Busy Girl

Who knew that keeping Joli occupied for hours could be so easy?!?!?!

While Joli was playing with play-doh I was getting activities ready for our Halloween party. Joli loved the things I was making!

Please Mommy

We've spent most of our week doing most of nothing and today Joli decided that it was enough. So she asked me if we could do something fun today and named off a few options. I picked the most low-key and went with the movies. I told her what movies were playing and she decided she wanted to see the Nightmare Before Christmas. I warned her it would be scary which only seemed to make her more excited. Then in the opening scene when I thought it was scary she yelled out "I LOVE THIS MOVIE!". Hmmm, she's kinda special.
After the movie, traffic was outrageous, so we stopped by Chris and Kacie's to hang out for a little while. Charlotte thought Joli was the funniest thing ever.

I get to sleep in tomorrow! Yipee!!

Joli's Quilt

Since Joli isn't old enough to get online and check my blog, I thought I would put up a few pictures of the quilt I'm making her. This is what I did today. It's not done, but this is the center.
Here is a closer picture so you can see the details in the faerie fabric that I thought was just perfect.

I can't wait til Christmas!!

Kitty Joli

I've been wanting to make an octopus for Joli for a few months but I've always either been out of hot dogs or Top Ramen. Well I finally had both and made Joli one for lunch! She loved it but was sad to eat her friend.
This morning she was hugging the pumpkin bear and told me that they were getting married because she has his baby in her tummy. Hmmm, what has she been watching?

We had a few errands to run before the Halloween party we were going to so while we were out we went by the frozen yogurt shop. We were really good and only got a tiny bit of vanilla yogurt and then a TON of strawberries.

We still had time before the party so we went over to Chris and Kacie's for a few minutes to take some pictures of the girls. Isn't Charlotte such beautiful faerie!?!

Joli was being really sweet and cooperating for the pictures. I think it was because I told her we weren't going to go to the party until we got some good pictures.

Joli thought it was important that I be in the pictures too. I dress up as a black and white faerie. I wanted to make a whole new costume but I never got around to it.

This was Joli's picture of Charlotte.

This afternoon we went to a Halloween party that was a ton of fun. We had to get Joli a cupcake in when we first got there because she couldn't focus on anything else.

The was a wonderful children's singer there and Joli loved hearing some new songs and of course dancing!

There was also an amazing balloon artist!!

As usual, it didn't take Joli very long to make some best friends.

Now we're home and Joli's getting her second bath of the day as she dumped dirt and sand on her head!

Bates Nut Farm

Well we looked passed the extreme heat and pretended like it was Fall long enough to visit another pumpkin patch. Joli had a wonderful time!
Charlotte was so silly today. She just laughed and wiggled the whole time we were there until she finally passed out from exhaustion.

Lilly also had a wonderful time and only became upset when her Mama had to take Syrus to the bathroom.

Joli has a new thing where she doesn't like to look at the camera. Of course the more I push the issue the more she doesn't want to look.

I actually remembered to get our classic holiday photo!

Just call me the pumpkin ride.

I think we have enough pumpkins!

Newly Cut Hairs

I had the hardest time deciding what I wanted for my birthday, but when Joe's mom asked me I decided that I really wanted to go get my hair cut. So I got the name of Kacie's hairdresser and went to see her today. My hair feels so great. I love it!!

One of the things I wanted was a cute little pony tail, and I got it!!

Twenty-Eight Pound Energizer Joli

The amount of energy Joli (and Brody) have had in the past few days is just blowing my mind. I feel like we're constantly doing something and yet they are NEVER tired. I've been trying to start new activities with Joli in an effort to keep her busy in the evenings as well. Kacie let me borrow her Montessori book and I was able to pull a few activities out that I thought Joli would love. One of the activities is sorting buttons by color. I haven't had a chance to go get more yet but the ones I have she was able to sort into light and dark piles. Once she's done with that then she counts how many are in each color and tries to count how many total (there are 20 total, but things start to get iffy around 14).
She really seems to enjoy the activity and I'm excited to add more colors for her to sort as well as introducing new activities.

Tonight Joli did two things that made me a very proud Mama. She has known her basic shapes for quite some time (took my breath away the day she pointed out an octagon), but she's still working on the coordination it takes to draw. So when she was at the kitchen table telling me she was drawing circles I just nodded, but then she brought me a page filled with different sized circles!! It may seem crazy but I feel like she's reached a very important milestone on the path to reading and writing! Yep, I'm that gushy mom!

The second thing that Joli did tonight that I thought was just amazing, was to set up a tea party. But not just set up the tea set. As she went in her room to she said that she was going to get the tea party ready with her friends and that she would come get me when she was. Usually she gets out the tea set and puts it on the table and is back in less than five minutes, but when she came and got me fifteen minutes later I was so surprised!

Notice how she laid out a "table clothe", set up all her "friends" at the table, went and got a plate of "cookies" from the kitchen, and even set out pillows for her and I to sit on! What a smarty pants!

Every once in awhile you have one of those moments as a parent in between the tantrums, the bathroom accidents, and the bedtime battles, when you think "Oh yes, it is sooo worth it!"

The Zoo and The Fall Festival

This week we were so excited to have some old friends from our hometown to come down and stay with us. Kathy and Angela were awesome and gave me a place to stay while Joe was in Boot Camp until he started getting paid. They came down so that Angela could check out colleges in the area but we also wanted to do something fun, so we headed to the zoo!

This hyena was menacing. He kept watching Joli and it was kind of creepy.
Angela really wanted to see the big cats and luckily the tigers we pretty close to the viewing area.

This guy was just watching his sibling splash around down below.

As usual we had to stop by the reptile house. I think this is probably my favorite of the snakes. They just look so pretty.

They don't creep me out when they're behind glass until they start watching me. That's not cool.

Joli is simply fascinated by snakes. She could watch them forever. I hope she realizes that she will NEVER EVER have one!

So this was the point in our trip when I actually screamed. I was watching the snake up in the tree and hadn't noticed the other moving around in cage. You can kind of see him moving up the side of the wall, well the screaming occurred when he jumped up from the leaves.

Today there was a Fall Festival in our area and I thought Joli would love it. There was a craft area where she could make something and she decided to decorate a visor.

Here is her finished product.

As we were leaving she noticed some crayons and decided to add a few finishing touches.

Then she got bored of it and passed on to me to wear.

After strolling around for a while, we went with Kacie, Chris, Charlotte, Abby, her mom, Syrus, and Lilly, up to the hay rides. We were all very excited. Charlotte was a little fussy but it's easy to distract babies.

After the hay ride we all went our separate ways and Joli and I went down to the bounce house that she really wanted to go in. The headed off to get our free pumpkin and finally grabbed a hot dog and a soda. Joli insisted that we couldn't leave until we had a cupcake.

I'm not sure if it was the hot dog, almost the entire soda, or the cupcake, but Joli wasn't feeling too hot on the way home. She's taking a nap now and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it was just too much junk and not a bug!