Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

It's snowing in Houston! We can't believe it! The kids think its magical! William even got out of school early today because of the weather (was this really necessary - no - but kind of fun). Thanks to Cici's suggestion we are enjoying hot chocolate and looking out the window loving our one afternoon of snow for possibly the next 4 or 5 years. The crazy thing is that I was wearing flip flops yesterday.

(Cici is eating snow in this picture)

Nursery

Weston is finally old enough to go to nursery, and he did great! We dropped him off, stayed 5 minutes to settle him into things, left, and never heard a peep for the next two hours of church. He did escape at the very end though when another parent was picking up their kid. My friend found him running down the hallway on the complete opposite side of the church. I guess everything couldn't go off without a hitch : )

We had a great Halloween!

We hope all of you had a Happy Halloween. We sure did!

If you can't tell Cici is a peacock. I fell in love with the costume at pottery barn kids but thought I could make it a little cuter and a lot cheaper. Cici was sold on the idea after being told that her great grandpa and grandma Packer used to own peacocks. The headpiece was a nightmare to create but luckily I am married to an engineer. I thought she was so cute!

William was an astronaut again! We did make a new hat though.

Weston was our little cowboy/sheriff. His hat lasted on his head for about 5 seconds. Oh well, we tried!

Here are the kids at the end of our church's trunk or treat the night before Halloween. They had a lot of fun and got too much candy (and they still had trick or treating the next night to look forward too : ) Will and Cici enjoyed passing out candy when they were done making the car circuit almost has much as getting treats themselves.

Before trick or treating we enjoyed a dinner of spiders, eyeballs, jack o lantern grilled cheese sandwiches, ghostly gruel, and witches brew. The kids really enjoyed this part of Halloween.

Halloween was tons of work, tons of fun, and now we need to start thinking about what we will be next year (especially if I am going to be sewing any of the costumes again : )

I Don't Want to Forget This!

With William in Kindergarten and Cicialy at preschool and then a friend's house, it has just been me and Weston today! I am loving it! We've played, wrestled, and snuggled. Weston has also managed to destroy the house while I worked on preparing my church lesson for Sunday. After lunch I told my seventeen month old boy that we needed to clean the house and began to wipe up a counter. He immediately went to the sink, opened up the cabinent, took out a dust cloth, and showed it to me. I told him good job and that he could go start dusting the house if he wanted to (not really thinking anything of it). After I finished wiping off the countertops I noticed how quiet it was and went in search of Weston. This is what I found!

He was actually cleaning! He sure was proud of himself, and I was proud of him too! I'm glad he is finding the joy in cleaning at such a young age.

I Can Now Stop and Breathe!

Cici turned 4 this past Sunday, and her birthday turned into a weekend extravaganza. On Friday morning she had a princess birthday party with her friends. Since I waited until the last minute to prepare, I was up all Thursday night buying the food (heart shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fruit and dip platter, princess punch) and party favors (rings, necklaces, bracelets, lipgloss), preparing the decorations (big flower pom poms), baking the cake (two-tiered circular pink cake with tiara on top), cutting out and sewing together the felt princess head wreaths each girl would get to decorate, making the princess ribbon dance wands, and setting up the games (pin the kiss on the frog, princess and the pea game, pass the poison apple, and search for cinderella's slipper). But it was worth it. Cici loved her party, and I think all of the girls had a lot of fun!

On Saturday we went as a family to McDonald's after Will's soccer game. Cici had been begging for the past week to go since the girl Happy Meal toys were Barbie themed. She was very excited that she got the exact toy she wanted (a mirror compact with comb)! I spent the rest of the day shopping for her presents before and after the General Relief Society Broadcast. I am grateful Macy's is open until 10 on the weekends! I got it in my head that I wanted her to be able to open a present of a new dress in the morning to wear to church since her birthday was on a Sunday. I went to the mall in the afternoon and couldn't find anything I liked except for an okay dress at Macy's. I decided not to buy it and look at Target after the broadcast. Well Target had nothing and by that time it was 9:45. I hurried back to the mall just in time to buy the dress before the stored closed.

Sunday night Cici and Will got to make edible princess wands (an activity that we didn't have enough time for at her party), we had Cici's birthday dinner (french dip sandwiches, Doritos, and rootbeer) and opened presents. It was a great weekend but she is definantly not getting such a fuss made over her next year : )

A couple of weekends ago my parents threw a little party for Cici at their house since they knew they would be in Europe for her big day. I think 3 parties is enough for 1 little girl!

(Can you tell how excited she is - she got exactly what she wanted!)

Cici's Big Week

Cicialy has been having a very exciting week full of momentous milestones. The first was starting ballet. For the past year Cici has been considering carefully what activity she would like to participate in when she got old enough. She threw out several ideas, thought about it, discarded a few, and then came up with the final three: ballet, gymnastics (especially after the olympics last summer), and ice skating (inspired from the Minnie Mouse vs. Daisy Duck scene in a Mickey Mouse Christmas). Throughout it all though ballet seemed to be the clear winner in her mind. She always wants to check out ballet books from the library and twirls around the house constantly. We tried out gymnastics this summer when a friend from church was taking it too, but despite having fun she wanted to take ballet this fall instead. So, ballet it is! On Tuesday morning you could just tell how excited she was, and it was so cute how she kept saying, "Mom, I'm just a little bit nervous." She did great and the next day asked if it was time for ballet again. I don't know if she'll be able to handle waiting a whole week inbetween classes.


