The Cast...

Here it is.... The new cast!

Tagen was able to get her hard cast today. When we took off her splint, we noticed a pretty nasty bruise on the inside of her wrist right where the break is. I was also able to wash her arm and hand before the cast went on. She LOVED that. I'm pretty excited about this new cast. It's thinner than her splint, so hopefully her shirt sleeves will fit over it AND it's water proof! That means normal baths again. As you can tell, she got a hot pink cast. I figured since we are expecting more pink in our immediate future, we might as well make the most of it everywhere. She's back to not using her left hand at all, but I'm hoping that's just until she gets acclimated to the hard cast. Now we just need to make sure she doesn't use the new cast as a weapon when Olivia makes her mad. We just might end up with more broken bones if she does.

Our Thankful Turkeys...

For FHE this week, I wanted to teach Olivia and Tagen about the meaning behind Thanksgiving. So, I found a cute idea on the internet and quickly made the cutouts and got everything ready. We talked to Olivia about being grateful for our many many blessings and she told us some things she is grateful for. We wrote them down on the tail feathers and she glued them onto her turkey. Then we hung them up to remind us throughout the week. Very easy, and very age appropriate for my little family. Here they are....

(this is also our last "cast free" picture of Mater for the next few weeks...)

Olivia is sure to tell everyone that she talks to on the phone about the Turkeys we made. She loves to pick out which one is hers and tell me about the things she's grateful for. I guess it was a lesson well learned... or at least, enjoyed by her.

Broken Mater...

Look Mom!

Broken and proud of it!

Tagen and Olivia have a game where they pull all my couch cushions off the couch and line the floor with them. They then proceed to jump from one cushion to another. Well today, something went wrong in the landing phase for Tagen. I had just walked out of the room for a second when I heard a different cry from her that just kept getting worse. I ran back into the room and found her face down on the cushion. I rolled her over expecting to see a bloody mouth or something and Tagen instantly grabbed her left arm. She continued holding it and crying for the next half hour. I knew something was wrong because Tagen doesn't cry about stuff for that long. She's pretty quick to get over the pain and move on. When her fingers started swelling, I called Brad and told him I was taking her to the doctor. So, an hour later and two sets of x-rays later, we have a broken Tagen. She has a buckle fracture on her ulna bone. Once the brace was on, she seemed to do much better with the pain. She's going to be sporting this brace until the beginning of next week and then we'll take her back in and get a cast put on it. She's our child that will keep us on our toes looks like... and with all her experience this early in life, I'm really going to push her towards medical school when she's older. She'd be a fantastic doctor that can truly empathize with all of her patients!

Take Two....

We had another ultrasound today.....

100% Girl.

Looks like Brad only knows one recipe.

More pink in our future.

Taste Test....

Yesterday while Tagen was playing she climbed up on my counter, grabbed the bag of Banana bread muffins and did this....

(forgive the grainy picture, it was taken with my phone...)

Apparently she had to taste test each and every muffin in the bag to make sure they were all edible. I though it was pretty cute how she lined them all up after she had tasted them. And that little bite out of each one is SIMPLY ADORABLE.

Halloween 2010

Because Halloween fell on a Sunday this year, we did our celebrating on Saturday. We were able to spend the day together as a family and kept it fairly low key. We were able to carve our Jack-O-Lantern, dance some jigs and go Trick-or-Treating.

Here's yet another picture tale of our activities....

Olivia and I drew the face on the pumpkin

and then it was Brad's job to carve it out...

Olivia did get to help pull out the guts,

but she quickly stopped because she didn't like the smell.

Both girls admiring Daddy's handiwork.

We had some Halloween music playing and both girls decided to dance to it....

Olivia REALLY got into it....

See?

After the rainstorm stopped, we got the girls into their costumes.

Here are my two little pieces of Candy Corn.

Olivia wore Tagen's costume when she was two and when she found

out I had planned on Tagen wearing it this year, she was determined that

she was going to be a candy corn also. Thanks Mom for making another costume for us!

Done with the obligatory pictures!

"Let's go get some candy!"

Those were the magic words! This was pretty much the scene all night....

Tagen tagging along behind Olivia as they approached each door.

We couldn't keep up with Olivia and Tagen was just content to wait until all the other

kids had their candy, then she'd walk up to the door and hold out her pumpkin.

It didn't take her long to figure out that she likes Trick-or-Treating.

The Great Pumpkin Search!

We were able to go out to Pack's Pumpkin Patch again this year to select our pumpkins. It was a lot of fun. Olivia ran from pumpkin to pumpkin trying to find the "perfect Jack-O-Lantern" and Tagen was pretty content to sit down and play in the dirt.

Here's our picture tale of our "Great Pumpkin Search....."

Olivia is off on the mighty search!

Tagen trying to figure out what everything was....

"Mom! I think this is it!"

"I like this one, Mom!"

Ah ha! The Great Pumpkin has been found!

Tagen's happy place... In the dirt!

They loved riding in the wagon....

Mostly.

Look at the concentration on her face....

That is HER pumpkin!

Getting situated......

Of course, you have to do the obligatory hay maze while you're there...

Tagen wouldn't venture too far without Daddy at hand.

We're finished! Let's go pay for our pumpkins!