Happy Halloween!

This Halloween marks the 9th year of more than one Morrill child, and every year they have had coordinating costumes.  I didn't start off intending to do that.  But little baby Ryan as Winnie the Pooh with almost 2 year old David as Tigger was super cute, and it's just gone from there.  This year Katy said she wanted to do the Wizard of Oz characters, and the boys said that was fine.  Ryan ended up complaining about it a bit, but then he liked how his costume turned out.  Pretty good for $3.77 in supplies, since all I had to buy was the black felt to make the hat, the raffia, and some brown face paint that we forgot to put on his nose last night!  Nathan of course is in the Carter's lion costume that Costco sold and apparently many, many people got.  I got David a grey hoodie and pants (both of which he is wearing again today, despite my efforts to convince him that it looks weird), silver face paint, and covered a dollar store funnel with aluminum foil.  And we got Katy a new white tutu, sparkly red shoes, a actual basket to use for trick or treating, and I made her pinafore (altering a pattern I had to make it shorter and wider so it worked with the tutu).  Oh yes, and I decided in the shower yesterday that I should dress up, too, so I just wore black clothes (yes, the shoes look kind of weird, but I wanted to wear comfortable shoes for all the walking!), bought green face paint, and wore Katy's witch hat from last year (which had a hard time staying on, so perhaps I should've sprung for an adult sized hat...).  

  Daddy took 6 pictures, and Katy is doing some version of that pose in every single one.  Silly girl!

I like how Ryan is holding hands with Nathan in this one. :-)

 Daddy must've felt left out that he didn't get to dress up...

 Yesterday afternoon I decided that I should make cupcakes for the kids to decorate.  Only it took a while to make them (I divided the batter into thirds, dyed one orange and one yellow, then did a layer of orange, then yellow, then white to make them look like candy corn!  They're cute, but I'm not sure it was worth the effort), then we had to drive around to 4 stores to find green face paint, then it was time for dinner and trick or treating.  So after getting home from trick or treating the big kids got to decorate one each (Nathan got to eat one without frosting for mess reasons, and he didn't seem to notice a difference!).  The rest are still waiting for them to get home from school today (well, the rest that I didn't eat last night...)!

 Katy got to wear mascara as Dorothy.  Heaven help us, that girl is going to be a knockout!

 This picture has nothing to do with Halloween.  I just love his sweet little face!

 Trick or treating is thirsty work!  Nathan insisted on doing a lot of walking himself, which is easier on my arms but more stressful!  Luckily we met up with some friends shortly after getting started, so the other grown ups helped wrangle the other kids while Nathan and I tried to keep up!

David and his cupcake.  He actually ate his before I got a picture of it, so he made a duplicate.  It's also waiting for him to get home!

Well, I sat down to upload the picture of us all in our costumes onto facebook, and got busy doing this instead.  I'm glad I did, but now it's 2:00 and I haven't had lunch!  I'm hungry!

David Morrill, Soccer Player

David has been asking to play soccer for a while.  He played on a team 5 years ago, and we hadn't signed him up since then for a variety of reasons (mostly time and money, two of those things you never have enough of).  Last month we decided to go for it, went to sign up, and had to put him on a waiting list.  A spot opened up, we took it, and David was finally on a soccer team again!

Now, David has told me that he plays soccer at recess pretty often over the years.  Apparently he's learned a thing or two, because he's really quite good!  I was worried that being on a team for essentially the first time as a 9 year old would put him at a disadvantage, but he's actually quite a valuable member of the team.  He's a great back (that's what it's called, right?), and has stopped the other team from scoring many times over the 3 games they've played so far!

Nathan had an ear infection on Saturday (I took him to the urgent care after the game.  Dan was busy signing with the Portland Opera, or we would have been able to divide and conquer.), which meant he was extra cuddly.  Which meant I was able to take some pictures rather than chase him around the whole time!

 Here's a good action shot of David running to get that ball going the other direction!

 This is David after making a good play and being cheered for.  This is one of the reasons I'm SO glad we finally signed him up.  Look how good he feels about himself!

 And this is after his team scored a goal.  Think he's excited? :-)

Another good action shot

After a few minutes I remembered that my new camera takes good videos, so I took a few.  I got several where David isn't involved in the play, but here are a two where he gets a good kick in there!