And then today Cici started preschool! 3 other moms and I have formed a preschool where we take turns teaching using the "Mother Goose" curriculum. She goes twice a week for 2 and 1/2 hours each time. There are 2 girls and 2 boys in the class so it worked out pretty well. I'll let you know how it goes when its my week to teach. She seemed to have enjoyed herself this morning. Now with Kindergarten, Preschool, ballet, and soccer for Will coming up we are pretty busy and loving it!

First Day of Kindergarten

Summer is officially over (except it is still in the upper 90s), and the day I have been anticipating and dreading all at the same time has arrived: my firstborn's first day of kindergarten. I didn't cry when I dropped William off because frankly I am excited about one less kid to entertain all day and being able to grocery shop with two children instead of three, but it did pull at my heart when he immediately found his desk, began coloring his assignment, and wouldn't even look at me when I said goodbye five times. The only thing that makes me sad is that my baby will never again be just mine all day long for the rest of his life : ( But, William was completely ready to begin this new phase in his life and loved his first day of school! And I must say I love how Texas has full day kindergarten; you can get a lot done in 6 hours! So hopefully the year goes well (I have heard some rumors that his teacher is not very patient) and I will be able to volunteer at the school frequently to keep an eye on my guy.

Firsts

We've had a lot of firsts here in our family recently.

1) Weston had his first visit to the Emergency Room and his first black eye. The story: No matter how tight we strap him into things he always seems to find a way free. While shopping at Target he wormed his way out of the safety belt on the cart and then thrust himself over the side landing smack on his eye. Nothing we tried would consule him and within five minutes he was looking like Quasimodo with a serious drooping eye. Ten minutes later he was projectile vomiting. Since trauma to the head mixed with vomiting is not considered a good thing we were told by our doctor's office to take him to the E.R. Luckily after five hours and a clear CAT scan we were able to go home. He did have a nice shiner for a few days.

2) Cicialy started gymnastics for the first time this summer. She is learning to balance on the balance beam, become familiar with being on the bars, do forward rolls and cartwheels, along with different kinds of jumps on the trampoline. Basically just extremely elemental skills, but she is loving it! Her coordination is vastly improving too.

3) We took our first extremely long family road trip a few weeks ago. Since we had already flown to Utah two times in the past year and a half, we decided that this time we would drive. Our reasoning was so that we could stay longer and have access to our own vehicle the entire time. It took two long days in the car to get there but was totally worth it! We spent two whole weeks jammed packed with bar-b-ques, cousin sleepovers, going to Lagoon with all of Dan's siblings and their families (except for Jake whose on a mission), movies, cousins' baseball games, going to Idaho to see my sister and her kids for a few days, and visiting with some of our good friends from Stansbury Park ( Alisa I will never forgive you for not showing up - just kidding but I was really sad not to be able to see you on this trip) - Thanks Holly for all the planning and for the visit. The highlight of the trip, and our main reason for going to Utah as our family vacation this year, was the big Packer family reunion up in Heber on the 3rd and 4th of July. We had so much fun canoeing, participating in the challenge course, camping overnight in cabins, eating endless soft serve ice cream cones, and most importantly seeing Dan's grandparent's, aunts and uncles, and all the cousins, cousins, cousins. My kids were in cousin heaven our entire trip. During the drive back to Utah, and even now a week later, Will starts crying about how much he misses his cousins. Thanks everyone who took the time and effort to make our trip so much fun!

(Cici threw and in Will's eye right before we took this picture)

(I hope Cici is only itching her nose : )

4) Last week William started swimming by himself in the deep end for the first time. The motivating factor - his friend Riley learned how to swim while we were on vacation and I guess he didn't want her swimming around without him!

Preschool Graduation and Visit From Grandma and Grandpa Packer!

At the end of May William graduated from Preschool. He loved it so much and is sad to be out of school for the summer (don't worry, going swimming practically every day is helping in that regard!) The ceremony was so cute with the kids singing all of their gospel pop songs, giving their moms flowers, and singing "You are my rock, my only rock, you make me happy ...." for the Dad's and giving them a big decorated rock. His teachers Ms. Glinda and Ms. Lori were phenomenal. We are all so proud of Will and all he has accomplished and are excited for him to start "big kid school" a.k.a. kindergarten next year.


The last two weeks of school were full of fun, fun, fun. Will had carnival day, which I was able to go to along with Cicialy. They had a big blow up bouncer and obstacle course, rockets, face painting, and an endless supply of snow cones and cotten candy. The last day of school was water day complete with two huge blowup water slides. Will sure is going to miss that place.


Towards the end of May Dan's parents finally came out to visit us for a week! The kids absolutely loved having Grandma Packer and Bompa around. We had ourselves a mini "staycation" visiting several of the area attractions. Houston has the best children's museum I have ever been to and the kids loved it too! We also went to Galvaston for a fun day on the beach and to NASA Space Center. We topped off the week by celebrating Dan's 32 birthday! We can't wait to see everyone in the Packer family when we come up for a visit in July.

The day after Dan's birthday was Memorial Day, and we spent the day swimming with friends from church at one of their parent's pool. Our friend Scott taught Will, our daredevil child, how to flip off of the diving board. Thanks Scott!