Halloween in the hood...

Girl power!! We are not lacking for little girls in this neighborhood. This isn't even half of them.

from left to right: Harper Tate, Rowan Tate, Lucy Nuttall, Clair Nuttall, Brynn Tate, Reese, & Brea Wild



Sneaking some candy!

Trunk-OR-Treating...

Our little princess and lady bug getting ready for our ward Trunk-OR-Treating party! Reese was so excited to be a princess this year and Anni...well Anni was just excited to have so many ruffles to suck on.




Watch out or she will cast a princess spell and make you disappear. Anni and daddy were disappearing all night.






Handing out candy with daddy! My favorite thing about this picture is Anni's little face in the corner.

The count down to Halloween continues...

...with pumpkin carving.

There's something about the smell when you cut into a fresh pumpkin; it's like I'm a kid again and I'm gathered with my brothers and sister around our old kitchen table, we're all elbows deep into pumpkin guts, "It's a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is on in the background, and my mom is preparing pumpkin seeds to roast. I love the nostalgia of holiday traditions.

I hope both these little munchkins have the same good memories one day. I know I will.

It's official...

...we have a thumb sucker...

The minute you give Anni her night time blanky, she grabs it and immediately puts her thumb in her mouth. I have mixed feelings about the whole thumb sucking. But I was a thumb sucker, and I turned out ok...right? I never had braces either. I just remember how hard it was to stop. I loved my little thumb. Oh well, in the mean time, I do think it's adorable.

...and p.s. those eyes and that face...they melt my heart!

Halloween Caramel Apples

I realized the other day that this is the first holiday season since Arnold and I have been married that I haven't been either pregnant or sleep deprived with a new born. In past years I would think about all the fun things I would be doing if I weren't puking my guts out or tired as death. So this is the year! We are doing everything we can think of the celebrate every holiday.

I haven't made caramel apples for years...and it turns out I haven't forgotten how. Caramel can be tricky. But how could I go wrong with the worlds best sous chef. Reese did just about everything but make the caramel. She especially like the decorating part. The orange white chocolate was her favorite.

Washing the apples...


drying the apples...


putting in the sticks...


I wish I'd gotten a picture of her decorating, but I was too busy trying to control the chaos...or mess...


Reese was so proud. She couldn't wait for daddy to come home and see her masterpieces. He was very impressed...and they were delicious!

The count down to Halloween...

...started with a fun Family Home Evening Halloween activity. Reese is so excited about our new pet spider. I'm hoping he'll scare off any real spiders that may be lurking!

7 months...

It's passing too quickly...



Anni is growing up so fast. She changes and learn's new things almost daily.

At 7 months Anni...

• has 1 tooth with the second one breaking though right now. 
• sucks her thumb at nap time and night-time. Any other time of the day she sucks and chews on anything and everything else. She is not content if she is not chewing or sucking on something. Nothing is safe from Anni slobber.
• can't quite crawl, but it's not for lack of trying. She loves to get up on all fours and rock back and forth until she gets so frustrated that she can't propel herself forward. 
• is an excellent sleeper. She goes to bed at 7:30 p.m. and sleeps until 8 a.m. Then naps from 10 a.m. to 12 noon and again from 2 - 4 p.m. 
• loves eating "real" food.  Carrots are her favorite baby food. Now that she's tried pretty much every kind of baby food, when I can I've started giving her what ever we're eating for dinner. I just grind it up. The other night she had homemade roasted chicken stew and she loved it!
• can give her sister a run for her money in the squealing department. She loves to hear the sound of her voice, that's for sure. With Reese I used to have a binky I could stick in her mouth when I needed her to be quite...like at church. But not Anni, she doesn't take a binky. I have a feeling she's going to get taken out a lot more often than Reese.
• loves to have mommy sing to her. If I sing to her she smiles and stares into my eyes. If I sing long enough...she'll drift off to sleep.
• has the most beautiful blue eye's. People comment on her blue eye's everywhere we go.

Piecy update...

Everything these days is..."cool". It's Reese's new favorite word. "Cool dinner mom", "Cool shirt dad"...everything is "cool". I should cherish this phase...because I'm almost certain that one day nothing mom and dad do will be "cool".


Reese got a new dolly for her birthday and a new hand-made dolly cradle from her Grandpa N. Every night when we go to bed Reese has to put "her" baby to bed as well. She feeds her a bottle, burps her, reads her a story, has me swaddle her, then puts her in her cradle and rocks her to sleep.  It's so sweet to see her little mothering instincts. It is also so sweet when I realize how much she's mimicking me in what I say and do as a mom. Example: Some mornings Reese gets up before Anni. We'll be sitting on the couch and I'll hear Anniston up, so I'll say..."Anni's awake, I better go get her." Reese will respond, "Oh...my baby wake up too, I go get her." When I walk into Anni's room I always say, "good morning sweety." So Reese walks into her room, head to her baby and say's, "good morning sweety."