Around this time Nathan changed from just being clingy to being cranky, so I had to stop with the picture/video taking.  David ended up playing all of the first 3 quarters and the middle of the 4th quarter.  They play 6 to a side, and there were 3 or 4 boys sitting out, so he definitely got to play more than his share!

Arrrrr!

First off, I'd like to say that I got a new camera for my birthday (thanks, Mom & Dad!).  I'm going to use it as motivation to start blogging more regularly.  But I'm not going to stress about catching up.  I may throw a few old ones on here, but mostly just go forward as a new bloggin' woman.

Yesterday, for those of you that don't know, was Talk Like a Pirate Day.  And to celebrate, Krispy Kreme was giving out 1 free donut to anyone who talked like a pirate, and a dozen to anyone dressed as one!  OF COURSE I had to take advantage of that!

Four years ago for Halloween we had a pirate in the family (Look at how little they are, especially cute Katy!  She was just shy of 17 months old, so just a bit younger than Nathan is now!).  Between the parts of that costume, some other stuff we had on hand, and some fabric I was given several years ago (and made into a skirt in 20 minutes!), we came up with 2 cute pirates!

This is Katy's pirate pose.  She's holding an imaginary sword.  Obviously.

 So, I went in expecting to get 2 dozen glazed donuts for my 2 pirate kids.  They only gave us 1.  I think that was kind of stinky.  It said "limited to one per guest, per visit."  Hello, they are separate guests!  I didn't make a big deal out of it, though (but I did tell the family that was coming in while we were leaving that they should go in separately if they wanted more than 1 dozen!).  I had assumed we wouldn't get the additional donuts for talking like a pirate since 2 dozen is a good amount (with half a dozen people in our family that's 4 apiece), so we did get those after all, and found out that those weren't limited to glazed!  So we ended up with 1 dozen glazed, 1 maple bar (mine), 1 with sprinkles (Nathan's, and yes, he did say "arrr!"), and 3 "kreme" filled for the other kids.  Pretty good for free!!!

Katy kept trying to stay in character for pictures.  This is one of several of her saying "arrrr!"  I wonder why that hasn't caught on in place of "cheese"...

 We got a real smile out of her!

The last time we went inside a Krispy Kreme was when we told them we were expecting Nathan, so it's been a while.  The kids were really fascinated by watching the donuts being made!  I'd never noticed that you could see all the way from the dough getting dropped onto the conveyor belt, through rising, and of course the cooking and glazing.  Today while eating one Ryan said "It's hard to believe this starts out as just dough."  He also wondered what their secret is.  Don't we all?

 Nathan enjoyed his chocolate with sprinkles!

After several attempts, I got another one of Katy actually smiling, with her partially finished donut in hand.  I'm impressed with how her costume turned out, especially considering the fact that no money was spent and less than half an hour (including cutting, sewing and gathering all the parts).  Hopefully she'll wear the skirt for dress-up sometime too!

Oaks Park!

Warning: lots of pictures.  21 to be exact.

So, I went to upload pictures from our cameras a few days ago since Miriam wanted the ones I took of her & Sidney, and I discovered that I had pictures from Easter still on there.  Yup, hadn't gotten around to uploading pictures for the entire months of April, May, and June.  It's been busy - I got a job!  That's a whole other post.  Anyhow, I'm going to be a good girl and blog about our latest fun adventure, and maybe catch up on some other stuff in my spare time (ha!).

So, Katy turned 5 on Sunday, June 3rd (another post I should do...).  We planned on taking the kids to Oaks Park the day before as her big birthday thing (i.e. instead of doing a party).  That morning she woke up with a fever and owie ear, head, and throat, so I took her to the doctor instead, and we promised we'd take them soon.  In the summer they have b1g1 on Tuesdays, so we knew we'd go on one of those.  When Miriam decided to come visit us before moving to Wyoming (sad!), we decided to go with her and Sidney!

The day was overcast, drizzling a little, with at least 3 or 4 sudden downpours that lasted a few minutes each.  Other than the first time when the boys were stuck on the Spider, we were pretty successful at just going undercover for a bit.  And because of this less than ideal weather, the park was pretty empty!  It was awesome!

Time for the pictures:

 Last summer when we went Nathan was just a teeny guy, so I didn't realize all the great stuff they had for toddlers!  It was so fun to watch him and Sidney ride all by themselves!

