October was busy. Very busy.

DISCLAIMER: This post is insanely long!


There are soooo many pictures that I missed out on posting while they were happening because we've been so darn busy the past month or so. Where did October go? Seriously, I can't believe we're already a week into November. Crazy. Anyway...I wanted to "catch up" on here. So I went through my October pictures and picked out a few pictures from each "event" that I haven't blogged about. So here goes...



Haylee's gymnastics gym (that she loved going to!) had to close down mid-October due to low enrollment numbers. It was a bummer, but we decided to take dance class again after this happened. So she's happy. Come to find out, the child really missed dancing. The last day of gymnastics class, we were invited into the gym (instead of watching through the windows) to participate with her, take pictures, and watch. So here are some pictures of her doing her thing...

We are getting into a fairly decent groove at bedtime with two children. Basically, Tommy bathes Haylee and puts her to bed and I do the same with Rylee...divide and conquer. It's working pretty well. The night I snuck in and snapped a few cute pictures of these two reading at bedtime. It was adorable...

Just like her big sister, Rylee got her ear's pierced recently. She is oh so cute with her little earings!!

Here is the before...

The torture...

And the after...

If you click here you can see when big sister got her's done! :)

Tommy cleaned out our nasty-overdue for a face lift-flower bed. Then we planted flowers and then Tommy & some of our neighbors put in a nice stone border. It looks soooo much better! I need to take a picture of the final thing....but here's a shot of Haylee "helping" me plant.

We said goodbye to our lovely pet fish Pedro a few weeks ago. Read about it here. And then check out the pictures below...

My grandma (I call her Nina) and my GREAT Grandma Strom came to visit. That's Haylee & Rylee's GREAT GREAT Grandma! We had FIVE generations here visiting together. VERY COOL. How many people can really say that? When Haylee was born we took a five generation picture....click here to see that one. Now that we've added Rylee to the family, we needed another one! So we did it. Here are a few pictures from their visit...

Here's Haylee & her Great, Great Grandma Strom! They were BUDDIES! They played and played and played. It was really cute. :)

Rylee found a buddy too....her GREAT Grandma -- Nina! :)

Apparently Grandma & Nina blinked in most of my pictures...LOL! :) It's still cute...

And our five generation picture: Great-Great-Grandma Strom, Great-Grandma-Nina, Nana, Mommy, Haylee/Rylee

Rylee also started solids this month....just rice cereal for now. She LOVES it! And learned how to eat it very quickly....maybe this means she'll be a better eater than her sister. I sure hope so! And maybe she won't have allergies!?!?!

She thought it was funny the first time.....crazy kid. Most babies make funny faces and stuff when you do this the first time (her sister sure did!). Not this one. She thought it was funny.

Haylee has been patiently waiting for the day that Rylee gets to sit next to her and eat at the table. She is such a great big sister. Every time Rylee does something new, Haylee gets soooo excited! She'll tell me, "MOMMY! Rylee is getting bigger!!" She just loves her so much. I'm going to try really hard to remember these moments for their teenage years when they hate each other.

We started a "Chore Chart" for Haylee about three weeks ago. She LOVES IT. She gets a sticker for each chore she completes and then at the end of the week she gets $1.00 in her piggy bank if no more than 5 squares are empty. Her chores have changed throughout the weeks....but right now they are:

• Good @ Miss Shari's house (not really a "chore" so to speak....but we were having too much testing at Miss Shari's house...so we tried this and boy did it work!)
• Dirty clothes in hamper
• Dinner dishes in sink
• Pick up toys before bath
• Good behavior during bath and bedtime (again here like at Miss Shari's house)

Here she is sooo proud of her first week's completion: NO BLANK SQUARES! :)

And one last cute little grin from Miss Rylee...

Whew...October is finally behind me.