In other dolly news, the other day I came down stairs to find Reese trying to put a baby supository in her dolly's bum. After quickly stopping her, I asked her what she was doing. Her response, "my dolly can't go poop, her need help." Crazy kid!


Every night Reese likes me not only to read her a bedtime story, I also have to make up a bed time story. I used to tell her all kinds of story's about frogs, snakes, princesses...you name it, but ever since her 3rd birthday she likes me to tell her the "story" of her 3rd birthday party. It goes a little something like this...

"One upon a time there was a girl named Reese and she was about to turn 3 years old. Her mom asked if she wanted to have a birthday party and she said she wanted to have a water balloon fight party. So they designed invitations and delivered them to all her friends. On the day of the party her dad got up really early and blew up 600 water balloons while her mom got everything else ready for the party. When it was time for the party all her friends arrived. They had lunch, then sang happy birthday, ate cake, opened presents, and then they had the biggest and best water fight ever! After all the balloons were gone, her daddy got out the sprinklers and they road their bikes, scooters, and plasma cars through the sprinklers. They played and played until they were all so tired they had to go home and rest. It was the best 3rd birthday ever! The end"

She has had me tell her this story every night since her birthday...until last night. When I started to tell her the story of her birthday she said, "no mom, not the story of my birthday tonight. Now tell me the story of Reesey at Cornbellys."


Today at church I told Reese she needed to be reverent and think about Jesus during the sacrament. She folded her arms and sat quietly for a few minutes, then she turned to me and said, "mom, why Jesus want to give me food?"


Mom: Reese will you please go pick all the toys down stairs?
Reese: (while running in circles in the living room) I can't mom, my leg hurts.
Mom: If your leg hurt you wouldn't be running in circles. So please go pick up your toys.
Reese: (she's now stopped running and has her hand on her tummy.) I can't mom, my tummy hurts.
Mom: Well if your leg and your tummy hurt we better go to the doctor.
Reese: (Reese hates the doctor.) No mom, no doctor. I can't go to doctor.
Mom: Then I guess you better go pick up your toys.
Reese: Mom, I watching TV. I do it later.
Mom: Reese I want you to go pick up the down stairs right now.
Reese: But it's dark. I can't see.
Mom: Then I'll turn the light on for you.
Reese: No mom, you feeding Anniston. You can't get up.
Mom: I'll stop feeding Anni for a second and turn the light on for you.
Reese: No mom, Anni will be sad.
Mom: Reese stop giving me excuses. Please do what I ask.
Reese: (with her finger over her mouth) Shhhhh...just stop talking mom.


Mom: So Reese what did you learn in nursery today?
Reese: Mom we don't do learning stuff, we just play and do fun stuff!

Cornbelly's

Cornbelly's has become an annual tradition for us, mainly because Arnold always gets free tickets. Usually I always say that I'm glad our tickets are free because I don't think it's worth the money they charge. But this year it would totally be worth every penny. It had about 4 times the amount of activities then it's had in past years. Reese was in heaven. She would have stayed there all day! Some favorite's include; every slide she got to go down...are there were quite a few, the bouncy pillows, trick-or-treat kiddie corn maze, pumpkin princess playland, and cornbelly mountain.

We have a sitter...

It's official, Anni can now sit up all by herself for long periods of time.

My little helper!

Reese is such an awesome big sister. She loves Anni so much and always wants to do anything she can to help me take care of her, including feeding her. And she's not that bad at it.

Box Fort

Growing up as a military brat, we always had big boxes hanging around. I loved making big "box" forts. Sometimes I would join up to 4 or 5 boxes and make "box" mansions. I could spend hours playing in my box forts. So when we got a recent online purchase in these two big boxes, I couldn't help but introduce Reese to the awesome world of box fort making. She, of course, thinks it's the coolest thing ever!!

One Ring Circus

Arnold got some free tickets to the Piccadilly Circus that was in town. Reese wanted to take her friend Rowan and Brynn. All I can say is...thank goodness it was free. It was definitely a "one" ring circus. I think the kids had a pretty good time, so it wasn't all bad.

Excited for the show to start...


...Reese thought the Kangaroo was pretty cool...





...they were laughing and having a good time, but at one point I looked over and this is what I saw. It must not have been a very funny moment.


The closing act was probably the coolest part for Reese. She loves Elephants. They were really fun to watch, but I kind of felt sorry for them.

Lately...

I grew up sleeping in sponge curlers every Saturday night for cute curly "church" hair. So one night I decided to try it out on Reese. Unfortunately they had all fallen out by morning. But she sure looked cute in the curlers.




These two love to watch morning cartoons snuggled under blankets in the "big" chair.




Little Anni is growing up so fast. If I blink, I feel like I might miss too much.

2011 Family Photo's

Once again Chellese managed to capture great shots of our little family. There are 30+ photo's. Here's are a few of my favorites...ok, maybe more than a few.












You know why I love this photo?? I love it because I painted those finger nails about 2 hours before we left for family photo's. Hard to believe hu?? I don't know how she does it...but all the polish manages to disappear so quickly.