aurie there with us. She made the trip a lot more fun.

School Starts

I figure with one more day of freedom (as much as a mom actually gets) I better get a entry in. I am only going to go 3/4 time this semester meaning I only have two classes. John is taking three. He is working nights and boy are we glad because his schedule is scary. He has a class in the morning at 8:00 and then his next class doesn't start until 12:00 and then his last class starts at 1:00. I was happy we were able to get my classes scheduled around his because daycare is expensive. Mariska started in a toddler bed when Aurie went home. It was rough the first couple nights but now she does really well. We are still working on the falling out of bed issue but I guess that will just take some time. Mariska has started to talk more. Usually we can't understand what it is she is saying but now she actually says words. She surprised me yesterday by saying "fish." The best part about it is the way she puckers her lips to say. One would say she actually looks like a fish.

Labor Day Week

So we picked a weekend that was not going to busy camp wise. The weather according to the computer said it would be nice and as long as we were out of there by Tuesday afternoon we would miss the storm that was supposed to hit Lake Easton. John took the couple days off and we headed out for what was looking like a wonderful get away from everyday life. We arrived at Lake Easton and much to our surprise it started to sprinkle. No big deal we would get the tent set up and then get dinner going. Yeah right. We got the tent set up and it started to pour. We couldn't get a fire to stay long enough for us to fix our dinner. We had planned on having sandwiches for lunches but because of the rain we decided to go ahead and have them for dinner and then have our tin foil dinners for lunch the next day. We retired early because we had nothing else to do with it raining. We woke to what was looking like a beautiful Monday. We had breakfast and then decided to go hiking. Mariska, being the independent person she is, refused to be carried and walked almost the entire couple of miles we hiked. Towards the end she had had enough and she seemed a little cold so I stuffed her into my jacket and walked with her wrapped around my front the last half mile or so back to camp. She went down for a nap and I decided to join her since I tossed and turned most the night. It started to rain again while we were sleeping but nothing to bad. John hung out with Aurie and they had some good conversations. It did rain just enough that when Mariska woke and started to run around and do the usual falling down she was falling down in mud instead of dirt. I took a lot of clothes for two days and I was starting to run out of them. I guess I never realized how dirty kids can get by being out side in the rain. It doesn't help that Mariska is OCD about having her hands clean. Anytime she fell down she wouldn't catch herself with her hands but would catch herself with her elbows or stomach. I am not sure where she got that from. I had a feeling to get dinner going at 4:00 so I did and we ate early it rained off and on for a couple of hours and I had decided that we should just pack up and go home because obviously the storm had decided to show it's head early. As soon as I came to this decision it started to pour. There was no way we would get everything cleaned up in that much rain so we went to bed early again. It rained all night long. Everything was soaked when we got up Tuesday. It had finally stopped raining and I told John that we just needed to go home. I was glad that we had some time on Monday to go hiking but I am sorry ti say this was not one of my favorite camping trips. I was surprised at how well Mariska did apart from constantly being in the mud and eating the leaves off the trees. She stayed away from the camp fire when we had one and she for the most part stayed in our camp cite without being told. She was up set that we had to go home but fortunately I am Mom and what I say goes.

We went to the Fair here in Ellensburg on Thursday and had a really good time. I was actually surprised at how much fun my sister had. I enjoy going but I wasn't too sure about her. She actually stayed with some friends from the ward when John and I came home and then when I went back to walk around that evening Aurie came with me. It was nice to have some sister time and I didn't realize how much I was in need of it. We really enjoyed the animals and had a great time seeing everything else. Hope you are all doing well.

We have officially caught the bug here!!!! I love watching the Olympics. Our TV has never been on as much as it has in the last week. We are huge swim fans and have found that watching Michael Phelps and his journey through this Olympics very exciting. The other sports that we have thoroughly enjoyed watching is Beach Volleyball. I of course really enjoy watching the men play (for obvious reasons). I think that it is a prerequisite for beach volleyball players to be easy on the eyes. They all seem to be fairly good looking. Anyway moving on. I got a little irritated watching the men's gymnastics. The Chinese are really good and our boys really had their work cut out for them but I felt that we were really jipped when it came to our scores. Even the commentators said that they felt the US scores were lower than they should be. I was really excited when Nastia and Shawn took Gold and Silver in the women's all around. I have never seen anyone stick their landings the way Nastia did yesterday. I am really looking forward to seeing the track and field events. I think they started today. Mariska has even enjoyed watching with us. She loved the gymnastics and would laugh hysterically when they did flips and jumps. You can definitely tell how vocal we are when it comes to sports because when ever John and I really get into it we yell and holler at the TV. I was on the phone with my mom during one of Michael Phelps races and all of a sudden Mariska was not quite yelling, but saying loudly "GO, GO, GO!" It was rally cute. I just checked a little while ago China has more gold medals than any other country but the US has 48 medals over all and China has 41. I think when this Olympics ends I will be a little sad. It has been really fun to watch and get excited for the competitors who are representing this wonderful country. GO USA!!!!!!!!!