 Or together...that was pretty cute, too! :-)

 Katy loves this roller coaster so very much.  We counted that night, and I'm pretty sure she went on it 11 times!  A few times by herself, a few times with me (sometimes with one of the babies), a few times with some girl she made friends with, and twice with a 5 year old boy who told her she was pretty.

 I love how much the big kids love Nathan.

 I guess I lied, we got caught in the rain, too.  Also on the spider.  Dang it!

 I don't know if you can see her face very clearly, but this is one happy little girl!

 While riding the motorcycles Nathan turned around to wave at Sidney. :-)

 Miriam and Sidney about to go up in the "hot air balloon."

 Around 4:30 I think Sidney had finally worn herself out.  Her pregnant mama was pretty tired too, so Dan and Nathan took them home.  The rest of us, we were only halfway done!

 Part 2 of Oaks Park, where I see my other children.  See, when we first got there we all went on the carousel.  Then the boys wanted to do a big kid ride, so Dan stayed with them while Miriam and I took Katy, Sidney, and Nathan on little rides.  After the boys got soaked on the Spider, they ended up going roller skating (it's included in the bracelet price) for over 2 hours!  Nope, I don't have any pictures of that.  And that's why I don't have any pictures of the boys from the first part.

I got Ryan to go on a ride with me (it appears from this post that we spent a lot of time on the Spider.  We did not.  I think it's just that you have so much time while waiting for everyone to get on and off, so I kept snapping pictures!).  It was nice. :-)

 This year the boys wanted "Deluxe" bracelets.  They cost just a few dollars more, and included bumper cars and 3 or 4 of the biggest rides.  Ryan is just barely tall enough to do bumper cars, which he was thrilled about!

 Katy got more and more courageous throughout the day.  I'm pretty sure she went on every ride she could (besides a few of the baby rides).  She started saying she wished she had a deluxe bracelet, but I don't think she's even tall enough to go on any of those rides!

Also, yes, Katy and David are the only people on that ride.  The park got even more empty as the night wore on, and we could often just walk onto a ride.  It was awesome!

 Katy convinced me to go on Rocko, which was like a ferris wheel where you're caged in and can rock your cage upside down.  We did NOT do that!  It was scary enough just riding it!

 Since it was another of those rides where you have to wait while all the people are loaded on, one spot at a time, we had some time to kill.  It's hard to be a crazy face with one hand, I discovered.  I look like I'm just trying to show you my teeth.  Lovely, aren't they?

 I don't have many pictures of David, because I still wasn't with him much.  I let the boys do their own thing, they just had to tell me if they were going to change which ride they were going on (since they would often do the same ride over and over again).  The park is fairly small and the crowds were fairly thin, so I felt pretty comfortable with that.  I can't believe they're getting that big!

 They spent a lot of time on the bumper cars like this (Ryan is in the red car, stuck against the middle, and David is in the blue car, stuck against Ryan's car).  Ryan eventually got the hang of it.  David decided to go on other rides instead.

 Another solo ride.  I wish I'd gotten a picture of the time Ryan rode Looping Thunder, the big roller coaster, all by himself, but Katy and I were on the scrambler and not really in a position to be taking pictures!

 David, Ryan, and a friend they made are on the bottom in this picture.  David had fun hanging out with him, and was disappointed that he lives in Salem so we wouldn't be exchanging contact info.

 Brave, brave Katy, riding rocko again.  Pretty sure this is when I started sitting out because I had finally had enough spinny rides and needed a break!

 My princess and me, riding the ferris wheel.  It was our last ride of the night, at 8:58 or something.  When we got home we tried to remember all the rides Katy went on, and we came out with an even 50!  It was 49, but then Ryan reminded us that they'd gone on tilt-a-whirl together.  We counted up Ryan's too, and it was a bit less because they'd spent so long skating, but still really amazing.  I'm pretty sure we're spoiled by that.  How can we ever go to Disneyland and wait in hour long lines after that?

The view from the top of the ferris wheel.  That's downtown Portland off in the distance.  It was really beautiful.

I don't know that we would have had anywhere near that much fun if we'd gone on June 2nd like originally planned.  It was fun to be there with Aunt Miriam and Sidney!  And awesome to have so few people there!  So Katy, sorry you had an ear infection the day before your birthday, but it turned out great!

