Some Violet stories

I realize that it's Halloween and that I should be posting about our trick-or-treating and costumes, but these are fresh on my mind and I can't let myself forget about the hilarity that is my life with Violet.  Here are a couple of recent stories:

A few days ago, after I had showered both kids, I were getting them dressed for bed.  As I was chasing around naked Charlie to put his diaper on, I said, "Charlie, you have the cutest little bum!"  Violet then walks over to me, shakes her bum in my face and says, "Mine's cuter!"

Then today we went to pick up Brandon at the airport.  He texted me to tell me he landed just as we were exiting the freeway, so I thought we were just in time to do the drive-through pickup. But I pulled into place to wait for him and several minutes went by and he was nowhere to be seen.  Violet announced to me that she had to go potty, but I thought we didn't have time to park and get out since Brandon should have been coming out any minute.  I told her to hold it until daddy got in, and then I would have him take her in (I couldn't take her into the airport because if you leave your car unattended they think you're a terrorist and tow it.)  She apparently couldn't hold it in any longer, and after I convinced her that she couldn't get out and pee on the side of the street (she was about to) she took matters into her own hands and peed in a plastic grocery bag and then handed it to me.  So I'm sitting at the airport, unable to leave the car, with a plastic grocery bag full of pee.  Yes, this is how I spent my Halloween.  I finally decided to stuff it in a paper bag that I found and just have Brandon throw it away when he got out.  Well, a few more minutes went by and he still wasn't out and Violet informed me that she had to pee again.  I told her that I didn't have any more grocery bags (I wasn't sure what to do at this point) so she found a Styrofoam cup and peed in it (I was actually pretty proud of her, she didn't spill or anything) and then she said, "I'll just open the door and dump the pee out."  I just turned around and said, "If they don't let me take a four-year-old in to use the potty, they can have pee on their sidewalk."  And that's what we did. 

Oil Ranch and Zoo Boo

Fear not, readers, I haven't been a complete slacker despite my lack of blog posts.  This month has actually been pretty eventful for us, and the only reason I haven't been posting much is because it took me a good two weeks to recover from the trauma that consisted of driving 12 hours by myself with two kids and almost spinning off the road at midnight in Arkansas.  But I'm sort of back in action, so here are a couple of updates on what we've been doing.

 

First off, we went to the Oil Ranch with my ward's playgroup.  I'm really grateful that it was all planned for me and we got a group rate, because I honestly don't think paying $30 to get into that place would have been worth it. The kids ended up having fun, but it was enough headache for me that I probably wouldn't go again. Instead of having an actual pumpkin patch, they had small pumpkins set out on the grass for the kids to take-- you know, the kind they use for pies that you can buy at HEB for $2.  But other highlights included pony rides, which Violet loved but Charlie wouldn't go near to save his life:

 A romp in a big stack of hay:

 Also, a petting zoo, but Violet is afraid of petting zoos ever since the deer at the rodeo ate her skirt, so we didn't go in that.  But the kids did like looking at the bunnies in their cage.

A tractor ride to go feed some cows, which should have been named the screaming tractor ride of terror, because the cows stick their heads in the wagon and lick anyone in sight, and their tongues are long enough to wrap entirely around Charlie's wrist (although even with a cow's tongue wrapped around his wrist, Charlie didn't get the memo that you're supposed to let go of the food).  The kids were fine after they figured out that dropping the food on the floor of the wagon and letting the cows eat it from there was a much better idea.

 After that, it was hot and Charlie started getting really grumpy and I was about to call it a day and make the hour-long trip home even though we had only been there for an hour.  I finally made a last-ditch effort to make him happy and took a little train ride, which was essentially the same as the tractor ride except that it didn't involve invasive cows and didn't have a 30-minute wait in the hot sun to get on it. So, it was exponentially better. 

The last thing we did there was nothing short of a miracle, and may have been the only thing all day that changed my view of this trip from "totally not worth it" to "pretty fun."  We found an empty bouncy house. We had tried bouncy houses before but they were full of school kids (and to be honest, pretty bratty ones) and Charlie left screaming every time.  But this one, oh, just look at his face. Have you ever seen him so happy?

 The next eventful we went to was Zoo Boo.  Basically, they have trick-or-treating at our zoo.  Awesome, isn't it?  And although it was just as expensive, it wasn't a two-hour round trip and Charlie never complained, so in my opinion it was more than worth it.  There were a few booths scattered around the zoo where you could get candy, play games, and even pick out and decorate pumpkins.

