Noelle and Daddy

Lately it's been so nice to see Noelle going out of her way to be with her dad and be interested/obsessed with where he is. She started this newest, and hopefully permanent phase, a few weeks ago when she started waking up every morning when he would leave for work. I would hear the door close and then without fail Noelle would start to cry. Her bed is situated in a way where she can look out the window so the door must have woken her up each time and she would look out and then start crying for her dad. Sometimes she would cry out to me "Where's daddy going" even though she already knows. Other times she would cry for Josh saying "Don't leave daddy, I'm going to miss you". He can't hear this of course so she would then come into my bed and I would explain again how dad is going to come home later after he teaches the kids at school. It's so wonderful, even though sad at times, to see her so wrapped up in her dad. She runs to him most times when he comes home from work now, usually shouting "Daddy, daddy!". And man does Josh love it! He is eating it up at the moment since as most of you know, Noelle and Josh have had a bumpy couple of years with Noelle going in and out of being openly affectionate with him.  

Thankfully we seem to have come to a point where she seems to have leveled off at being affectionate with her dad, wanting to be with him, and going out of her way to include him in her world. She doesn't cry for him anymore when he leaves in the morning, which is a good thing I think because that was heartbreaking. She has continued to be really excited though when he comes home and talks about him throughout the day, asking when he is coming home. Noelle loves all of us being together, this includes big family hugs, all of us laying on our bed watching a show with her, and she loves for all of us to play games together.  She's at a fun age, still difficult at times, but fun. I'll have to write some of the difficult stories soon because they have not been in short supply lately either : )

Cute pics

Here's mix of some cute pics taken lately. The ones of Noelle in the laundry basket Noelle was in her "boat" and having a lot of fun. The ones of Madeline dressed in Noelle's stuff were inspired by Laura just tonight : )  The one of Noelle in the snow happened just the other night when it started snowing for the first time this year. Unfortunately it snowed for just about five minutes and then stopped. Noelle was pretty put off by it stopping and moaned that it would "never snow again". She has been saying things are never going to happen quite a lot lately and I'm not sure where she got it. If I tell you she can't do something like watch TV, she'll mumble under her breath "I'm never going to get to watch TV". And she says it in a way that seems older than her three years, but I guess I should be used to that by now : )

Fall pictures

 

Some of my favorite pictures growing up are the ones of us kids in the leaves. I finally got some taken of Noelle the other day after her dance class. I had the realization when I was looking through these pictures that she is in the same leaves that I was in for our pictures! Of course they're different leaves, but the same tree. It made it even sweeter to me. I am going to look for some pictures of myself in these leaves so I can compare Noelle and I. If I can remember to do this when I go to my parents house then I'll post pictures of both of us in the leaves. I didn't want to wait until I did that because knowing myself, I may never get around to doing it. 

And not to leave Maddie out, here's a picture of her from that same day. I'll have to wait until next year to get a good picture of her in the leaves. 

Hilariously embarrassing

One of the most embarrassing moments of Josh's life happened just two days ago so I thought I'd share it. I have his permission of course but I thought it fitting to write this after his nice little comment about me slacking on my blog : )

I need to paint you all a little picture of the stage on which this most embarrassing moment happened.  My mom's birthday was on Sunday so we were over at my parents house for dinner. Some of us were in the kitchen and some were in the dining room.  Josh was helping to clear the table after dinner and was in the dining room with my mom, my grandmom and the Korean exchange student staying at my parents house, who is a woman. Josh describes the following events like this. He had some plates in his hands when all of a sudden he feels a cool breeze on his legs. He thinks to himself, "no way", but looks down as see that actually yes there is somehow a way that his pants are now around his ANKLES! His pants completely fell down in front of my mom, grandmom, and the Korean exchange student! I unfortunately did not get to witness the event but only saw Josh walk into the kitchen as if in a dream with a strange sort of smile on his face. He calmly said "my pants just fell down" with a big smile on his face. I can't believe that he means what I think he means so I confirm that he means they really fell all the way down. He said that he thinks he could have just played it off because no one was looking but that he was in such shock over it that he started talking out loud about it. He also said that it looked like none of them were actually looking but I think they made sure to make it look like they didn't see to avoid an awkward situation being even more awkward! Can you imagine? I seriously can't. I laughed so hard and I still wish so badly that I would have looked in the dining room and seen Josh standing in the dining room, plates in hand, with his pants around his ankles. Man, that is something he and I, or those present in the dining room for that matter, will never forget!

my funny girl

Noelle has been saying some pretty hilarious things lately (not that this is out of character) so I thought I'd share a few.

The other day Zoe ran off when I was letting her out to go to the bathroom and was gone for awhile. When she came back, as I was letting her in, I said something like "Zoe you were a bad dog". Instantly, Noelle started crying and said "Mom you can't say that, that might hurt her feelings. Zoe's not a bad dog, she's a good dog". I wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time but mostly I was trying not to laugh because her reaction was so cute. I wish I could write in her inflection because how she was crying and saying it was just so priceless!

Tonight we were watching some of the The Bee Movie and Noelle said to me. "Mom, she (even though it is a boy bee) shut the door in her mom's face...she didn't get in trouble...Bees don't get in trouble". How funny is that? She was aware that something the bee did was wrong but didn't get in trouble so she made up a rule to go along with what she saw!  This kind of proclaiming general rules as if they are part of the ten commandments is very common these days.  

There was something else that was really funny but I can't remember it now : (  If I remember I'll just write about it later.  I keep saying I need to carry around a pad of paper and pen so I can write down what she says but I keep not doing it. I'll add that to the list of the things I should be doing that I'm not : )

Harvest Party

So here's some pictures of the girls from the harvest party. Maddie was the cutest little pea pod and she didn't seem to mind wearing her costume. Thankfully, Noelle was actually excited this year to wear her costume. I included a picture at the bottom from last year when she was a little grumpy about wearing her chicken costume : )