Marty and Emily: iphone 4

Looks like we're going backwards this time. I'm glad I can get Marty's iphone pics on here, but I've got to say I wish I would have done this sooner. Because the thing I lose when I try to go back a long way is the detail. And it's the small things about my kids that I love the most. But anyway, here is a sentence about each picture...

Brynn and Bryce had a sleepover in the dinosaur hut.

I can hardly bear the thought that they might soon be getting too old for this kind of thing together.

No big deal, just Marty being Daddy one night.

My parents came out for Thanksgiving this year, and Gabe's birthday was the day after Thanksgiving.

(My question is, where are all the Thanksgiving pictures - is it possible we didn't take any??)

Gabe is my airplane kid and the first thing he would ever sit down and watch was a two-minute Planes trailer, so I caved and bought some of Planes merchandise for his birthday.

The DVD came out the week before so he got that also, and that was Gabe's first movie he ever really watched.

G&G O gave him a cute little airport and plane.

I love all those bare feet at the end of November in AZ.

He couldn't let go of "Dusty" long enough to eat his cake.

We decorated the clubhouse outside with Christmas lights, and they were actually bright enough for us to read while we snuggled up in there with blankets and our old futon mattress we'd been planning to throw out.

(I promise our kitchen is not that neon, it just shows up funky on the iphone.)

Marty got really desperate for me to mend his suits so I made a deal with him:

"You go take the kids somewhere and get them out of my hair and I'll mend all of your suits."

I think it was a pretty good deal for both of us.

Brynnie-Pie loves to do my hair...heh...heh....blamrphs

I guess I should be fine with it, because I love to do her hair, too (does this bring back a rush of memories from the mid-nineties?).

12:00 church is rough when you're two (and judging by the outfit, I'm going to guess I was playing organ that week and Marty got to dress and bring him - love you, Marty!)

The kids filled up their two-week routine chart and picked the carousel as their reward.

Funny which kid looks nervous and which one doesn't.

He's still my cautious little boy...

...and he still isn't. :)

Camille's first rice cereal came quite a bit later than the other kids...

But it was every bit as messy as the others...

And she got just as mad as the others!

So one night we had some Journey playing while we were eating dinner and Gabe started rocking out to it...

...with his head back like he was belting with all his soul...

and brought some serious attitude.

It's one of our more memorable dinners (of course any dinner wherein I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by the time it's all over is one of my more memorable dinners - dinnertime is just NUTS around here).

Bryce fell asleep on me while I was reading to him.

Mommy on the couch with a book and one kid...

...always turns into Mommy on the couch with all kids (always!).

But because I'm so nice, I shared the gift that is a sleeping Bryce with Marty.

Halloween!! (Again backwards, just try to keep up :) )

We trick-or-treated with the Mathers and had so much fun this year!

All through October Bryce had been saying he wanted to be a ghost.

Upon hearing that, Marty thought, "Boring," but I though, "Easy!!!"

I tried to paint his face white, but it didn't really stick.

What did stick is the "blood juice" (red cool-aid, I think) that we had for Halloween dinner - all around his mouth!

We happened to have a Dorothy costume for Brynn and wanted her to wear it, but she was absolutely determined to be a "bad guy."

We didn't know what she meant, but she assured us that she'd handle the costume, and we made a deal that she could be a bad guy for Halloween if she'd be Dorothy for her school literature parade.

So here is what she came up with!

She asked if I would give her bad guy make-up...I don't know, does this look like bad guy make-up??

Awe...

Oooo...

Ohhhh.....!!

Yeah, the gloves only lasted as long as the picture, and the mask didn't even last that long!

Halloween dinner with the traditional mummy-dogs (hmm, looks like this year it was only mummy-dogs!).

Believe it or not, Brynn picked out heart-shaped eyes and Bryce picked out a scary mouth.

SO...the ward trunk-or-treat...one of my worst ideas ever.

The ward trunk-or-treat was a few days before Halloween, and even though everyone already had costumes, a thought popped into my head.

Bryce had recently gotten into The Wizard of Oz and was agonizing over whether he should be a ghost or the tin-man.

I realized how cute BandB would be together as Dorothy and Tin-Man and figured, what the heck, the rest of the costumes couldn't be that hard to throw together, right?

Well, that's what I worked on from waking up until the minute we left, but behold: The cutest little Toto EVER!!

Bryce was my great little helper and was really excited about his costume.

But by the end of the night he was realizing just how uncomfortable the whole thing was.

(Gabe, oh Gabe, my middle child. I love you so, so much. Can you ever forgive me for forgetting to take a single picture of you as the Cowardly Lion? Also, can you ever forgive me for putting you through this lion costume to begin with?)

The idea was for everyone to have their nose painted to match their costume, but Camille and I are the only ones whose paint showed up in the picture (but you can see Bryce's silver nose in his singles).

I predict these two little girls are going to love this picture when they're all grown up.

Pretty much the whole month of October we had been trying to get out for a family bike ride and could NOT make it happen.

Finally we just took a few minutes even though it was getting dark and figured we would go as far as we could before it was too dark for the kids.

Well, we ran into an elderly couple down the street and spent pretty much the whole night talking to them and posing for a picture that is apparently really complicated on Marty's phone. :) (But on the plus side, we ended up with literally about 50 pictures of us in this same pose.)

Brynn put on a Halloween party for her and Bryce that mainly included turning Bryce into a mummy.

For the literature parade at school they are supposed to dress up as a story-book character (has to have originally been a book) and they have to bring the book with them.