Zach's Parents Came to Visit

 Zach's parents came to visit for a week at the end of September, beginning of October.  We had so much fun with them and loved having them here. My girls were in heaven!  They flew in on a Friday and on Saturday we headed out to Linder Farms to pick out some pumpkins and have some fun. Saylor LOVES the swings, so that was the first thing the kids decided to do.

 Gavin (Saylor's cousin) and Say wanted to ride together on this ride.

 Casha was to afraid to go by herself and Saylor didn't want to ride with her, so Zach's Mom volunteered. What a nice Grandma to do that!

 The petting zoo is usually one of Saylor's favorite parts, and she was super excited to go in there this time just like normal...

 Until the goats wouldn't leave her alone and were trying to eat her and her clothes. She had a cup of food in her hand and they were trying to get to it and it scared her to death. She started freaking out screaming and crying.  Once she got over to where the bunnies were, then she was good and didn't want to leave, but man those goats scared her.

 Saylor and Zach decided to climb to the top of this haystack.  Say was very proud of herself and I got called a wimp because I wouldn't, but I didn't want to get all dirty and nasty so I opted out and went with being a wimp. (I mean really, its like I couldn't climb that? No need to prove myself and get dirty on this one)

 Zach's brothers fam is climbing up in this pic. Casha didn't care to go up either as you can see.

 Say, Gavin, Casha and Andrew with their pumpkins they picked out.

 When we were done with the pumpkin patch we came back to our house to carve pumpkins, eat pizza and homemade root beer and hang out.

 This is about as involved as Casha got with the pumpkin carving.

 The girls LOVED playing and spending time with their Pap. (Zach's Dad kept calling Saylor "Honey" and after they left she said, "I did not like Pap calling me Honey, I am not his honey, I am Saylor."  We loved it and laughed pretty hard.

 And Mamaw.

 

 

4 Generation picture. Zach, Casha, Wendy, Saylor and Pap Mineer.

 

I didn't take to many pictures while they were here it turns out but we had lots of fun. On Sunday we had everyone over to our house for a BBQ after church. We hung out all night and had a good time.  We also got to go to dinner with his parents, Zach got to fish with his Dad for a few hours, we took them to go see where Zach works and we just got to hang out and spend time with them. We loved it! 

September Part 2

The 2nd half on September was a rough few weeks for us around here. Casha got sick, I got sick and  Saylor as well. It started with a weird flu bug. I couldn't get Casha to eat anything for about a week and a half and every time she did eat, she would have instant diarrhea.  A few days later I got an awful stomach ache (luckily I didn't get the other part of it that Casha had). I got achy, had the chills and fever for a week. Every time I ate anything my stomach would hurt so bad and I didn't get an appetite back for about 2 weeks. Then after I got over the flu, Saylor got it and then we all got colds.  The colds were lingering forever, so I made an appointment, and all three of us girls had sinus infections and Casha had a pneumonia. They put us all on antibiotics and slowly we all started getting better.

 I did have a cool experience though while I was sick. A lady that had just moved into my ward and that I have never talked to before showed up on my doorstep one day with dinner for us. She said she had heard I wasn't feeling well and thought she would stop by and see how I was and bring dinner.  I couldn't believe it, it was so nice of her and a great example for me on serving others. I still don't know how she heard I was sick but it was super cool and nice of her and because of that experience I have gotten to know her since.    

 Some more canning happened around here.  Zach went to the church farms and grabbed another 2 boxes of pears for us. One day Say decided she was going to "help" and have some fun on her own with the pears. She played in this mess for about 2 hours.

 Casha and Say LOVE being outside riding their bikes or digging in the flower beds. She had just woken up in case you can't tell from the lopsided hairdo :) 

 An "action" shot of Say riding on the bigger bike. She flies around on that thing like a crazy girl. You would think she has been riding for years the way she cruises around out front. She is trying to get new tricks down all the time. I love watching her and get a little scared at the same time as she dodges or barely misses mailboxes, cars, Casha or whatever else is in the path.

 Casha loves to copy any of us. This time it happened to be Zach and I loved it. It was so cute. She climbed up next to him on the couch, studied him for a minute and then got in this position. She is such a funny girl. She stayed like that for quite awhile just watching football or whatever it was Zach was watching.

 Casha has really been into the itouch, phones and my kindle lately. She is always trying to get a hold of them. We haven't let her actually play anything on them so when she gets a hold of them she doesn't really do much but scroll through the pages and starts pushing on whatever she can. This time it happened to be my kindle and she was so excited I didn't take it from her right away.

 When she realized I wasn't going to take it right away then she made herself comfortable. I walked out of the room and when I came back this is how I found her.

