Coen's Archive #1

He has started saying everything we say, so his vocabulary is growing like crazy. He especially like socks & crocks. He's got almost all his body parts down. He forgets his shoulders, but I think that's on purpose so I'll tickle him. Unfortunately I think he has a cavity, YIKES. Hopefully he does better at the dentist than Reagan. He loves suckers and has become very attached to his pillow and blanket. He sleeps with one or both over his head. Scares me to death. I go in to check on him and his blanket is wrapped around his head a time or two, but he loves it. He likes to wave bye to people, so all the checkers at the grocery store love us. He's still playing with Reagans doll stroller and her high heels, but hopefully after Christmas that will change.

If you ever need someone to speak goldfish Coen is your man. I'm sure he'll make us millions one day. He can find his teeth and when you ask him what lips are for he gives you a kiss. Today he said very clearly banana instead of manana, plum & wow. He's just started putting both of his hands on his face in kind of an uh oh fashion. I'm not sure where he picked it up, but it's pretty funny. Anything with wheels is a car car and every morning we watch the school buses drive by and he yells car car!

Coen is daily adding to his vocabulary. He now says buppy which is duppy which is sippy cup. He says no, of course, manana & cracker. He say mama & daddy & tries to say Reagan but says ReRe, it makes Reagan really mad that he doesn't say Reagan.

He's working on animal sounds now. I think his first word was Moo. He said it every time we saw cows all the way to Dillon. He also barks, and can do a pretty good meow & cock-a-doodle-doo.

Coen can now find his nose & his belly, he's working on his ears. He can fold his arms, give a high 5 and kisses. He loves to play peek-a-boo, but puts his hands on top of his head. He likes to dance by spinning in circles as fast as he can to get dizzy. He loves cold peas, sausage and noodles. He loves to be outside and immediately grabs the broom, rake, or shovel and drags it around the yard, just like daddy. His favorite things to play with inside are my pots and pans and the baby monitor which he love to drag around by the cord. He also tries to kill himself daily by climbing up on the rocking chair, standing up and trying to surf. He is, though, perhaps the worlds best cuddling baby. What a great boy!

Pumpkin Carving & The Ward Party

Here's our little duck.  It was quite the challenge getting him to wear the feet and hat, but he eventually warmed up to the idea & had fun.  The kids got to go trunk-or-treating at the ward party.  Coen caught on real quick!  Lots of candy never made it into his basket, just straight to his mouth wrapper and all.

Isn't Belle beautiful?!  (She is not a princess, for your information, she's Belle.)  Please don't be so foolish as to use the p word when talking to her about her Halloween costume.  She refused to get her face painted at the party and wouldn't go fishing with me, but she did go with her daddy.  Once she figured out they would give her candy for playing games she was much  more enthusiastic about it.

Carving pumpkins for family home evening.  That one is Reagan's design.  Then my camera ran out of batteries, so I'll get a picture of all of them soon.

Coen's hard at work playing peek-a-boo and eating raw pumpkin seeds.  Good boy!  We have another picture in which Nick thinks Coen looks like Sloth.  Maybe I'll post it later.  We had a chili cook off  at the ward party and I won for the hottest.  My prize was a Palin picture and hot tamales.  Wahoo!

While Daddy Was Away

Nick got to go to Provo for the weekend to watch football with the guys.  BYU won, Ohio State lost.  He got to wander around campus with Dane, check out Tanner's new job & hang out with Dad & Willey.  He saw Ben Guffey at the BYU game.  He stayed with Willey & Rona & their fam which made us jealous since we haven't seen them in forever.  Nick was also the first in our family to hold baby Lorelie which made Reagan very angry.  Coen is finally feeling better and had to get in on the picture action, totally hamming it up.

Reagan and I needed something to look forward to while Daddy was away, so we went to the store and bought puffy paint & an apron for her, fabric and yarn for me.  She got to stay up durning quiet time to paint.  In case you can't tell, there are 4 orange fish and then pictures of me, Reagan and Nick plus two hand prints.  If you look close you can see that she is also wearing very (fairy) wings over her dress over her pants.  I almost finished painting both bar stools and recovered the seats.  Then, because I can't sleep while he's gone, I started knitting again.  It's harder than I remember, but I think I'm catching on.  Of course I have no one to tell me if I'm doing it wrong, so I can pretend I'm perfect.

It's A...

BOY!!!

So I was dead wrong.  I was so sure we were having a girl, but I'm so excited for a boy!  Coen really really needs a brother!  But if this little guy thinks he can lounge about, totally stretched out like this the whole time, we might run into some trouble.  I took some video of Reagan last night demanding that we name him Homer Simson.  It was really funny so I'll try to down load it one day.  Now that she's thought about it though, she thinks maybe Peter Pan would be better.  She has informed me that she is still having a baby girl who will be named Belle, so we'll get one of each and that's nice.

Fall is Here

Holy Sumac!  It's grown so much this year.  We're excited to see how big it gets next year.  Hopefully this year it's big enough to not be completely buried in snow.

Happy Halloween!  We're totally ready.  Coen can tell you what a ghost says and Reagan knows all three Halloween songs that I do.  We've watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and Garfield's Halloween.  We tried to get Reagan to watch Nightmare Before Christmas, but although her eyes were glued to the tv, she said it was scarey so we didn't make her.  It's getting a little too cold to be at the park for very long.  So after about 45 minutes, we went and had lunch with daddy at work.

We don't have a tree in our yard, but luckily our next door neighbor does.  We've been trying to help them take care of their yard this yard because they've had some health problems.  So for Family Home Evening this week we went and raked their yard and then tried to drive home the importance of service and helping others.  Mainly we focused on helping Coen and cleaning up the toy room.  I guess we'll see in the coming weeks if it took or not. 

Reagan had never experienced the joy of a pile of leaves.  We were half way done before she figured out that she could be like Charlie Brown & Linus and play in the leaves.  When she finally did, it was with much sorrow that she continued to help us scoop them up into the bag.  She kept trying to get us to dump it out.  Fortunately for her, there are still tons of leaves on the tree.

Opa Comes to Town

We took Opa hiking up Tubbs Hill.  It's got a great view of Lake Coeur d' Alene.  We also think we could see the floating green of the golf course.  It was perfect weather and Nick took the day off, so it was great.  We went to the beach afterwards, of course, and had a picnic and fought with the seagulls.  Nick got to throw a football to someone who could actually throw it back, so that was fun.

That night we went to an what Reagan calls an "Estrant"  where she got her own play dough.  She's been talking about it ever since.  Then we went to a little fruit stand and picked out pumpkins.

This is Nick's favorite picture.  After the pumpkins, Opa bought some ice cream to take home and eat.  Reagan is completely convinced that Opa will be back on Saturday to buy her more Rocky Road with marshmallows.  I've been trying to let her down easy.  Thanks for coming Opa!  We love you!!!

Halloween Cookies

After having one of those ridiculously bad days, Wednesday, where your children find a way to push every button you ever had and lots that you had no idea could be pushed, we worked extra hard to have a good day on Thursday.  We made these sugar cookies in the morning, watched Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin, and went swimming at the hotel in the afternoon.  

After a yummy Thai curry dinner (each of the kids had 3 helpings) we made the frosting.   Reagan got to chose the colors.  Coen just ate the cookies as fast as he could, but Reagan didn't stop until every single cookie was frosted.  Then we had hot chocolate and cookies.  Reagan just licked all the frosting off of course.