Happy Halloween!

A couple pre-trick-or-treating photos of Jenny the leopard and Reagan Tinkerbell. We're waiting for it to get dark right now since daylight savings time being the wrong weekend is screwing everything up!

Cheetah-licious

The girls got a Cheetah Girls dress-up trunk at the toy store, along with a couple singing Cheetah Girls, so they had to do these brief performances when they got home. Jenny's getting a little too big for these types of dress-up outfits, so her top is too tight, and her pants don't cover her panties. Reagan's still too small, so they hang off of her - I'm sure there's some point where these things fit small children perfectly, but I've never seen that time with these girls. Anyway, here they are. Many of you probably don't know the Cheetah Girls, but they are on Disney, and they sing, and they wear clothes with Cheetah prints on them somewhere. That about covers it.

Trip to the Zoo

We had a very busy day today - or sort of yesterday since it's the middle of the night. First, we went to the zoo. We only did half before the girls got tired. We thought it would be a fun day to go because, besides the fact that the zoo is always awesome, they were doing Halloween stuff. Not the ghost train that some of you may remember from a couple years ago that scared Jenny, but some fun crafts and that type of thing. I'll post a few pictures.

Reagan had several amazing comments that I of course can't remember right now. I will say that when we were at the black bear exhibit, she impressed everyone with her wit by saying loudly, "Look at his big old butt." Everything is "big old" these days with her. She also told Jo-Jo to move her big old butt yesterday.

Jenny was racing ahead as usual, and we realized she's really used to having someone like Justin there with her to run ahead and climb on things and be crazy. We just kept yelling for her to slow down and wait for us.

Anyway, here are some pictures.

These guys were very cool and kept coming right up to the glass to perform. The girls didn't want to leave them.

In the polar bear cave.

How Reagan had to spend most of her day, since she repeatedly said she didn't want a stroller, but also didn't want to walk. Just like the pictures of Jenny and Lee at the zoo about 3 years ago.

Hats we got for free in the store - I guess for buying so much. I will note that we also accidentally stole a bracelet. There was one on the floor right in front of the register that looked exactly like the one Reagan got, so we had them verify that we had paid for it. Then we realized in the car that the one we had paid for was in the bag, so we had just stolen that one. I felt a little bad, but not so bad that we turned around to take it back.

You can't tell in any of the pictures, but the eyes of the pumpkin actually light up.

I won't post all of the animal pictures here, but there were a lot of cool animals. I did think of one other little Reagan story from a time when she was walking with me. We were walking towards the black bear exhibit, and she said, "We don't want to get too close, or the bear will bite off our heads. And then we'll have to clean up all that blood." She's always thinking.

After the zoo adventure, we dropped Lee off so he could finish watching the Steelers game, then Jo-Jo, Jenny, Reagan and I headed off to the mall. I guess I could have prefaced all this fun activity by saying that Jo-Jo arrived Saturday afternoon for her Halloween visit. We went to get the girls some new clothes and some new toys, since they are obviously deprived. I'll do another post to show you the girls with their Cheetah Girls outfits. After that, we went to the grocery store because we needed to buy, as Jenny stealthily added to my grocery store list, a "pumcin." It was a long day, but fortunately, Lee and I were able to head off to bed at 8:00 like usual and leave the girls with Jo-Jo!

Another Tooth Gone

Jenny pulled this one out herself last night. I was trying to decide which picture to post, and I couldn't, so I'm just going to put up both.

Preview of Jenny's School Pictures

Well, I don't think she was farting when the pictures were being taken, but I don't know what this face is about. They sent these ID cards home, but they haven't sent the pictures yet. I think it's pretty funny!

Videos!

As promised, a couple videos of Reagan, who is completely insane - which she told me when I returned home from a grocery store run this evening.

Kind of Cute

Lee and I were just in the kitchen talking to Reagan. I got some chips and salsa at the store, and she wanted some. I told her she might not like the salsa. She had a bite and said, "Actually it's actually good. Really good."

Then Lee and I were talking about how cute she is and she said, "I'm kind of cute."

We both said that we thought she's very cute, and she just continues to say, "No, I'm kind of cute."

She is super-cute though. And I'm pretty sure she's eating handfuls of salsa right now.

Recent Pictures

I finally uploaded the recent pictures from the camera. The first are a few from gymnastics. Jenny's further away from where the parents sit, so it's harder to get good pictures of her. Reagan actually manages to look athletic at gymnastics!


I love this next one because Reagan just looks so excited to be doing a forward roll!


I think she looks so tall and slim in this one.


Jenny's excited to be there in this one:


She was able to do a flip on the bar without any assistance by the second week:


These next three are Jenny and her friend Elyse modeling and dancing.




That's it for now, but I'm planning to try to get some new videos of the girls this weekend, especially Reagan. Pretty much everything she says these days is hilarious, but it's much funnier to hear her than to hear me tell it. I at least want to get a video of her and her current favorite phrase - "Dang, girl!" She says "Dang" more often than anyone else in the entire world. We'll see how it goes!

Bloody Fairy

Jenny and Reagan went with Jo-Jo to the create-your-own pottery place here for Grandparents Day last month. They made several items, but Jenny's favorite is this angel. She loves angels for some reason, and now that she sees how this one turned out, she's calling it the bloody fairy. You can't see it in this picture, but the only other part of her painted red is her hands.

Bloody Mary

Sometimes Jenny's friends are so helpful.

