Photography Failure

So I tried to get some good pictures of all the kids together today.  I have a bunch of them together but most are snapshots taken with my phone.  It did not go well.  I ended up totally frustrated with them and gave up this morning.  We tried again after naptime with the same bad results.  Hazel would NOT look at the camera except for a brief second every few minutes and of course everytime she did look one of the others looked away.  Bella won't ever open her eyes for the camera.  Then I got Hazel to look at a toy and Phoebe flipped out because it was her toy and she wanted it.  Plus my yard is ugly, a problem I can hide when taking pictures of just one kid, it's a little harder to do with four though.

So I pretty much just shot continuously hoping to catch them all looking and smiling together, out of hundreds of shots I got these.  And honestly I'm not happy with them.  But they are good enough so here they are.

Halloween Costumes

Tonight we went to the Halloween carnival for Early Intervention.  Since we keep having kids all with speech delays we've been every year since we moved to Utah.  So I got pictures of the kids in their costumes before we left.  Hazel was a frog (John and Phoebe have both worn that one in the past) and Phoebe was a purple dragon (which Bella and John have both worn before.)  John went as a vampire and Bella a witch.  They both changed their minds about costumes several times.

Bella's 7th Birthday

Today was Bella's 7th birthday.  We went to the used book sale at the library and then went to Lagoon.  And then we had dinner at Famous Dave's tonight.  She had lots of fun and loved her presents.   Here's what she got...

I made her this owl hat, it turned out super cute and she loves it


Playmobil horses


Hello Kitty slippers


Judy Moody movie, we just finished reading the book this week so it was perfect timing.  Judy Moody books (we've now read two) are the first chapter books that John has liked, usually he hates when I read chapter books.


A Peter Rabbit doll.  She LOVES Peter Rabbit.


And My Little Pony toys.  She a huge horse/pony fan and has several My Little Ponies already.  But she read a book a week or so ago about Scootaloo, one of the ponies that has a scooter and kept trying to make a scooter for out of various things for her ponies.  So when I found these I knew they were perfect.





And here's the video of her opening things.  She wearing different clothes for different gifts because she opened things on three separate days.  I find things are better appreciated spread out more, instead of opening it all at once.

School Stuff

We ran out of sidewalk chalk a week or two ago, despite starting the summer off with over 100 pieces.  So we made some sidewalk chalk paint instead (we did find more chalk at the store though, not as easy to do when the weather starts getting cold.)  Just mix equal parts cornstarch and water and add some food coloring and you're ready to go.



In no time at all our driveway was transformed into a giant piece of art.


















On to more book pictures.

Books!

This post is mostly a bunch of pictures of the kids holding books.  Now that they are reading real books I've decided to take a picture of them holding each book after they read it.  But first an update.  Things are going great!  John is doing his work without complaining at all.  I can't even remember the last school related tantrum he's had.  And I have finally gotten him to do work alone.  Before he wouldn't do any work unless I was sitting next to him, and if I sat next to him he would ask a ton of question the whole time like "what's the answer?  Is it this?"  And basically didn't do anything himself, if I got up to leave he flipped out.  I can now give him a stack of books and show him all he needs to do and he will sit and do it all by himself without me even in the room.  We still do the big subjects together like math and science, but he does his handwriting, phonics workbooks and several worksheets alone now.  Bella does too but she's always been able to.

Now onto the pictures
































And Phoebe didn't want to be left out of the book picture taking


She loves sitting at the table during school




And this one is of her preschool project. We got these on sale at Joann.