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I love my leaf blower. It is by far my favorite yard tool. It makes me feel like the goddess that I really am. Piles of leaves scattered about in the lawn? Crank it up to full blast! Leaves and dirt littering the deck? There they go! Sand drifting all over the patio from the sandbox? Watch it fly! Kids with runny noses and dirty faces? Wait, maybe not. Blowing leaves has been a therapeutic activity for me this week. I feel like a mini Moses parting my personal Red Sea . Even better, the boys love it when I blow leaves and we have a good time playing with the piles afterwards. Leaves are the greatest fun for little people. It is like confetti littering the yard. You can jump in it, throw it, and pile it on your brother’s head and no one gets mad at you (as opposed to dirt and sand). When we are done, I put on the vacuum/compost attachment to the said glorious leaf blower and before long the mess is sucked, chopped, and bagged. I need one of these for the house. The only bummer is that ...

Have you had the pleasure of going to the doctor with small children? If not, let me share. First, you enter the lobby. Chances are you are bit late because you had to corral everyone into the car, buckle seat belts, make sure that your bag is packed with ample snacks, sippy cups, diapers, wipes, and toys, not to mention wallet, keys, and cell phone, franticly drive through traffic, drag everyone out of the car safely across the parking lot and into the lobby. Likely you will encounter a line of people waiting to be checked in at the desk. You wait in line, keeping an eye on the four year old while holding the squirmy two year old. Once you get to the desk, you scramble through your purse for your insurance card and credit card, all while holding the two year old and keeping an eye on the four year old. Hopefully this isn’t your first visit because otherwise you are given a huge pile of forms on a clipboard that make you fill in your address and insurance information maybe ten times. F...

Our life is like alphabet soup these days. Davin is learning his letters and finds them everywhere. His favorite is D because it is his personal letter, and R is a close second. Not only does he know the first letters to his name, he knows the first letters for most of the kids in his class. He finds letters everywhere we go! Waking up can be a little hard sometimes, but as soon as it sets in that he is riding the bus, he perks up and runs up the hill to the bus stop. He spends the weekends asking if he can go back to school. It is so fun to see him learning new things and having fun in school.

I am often asked how old Rowan is and I find myself saying that he is two. He is nearly two and I find myself rounding up. He seems so big lately I forget that he is still one. In a recent acrobatic achievement, he figured out how to climb out of his crib so he moved to a toddler bed. He moves furniture around the kitchen to maneuver up to the cupboards to find a snack or help pour salt into the soup. He loves to color with chalk on the driveway, eat suckers, and wear my sunglasses. He recently got a haircut and he looks so grown-up. He is growing so fast!

Davin and Rowan have been on a Disney Cars kick for the last few months. We have the movie memorized and feel intimately connected with all of the characters. So when we asked Davin what he wanted to be for Halloween, the answer wasn’t a surprise: Lightening McQueen. We looked around for costumes in the stores and decided they were a little lame, so Chris came up with an idea to build one out of cardboard. Our initial plan was to dress Rowan in one of Davin’s old costume (a BYU football uniform) but as soon as he saw Davin’s costume, he clearly indicated that he wanted one of his own. We spent Wednesday night in our car shop whipping up vehicles for our boys to wear to the church trunk ‘o treat the next day. They were a hit! I was a little worried that Rowan wouldn’t wear his but he kept it on the whole night. On Saturday, the boys wore their costumes to our neighborhood Halloween party. Sadly it started to rain and kept raining all night, cutting back our trick o’ treating activities ...

Chris and I decided to host an adult Halloween party this year and picked the Harry Potter series as our theme. We invited our guests to come in Wizard appropriate wear and assigned dishes from the books. Roast turkey and butter beer were our contributions for the evening and we also enjoyed other Hogwarts dishes such as Cauldron Cakes, Fizzing Whizbees, and Pumpkin Pasties. The house was converted to a modified version of Hogwarts, including floating candles in the Great Hall. Each couple was sorted into a house and we played games to see which house would win the house cup. We played “Guess the Bean” where participants tried Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans and tried to guess the most correctly (most were yummy flavors but there were a few nasty ones as well), “Guess the Costume” where we tried to determine who was who, and “Harry Potter Pictionary.” Of course, Gryffindor took the house cup and won a stash of Gringott’s gold. We had a great time hanging out with our friends; they we...

There is a reason why you have two ears. Sound attacks your head from all sides and it helps to be able to hear from your right as well as your left. Rowan had a cochlear implant put in his left ear and we opted to go forward with the right ear as well. He had the surgery over a week ago and everything went really well, much like the first. He had a huge bandage on his head again, but it didn’t take too long for him to rebound and get back to his normal busy self. In a few weeks, assuming that he heals normally, he will start wearing the device on the right as well. Like before, it will slowly be turned up in order for him to adjust to the increased input, though it won’t be nearly as dramatic because he can already hear at full volume in his left ear. I’ve had many ask about his progress and he is doing very well. Of course he isn’t quite up to speed with the rest of his peers in terms of language development, but he is catching up. He can identify sounds and link them to ideas. He ca...