It's a girl . . . . . .maybe

So, I am almost 19 weeks along and this week we had an ultra sound. We had the doctor look to see if she could determine the gender. The baby was moving quite a bit so the best we could get out of the doctor was that she was 75% sure that it was a girl. That is not exactly the kind of percentage I was looking for. Needless to say, we are not going girl shopping yet. So, stay tuned and hopefully before Christmas we can say more definitively that we are having a girl.

A place I love

I love Merril park. It has everything I look for in a park; great play equipment, beautiful setting, walking paths, and bathrooms (a must for a pregnant mom). I love to take the kids to this park. They have a blast on the play equipment, and then when the play structures no longer interest them we go on a walk by the river. During our walks I simultaneously get some semblance of exercise while the kids have fun finding rocks to throw in the river, discovering "secret paths" (thats what Carson calls anything resembling a trail), and exploring different facets of nature that would intrigue little boys. I have had some good mommy moments with my kids at this park. On Saturday when we took a trip to the park it was a perfectly beautiful autumn day to enjoy this park with my boys.

Trick or Treat

We definitely had a lot more treats than tricks at our house this Halloween. My parents came up for the weekend and my mom and the boys decorated cupcakes. The boys had a great time. Although, I am quite sure that my mom was not prepared for some of the challenges that cooking with a 1 and 4 year old create. As a result my mom and both boys were splattered with cake batter before the project was done (my mom let Lincoln turn on the mixer, which he did happily to full blast). Also, Lincoln managed to eat about half a bag of m&m's before my mom realized he had not put one single m&m on a cupcake. I think it is safe to say that my kids mostly had m&m's and cupcakes for lunch Halloween day. My parents also did a great job of playing up Carson's costume. Carson decided to be a dragon this year. Despite Carson's costume looking like the cutest most friendly dragon ever he thought he was a scary dragon. So the whole evening my parents pretended to be afraid of all of Carson's "roars" and attacks with his "sharp claws". We had a spooky dinner of hot dog mummies, apples with fangs, and creepy fingers. The kids got a kick out of the dinner. Then after dinner my parents handed out candy for us while Nate and I took the kids trick or treating. The moments that cracked us up the most while trick or treating were Carson randomly roaring at other children (he was being a scary dragon) and Lincoln saying "more house" after every door. Lincoln turned out to be a hard core trick or treater and could have gone to "more house" for hours, but we called it a night after about an hour of trick or treating. It was a fun day. Our family loves Halloween!

October Highlights

Some of the highlights of October aside from Halloween were our trip to Utah and the local pumpkin patch. We went to Utah to visit family and catch a BYU game. The game was depressing but we loved visiting with family and going to Salt Lake's children museum. Carson and Lincoln were in heaven at the children's museum and could have stayed all day. We will definitely be going back to the museum when we have more time to spend there. This month we also made our annual trip to Linder Farm with my brother and his family. We visited the farm on probably the coldest day of the month, and I did not dress my kids warm enough, which probably contributed to some of the Lincsters grumpiness during this outing. Although, Lincoln was a bit temperamental we still had a good time and managed to snag some great pumpkins.

We had a bit of a rough start at the farm. Lincoln was quite unhappy about the hay ride

Lincoln cheered up a little once he got to walk around and explore the pumpkin patch

Carson and his pumpkin, giving his most cheesy smile

Nate holding up the Lincsters pumpkin

My boys

Carson watching out for his brother

The Children's museum at the Gateway

Lincoln and the magnets

Carson loved the helicopter and kept telling people "to prepare for a crash landing"

Playing takes a lot of concentration

dropping the blocks he worked so hard to pull up