And can I just talk about Charlie's costume for a minute? He was originally going to be Pasquale (the chameleon) from Tangled, but I had nowhere near enough energy to make it.  So I pulled out Violet's old chicken costume and stuck it on him.  When we first put it on him, he had just woken up and was a little confused. But when he walked up to the mirror, he gasped, started clapping, and yelled, "Chicken!  Bok bok!"  I still can't get over how cute (and funny) he looked in it.  I just. can't. handle. it.

 And of course, Violet was a very pretty (and rather convincing) Rapunzel.

More Nashville fun

I'm not going to do a day-by-day post because we really haven't been doing anything too exciting.  But I will post some stories from our trip, and I promise they will make you laugh.

-- Violet consistently gets dirtier than all 3 Funk kids combined.  They found a sand pile at Soccer practice and all started playing in it.  But whose child had the bright idea to lay down in it? That's right, my little princess.  She also fell into the stream (almost completely submerged) when they were playing around Edwin Warner park, and if that wasn't enough, a few minutes later she fell face first onto a freshly cut field of grass, which all stuck to her wet, sticky body.  When she got into the car she was still soaking wet and now covered in grass, too.  Carrie kind of wondered how she always manages to get so filthy.  She's just special that way.

-- Charlie is also attracted to dirt. The other day he started eating some and got a patch of it on his upper lip that made him look like Baby Hitler.  When we were washing him off that night we had planned on only rinsing his extremities but then decided to wash his hair, too.  And when we did, the entire bottom of the bathtub became black.  We had never seen so much dirt come off of so little an area.  Good call on the hair washing, I guess.

-- I bought everyone lunch at Costco the other day (I know, I'm so nice, spending $1.50 each on our kids) and Charlie turned down his water when he saw Carrie's Diet Pepsi.  He kept taking my hand and reaching for it and yelling, "Soda! Soda!"  When he finally got a sip, he took a deep breath and yelled, "Must. Drink. ALL!"  He and Carrie also share a soft spot for Dirty Diet Cokes.

-- We had a "sleepover" in my room last night.  Since Violet was sleeping by her cousins and not with me, she stole my pillow, which made it hard for me to fall asleep.  I used Elmo, followed by a towel, followed by a stuffed dog, and it turns out that none of the three make for an acceptable pillow.  Graham woke up right as I was falling asleep, and I put him back to bed.  Then just as I was about to fall asleep again, he woke up again, this time crying that he couldn't find the stairs and Caroline yelling at him to stop stepping on her.  The commotion woke Violet up, who crawled into bed with me, and then told me she had to go potty, and then told me she needed a drink.  By the time Graham had calmed down (he was apparently upset because he couldn't find Devin, who was sleeping 5 feet away from him and managed not to wake up through this entire ordeal) it was 3 AM, and I had still not fallen asleep.  The next morning Violet woke me up extra early to ask me if it was her birthday and then beg me to make her some popcorn. I shooed her away only to be woken up later by Charlie standing in his pack-and-play, yelling, "Mommy!" to which I responded by covering my head with a pillow and yelling, "SHUT UP!"  Carrie at least thought that was funny.

-- Another reason I didn't get much sleep last night was because Carrie and I stayed up way too late looking at dumb things on the internet.  But come on, we had a good laugh looking at this:

And this:
http://dashmandy.blogspot.ca/2013/01/revenge-of-snark-and-testimony.html

First day in Nashville

 Vacations for me require nothing but being fed and having my kids entertained by someone other than me.  This is why Nashville has been so great. Violet and Charlie have loved playing with the cousins, and Carrie feeds me all. the. time.  Yesterday we went to the Red Caboose park, which had a red car train for the kids to climb on.  Charlie especially loved it since his favorite book is the Little Red Caboose.

 We then went directly to another park-- Edwin Warner park, which made me really jealous that I don't live there.  Charlie passed out in the stroller, the older kids played in the stream, and I took pictures.  It doesn't get better than that.

 After a well-earned nap, we took the kids to soccer practice, where Graham was busy being Graham and Devin and Caroline showed Violet their moves.  Towards the end, the kids found a pile of sand to play in which Violet ended up laying down in and making a sand angel.  Typical.

More fun to come!

Can't contain the excitement

I thought I'd write a blog post before visiting my sister, but all I can think about right now is visiting my sister!  So I'll just list the top 10 things I'm excited about.
1. Cool weather
2. Leaves that actually change color
3. Eating all my sister's delicious food
4. Not having to entertain my kids because their cousins will do it for me
5. Drinking hot chocolate because it's actually cold enough to do
4. Taking way too many pictures
3. Being able to do my hair and not have it poof up from the humidity 15 minutes later
2. Seeing my cute niece and nephews that I haven't seen in way too long
1. Reuniting team spoiled! Yay!!!!!!