Hi!

Nathan started waving and saying "hi!" a whole bunch yesterday. I love it! I'll try to get a better video (maybe one where he isn't playing with my sports bra...), but I wanted to make sure I got one before he stops doing it, like happens so often with cute little things they do!

Watch "Hi!" on YouTube

Nathan's Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party

I loaded these pictures a few days ago, knowing I'd have more time to do the typing during Spring Break. Right now Katy is playing outside, David & Ryan are playing Monopoly, and Nathan is eating a cookie in his high chair. Life at Grandma & Grandpa's house is good!

So, birthday parties are a constant source of disagreement in the Morrill household. Pretty much I always want to have them, Dan always thinks they shouldn't. Sorry, Honey, I'm not ready to back down. Probably as the kids get older, but for now it's so fun!

I had seen some Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party stuff around Pinterest, and since we love that book I thought it would be fun for Nathan's first birthday party! Since first birthday parties are more for everybody else than the birthday child I decided to invite 3 families that have little ones. It was fun to have the entire families involved! I made invitations using this idea:

I made the leaves a bit bigger and glued the caterpillar on them instead of putting them in jars. They were really cute! I wish I'd taken a picture.

I printed out some VHC coloring pages, and they were a big hit! I thought about doing more involved crafts, but didn't get around to doing the prep work. It was easier without them anyway, and the kids loved just playing.
Here's the guest of honor! Yes, he has a whole apple. He takes them out of the fridge if he can get over there fast enough when someone else has it open. I've been buying baby apples so he doesn't waste so much, but clearly he didn't get one that time.

Who knew a paper plate could be so fun!

Here's our low class VHC cake. If I was a better person I would have displayed it on something prettier than 2 upside down cookie sheets, made the frosting before people got there (thanks for taking over on that Danny love!), split the frosting better so we had enough green, taken more time decorating so the cupcakes looked prettier, and done a better job on the face. Oh well, they sure tasted delicious!
I tried to tell people that Nathan really, really didn't need anything. It didn't work. But they did do a good job of not just adding to the clutter! The Slaters gave him these super cute short overalls. I can't wait for it to be shorts weather so he can wear them!
The Hamsleys gave Nathan this adorable duckling. It quacks and sings the abcs, and is remarkably non-annoying! I love seeing him hug it and carry it around. :-)
After everyone left I finally thought to take pictures of the food. I was really happy with how it turned out! I downloaded some clip art and made these cute signs. On Monday he ate through 1 apple, and so forth. It was nice to not have to think about what to serve, and everyone ate a lot of healthy stuff in addition to the usual cake & candy!
These are not jelly beans, gummy worms, and gummy butterflies, they are eggs, caterpillars, and butterflies. On the far right are some watermelon taffies for the slide of watermelon the VHC ate on Saturday. On the far left of the other picture is some cheese for Saturday, although we did cheddar instead of swiss. We had chocolate cupcakes, so that took care of both chocolate cake and cupcakes, and the kids got lollipops in their goodie bags. That was enough of the Saturday stuff, it did give the caterpillar a stomach ache, after all! Katy insisted on having "nice green leaves," so that's what is in the upper right of the picture. My kids actually like spinach pretty well, but with all the other yummy stuff the leaves didn't get eaten. :-P
Here's my attempt at nice picture of a leftover cupcake. Yum! I got a bigger tip to pipe the frosting on. I'm excited to make cupcakes again sometime without the rush of "all the kids are anxious for cake, hurry, hurry!" so I can make them look prettier.
Remember how I said I should've divided the frosting better? I ran out of green, but we had quite a bit of red left. This is what happens when you add red to the bag that already has green. Pretty cool!
Here's Nathan's other present - some cute Cars jammies! He actually really needed some, so it was a great gift! I tried for a while to get a good picture of him in them. I got lots of blurry ones while he walked around. He finally sat down, but of course wouldn't smile before he was up and about again.
I also got a couple like this. Sigh. Getting a good picture of this 1 year old is hard. He sure is busy!

I was really pleased with how the day turned out. The food was good, the cake was yummy, the kids all had fun, and the husbands even seemed to have a good time! :-) Oh yeah, and I had fun, too! I'd say it was a success.