She also said "yes" to us for the first time. To bad it wasn't in a good way. We were at Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago and I always make her hold my hand in the parking lot but I had to let it go to unlock the car. When I let her hand go she started walking on the painted lines, which she usually does just right around our car when I let her, but when I told her to come back and get in, she took off walking as fast as she could. I started to go after her and then she took off running. I was scared/ticked/mad, ya know, all those feelings you have when your kid runs from you in a busy parking lot? So I grab her and start telling her she can't run in the parking lot and she has to stay by me because the cars can get her and all that stuff.  I kept repeating myself saying, "Casha you don't run from Mommy, got it?"  She looks up at me and yells in my face "YES."  I couldn't believe it. That is the first time she had said yes to us and it was in a defiant way. I was so ticked at her and excited at the same time. Sometimes this girl is too smart for her own good. She totally got what I was saying to her and made sure to tell me what she thought about it. This one is a little monster I tell ya. 

Casha turned 2 (in September)

 Casha turned 2 back on the 17th of September. I/we were pretty lame and didn't do anything special or big. I figured she wouldn't know the difference and so I just decided not too.

Saylor was so excited to give her the gift she picked out that she gave it to her right when she woke up. Casha wasn't quite awake as Say was. 

 Saylor picked out this boat for her, but we ended up taking it back and switching it for a different one. They love playing in the tub with all the fun stuff it came with.

 Opening up another present, as you can see she is super excited about this one too.

 Showin off her new glow in the dark necklace.

 Daddy was the winner with the gifts. He brought her home a balloon. She was so excited. She had just woke up from her nap, but she was still excited about it.

 But then I did pretty good too getting her this cat. Ever since Say got her cat Casha always wants to hold it. We named this one snowball and she was so excited. Its just the right size for her so she can carry it all around with her.

 

 So I had to throw this one in because its the classic Casha look (or Sasha and she calls herself). She always is looking at us out of the corner of her eyes like this. It is always crackin me up and she usually does it when she is sneaking something.

 So I was super lame and didn't make her any cake or cupcakes (but for good reason, no one eats them around here) so I decided to get pizza. This is usually something I know she will eat, and if not the pizza at least the breadsticks. We decided to sing her Happy Birthday and put candles in her pizza and Zach started singing in a funky voice and Casha was NOT a fan. She tried to back away from him and almost fell off her chair and that made her really mad.

 She sat there staring at us, but mostly Zach, the rest of the song. I made us stop and have Zach talk to her and then we started singing again and she was totally fine. 

 She is a stubborn one, that is for sure.

 Totally fine now and enjoying her pizza.

 Rockin some new pajamas.

 

Some things about Casha:



• You answer "no" for everything. We have to listen to the tone you say it in to know whether it means yes or no. If we don't understand which one you mean, you freak out at us and throw a tantrum.
• You are such a picky eater. But its a tricky thing with you. You like almost everything we give you, it just depends on if you are going to eat it that meal or not.
• You love playing with your Sissy.
• You LOVE your blanket.
• You go to your nursery class really well now.
• You get mad really fast and easy, but turn back to happy and smiling just as fast.
• You love your baby.  Its one of the only toys you actually play with.
• You still have your bottle, you won't drink milk any other way. We just give it to you first thing in the morning and at night before bed.
• You LOVE to be outside, ride your bike, swing, go for walks, play in the dirt and run around.
• You are STUBBORN.
• You are sneaky and are always trying to sneak into everything (especially my purse and the diaper bag looking for gum and treats)
• You LOVE candy, cookies, gum, treats and snacks. You would eat them all day long if I let you.
• You eat oatmeal or pancakes everyday for breakfast. Its the only meal I can get you to eat really well. The rest of the day its hit or miss if you will eat for us.
• You are very playful and love having someone paying attention to you and playing with you. You are a little dream child if that is happening.
•  You ask for us to sing "Monkeys" every single night after family prayer. You love it.

September Part 1

All summer long Saylor has been doing jobs for us to earn money. We had her finding weeds in the grass, dusting, sweeping, folding laundry, washing windows and helping clean bathrooms. She didn't mind doing any of these jobs because she was working for a cause. This CAT.  She asked for it last Christmas, but I was done shopping for her already so she didn't get it. Well she never forgot about it and continued to ask her for it all year. So we came up with a bunch of jobs she could do to earn money. She earned $.25 cents for each job she did. The time finally came when she had earned enough money to go buy her cat.  It cost $22.99 (a giant rip off). She had to earn over $25 dollars so she could pay tithing and still have enough to buy it. She was so excited to go buy her cat.  We got in the car and drove to Target, and they were sold out of the pure white cat she had been wanting all along. Not any of the other Targets around here had white ones either. Say was super sad but said it was OK and she would just get this one instead. I was worried she would be pretty sad once the excitement wore off and she realized she didn't get her white one. (I was right, she didn't play with it after about 2 days and she wouldn't let it be in her room at night because she was afraid of it. She had nightmares about our old neighbors cat that looked like this one and in the dream it was chasing her and she couldn't get away from it. It scared her to death.  More of the story to come a little later.)  