Jenny: My friend Cheyenne said that if you stare in a mirror and say "Bloody Mary" 6 times then you'll be dead before you say it the seventh time.

Me: That's not true.

Jenny: How do you know? Have you tried it?

Because obviously she would believe any of her friends before she believes me.

I'm going to try to take some pictures to put on here tonight since I haven't in forever.

Spelling Skills

I'm afraid Lee's spelling skills are going to be passed on to Jenny.

Here's the conversation we just had in the car:

Me: Keke Palmer's on Radio Disney. You know Keke Palmer, don't you?

Lee: No.

Me: You know, from Akeelah and the Bee and Jump In. If I had a trainer like Laurence Fishburne, I could have won the National Spelling Bee.

Lee: If I had a trainer like that, and they asked me to spell the letter F, I wouldn't be able to do it.

Jenny: F starts with E.

Jenny's School Picture Experience

I don't actually have her pictures to post on here yet, but I do have a story!

Jenny had school pictures yesterday. When I picked her up, I asked her if she smiled pretty for her pictures.

She said, "Um . . . not exactly."

I asked her to explain and tell me what happened.

Her response: "Well, I was farting when they were taking my pictures, so I had a kind of embarrassed look on my face."

Then, she revealed that this was all a lie, and she told me three other faces she made for her pictures, so I'll be curious to see how they turn out!

Notes from Jenny

Jenny got mad this evening when we were in bed because she realized about half an hour after we'd been in bed that she forget to have dessert. She really wanted rainbow sherbert that she had the night before. I told her she could have some fruit snacks or a granola bar, but I didn't want her bringing ice cream into her bedroom. She got very upset with me about how unfair I was being and went into her room. She then delivered the following two notes to me.

Note #1:

oul I wut is to git doo zuzrt

I read this one as - All I want is to get dessert.

Note #2:

I'm soreu if I get on your nrfs it is my fafrit so can you plaz let me have the same cine I had yesd day.

I read this one as - I'm sorry if I get on your nerves. It is my fault, so can you please let me have the same kind I had yesterday.

So I let her go down and get a bowl of ice cream and eat it in our room because I was so impressed by her note. And because I felt bad that she believes she always gets on my nerves.

She told me that she's realized that her words don't always work because they get on my nerves, so she's going to start using letters. I told her she can still talk to me, but she's enjoying the letters right now anyway, and it's good handwriting practice!

The Weekend

The girls went to Wytheville this weekend while Lee and I went to see Rilo Kiley in Asheville. This is probably the last time they'll stay in Wytheville while Mom and Dad actually live there, so they were excited. Dad picked them up Friday afternoon, and they made it to Wytheville in time to go to dinner at their favorite Wytheville restaurant - Applebee's. Neither child was actually interested in talking to me while they were there, but Jenny did force herself to speak to me on the phone a couple times.

Their biggest excitement while they were there was going to see the new Disney movie that stars The Rock. Jenny is just calling the movie The Rock, instead of its actual title. Dad said they were very excited when he told them the movie choices and that was one. When they got back here on Sunday, I asked Reagan about it, and she told me the little girl in it was named "In." I thought that sounded wrong, and Dad couldn't remember what her name was, so we called Jenny in to find out what the girl's name was - it was "Peyton." So I guess Reagan got part of it.

Reagan was also happy because she got to sleep with Boo-boo. Mom told me that Reagan apparently woke up a couple times in the night to wake Mom up and ask for her water. She's so much fun to sleep with! Jenny and Dad were "downstairs," as the girls call the living room there. I mentioned to the girls that Mom and Dad's house in Wytheville doesn't have a downstairs, and Reagan just said, "Oh yeah. Just a hall." Mom said that both of them repeatedly referred to the living room as downstairs the whole time.

I asked Reagan if she missed us while she was gone. She had a long pause before saying, "Um . . . kind of." Then she said, "Well, I didn't really miss you, but I love you." Isn't she sweet?

After all that Wytheville fun, Dad brought the girls back early yesterday morning so we could go to the Dixie Classic Fair here. For the first time, it was just going to be me and the girls. Charlotte, Justin, Nicole - if you read this, I liked it much better when we all went together and I got to ride rides!

I told Jenny we could bring a friend since I had an extra ticket, so we picked up her friend Isabella on the way so that Jenny would have somebody to ride rides with her. The difficult part was that Isabella is taller than 48 inches, and Jenny is not quite 48 inches, so there was a lot that Isabella wanted to ride, but Jenny couldn't. Isabella had already been to the fair, so I was able to convince her to just ride things that Jenny could ride. They even went on one that Jenny was allowed to ride that flipped over several times, so Jenny went upside down. She's never scared of anything, so she was fine.

The other tough part this year was that I expected Reagan to ride the ferris wheel and nothing else, as usual. I tried to leave her at home, but she told me that she was already dressed for the fair, so she wanted to go. After the ferris wheel, she actually wanted to ride everything, so she kept getting mad that she wasn't tall enough to ride many of the rides. So then I had to talk Jenny and Isabella down to riding a couple things with Reagan.

Overall, they had a good time, but I have to admit that I was tired. I spent almost 4 hours at the fair as the only adult with 3 kids, and by the time we left, I was carrying 3 goldfish in bags, 2 little fish tanks, a large bag of kettle corn, a dolphin that Jenny had won, a snake that Isabella had won around my shoulders, and a smoothie that one of them couldn't carry because it was too cold - and trying to manage to hold Reagan's hand at the same time. It was definitely time to go home!