 I forgot to post these awhile back. Zach found a new hobby, it's making his own fishing lures. He was/is so excited about it. They are just like his favorite ones he fishes with so he decided he wanted to start making them so he doesn't have to buy them anymore.  It was a great choice because he loves doing it. Each different one has a name and (like the Minnow Maker, Trout Cast and The Assassin.  He also named his "company" SFS for South Fork Spinners.) 

 When we got home from the store we went over names for her cat forever and we suggested a bunch and looked up a bunch on the Internet and she said no to every single one of them. She came up with Black Feather and that's what she named her cat.

 She played with her all night long.

 Saylor started Preschool on September 5th.  She is going to a lady my friend told me about. Her name is Ms. Janis and she is a Grandma and super nice to the kids.

 She was SO excited to start. She asked me every single day for about 2 weeks if the next day was the day she was going to go start school.  This girl LOVES to be around people and where the action is. She doesn't care what they are doing as long as she in right in the middle of it. She couldn't wait to meet all the new kids and make new friends and do projects and crafts. 

 Our lives quickly became torture around here right after school started.  Casha came down with some sort of flu bug and got diarrhea for about a week straight.  Every single thing she put in her mouth went straight through her. It took her about 10-12 days to finally have an appetite again. On this day Saylor was complaining that her stomach was hurting her too. Luckily she didn't catch the flu bug when Casha did.

 A big part of our September consisted of canning.  We went and got peaches and pears from 2 different farms and canned TONS of both fruit.

 I am lucky and have a husband that doesn't mind helping do this kind of stuff. (He actually likes it, but don't tell anyone, he might be embarrassed. :)  But for real he likes seeing the results of all the stuff we make.)

 We had some dang good peaches. The girls and I were eating loads of fresh peaches while I was cutting them up.  Not Zach though, he hates peaches.

 Casha is loving on books lately. She has liked them for a long time now, but she will actually go get books and sit down and look at them herself, or bring them for us to read to her. I love it.

 Some of our results. 

 These girls are getting to be such good friends. We are LOVING it. They play together all the time and when one of them isn't around (napping or at school) they are asking for each other constantly.  Its so cute and I love listening to them and watching them. I hope this friendship they are gaining lasts forever.

Labor Day Weekend

 Over Labor Day Weekend my sister Ang and her fam came to visit. We loved having them and had loads of fun with them. We went to the MK Nature Center to look at some Salmon. Ang, Say and Mag posed for me in the owls.

 Checkin out the salmon.

 After the Nature Center we went to a super fun candy store. The kids were in heaven, so much so that we may have waited for one of these dudes for quite some time trying to decide what to get with his 5 bucks he got to spend.

 From the candy store we headed to KFC for dinner and then to a big park to wait for a Hot Air Balloon night show. The kids were having hand stand contests while we were waiting for it to get dark.

 They had a few balloons they blew up before it got dark. This was a fun one for the kids.

 Waiting and more waiting. We were super close to the balloons because my brother in law decided to go under the roped off area and ask some people if it was alright that we came and sat by them. They said yes, so we were super close to them.

They started to raise them as it was getting dark.

 My sisters cute fam.

 Say and Daddy watching the show.

 

The hot air balloon show was pretty dang cool. They would take turns, go down the line and all go at the same time and light them up.  We were so close that we could feel the heat from them, it was awesome. And  a good thing we could feel the heat because Casha didn't have any pants on. Just a diaper. From the time we got out of the car and walked to the park, she had completely soaked through her diaper and shorts. They didn't dry out because it wasn't warm enough so she hung out in her diaper. I was feeling a little dumb because we were in the restricted/reserved section with all these richies and I had my kid running around in her shirt/shoes/socks and diaper. We had a fun a night even if we all got a little chilly because we didn't know it was a night show so none of us had jackets. 

 

Zach decided he wanted to build 2 liter bottle rockets with my nephews, so on Saturday afternoon they went to work. I forgot to take pictures of course. My nephews had a blast with it. They played with it all day Sunday and after church they played all day out there.  They even decided to load the 2 liter up with Cherry tomatoes and start blasting those off. They LOVED it and got a crowd watching them, teenage boys driving by sat and watched to see the thing blow. It was pretty awesome and fun to watch.