The Walkers: Us Lately

So this post is going to be a random compilation of different things we've been up to the last month or so. Things have been CRAZY busy since the kids started school and I started my internship but we've settled in to our routine. I invested in a little weekly calendar that hangs on the fridge so that we can keep track of everyone's schedules, and that seems to help.

Malea started her first season of soccer this year, and has one game left. Kindergarten soccer is hilarious to watch by the way! Half the time Malea doesn't really get which direction to go. I have noticed some improvement with her over the last few weeks though, which is awesome. I am secretly a little happy that it's almost done.....we weren't too thrilled when we found out her games were every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:15pm, which is right at dinner time and usually when my kids are the grumpiest (not to mention daddy is at work then and has had to miss all but one of her games). Malea so far hasn't been a huge fan of soccer, but I think it has been a good experience for her. We'll see if she decides to play next year :)

Malea with Grandma Vicki at one of her games

There she is in the red jersey.....she looks so cute :)

Another reason I'm not a fan of week night evening games.....I have to chase Isaac around all over the place and keep him from wandering off since Keith is at work (here he is climbing a fence, this particular night was rough, I even lost him for a few minutes).

So Nu Skin does a Lagoon day every year but this year it happened to rain really bad that day so as we were starting to drive up there we decided to turn around and take the kids to Provo Beach Resort instead. We were bummed we didn't get to go but we weren't sure if any of the rides were open and the roads were pretty bad so we didn't want to risk it. We still ended up having a fun family night :)

They happened to be doing the Chalk the Block at the Riverwoods mall while we were there, so we walked around and looked at some of them. The poor artists had spent hours on their artwork and it poured rain! The rain had cleared up when we got there though and a lot of them had take off the tarps and started working on them again. They had a lot of fun activities for kids like face painting, balloon animals, etc. They also had chalk available for anyone who wanted to do their own artwork. It was really fun!

Isaac showing off his artwork :)

We've also been getting ready for Halloween at our house! I'm a huge fan of Halloween and started decorating pretty early this year...people can give me a hard time about it if they want, but I don't even care because I love it!

Here's Isaac in his costume :) He wants to be Woody again this year!

Here's some little crafts Malea made:

Some of our Halloween decor

Malea and Isaac coloring pumpkins

Coloring Halloween coloring pages for family night

Kiddos in their Halloween jammies and shirts :)

Here's a few other random tidbits lately:

This happened just after Isaac's 3rd birthday.....I was DREADING taking it away from him but it was long overdue. We warned him for a few weeks before his 3rd birthday that binky's "break" when you turn 3, and then after his birthday we snipped the tips of all of them. We were prepared to deal with some serious grumpiness, but surprisingly he handled it really well. He would just look at them and say "broke" and then move on. He handled it WAY better than Malea did when we took them from her. About the only thing that was affected with his sleeping.....it messed up his naps for a while, I thought we had lost them forever for a little while there but he has adjusted.

Here he is on one particular day that he WOULD NOT take a nap in his bed so I just figured we'd bag it for the day and then he fell asleep on the couch 15 minutes before I had to go pick up Malea from school (of course, ugh). His naps have gotten better although they have gotten shorter and there's some days he won't nap at all. I knew the day would come but I thought it would be later. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but Malea napped for so long that it is weird for me that he's already starting to grow out of them.

Here is a pic of Malea from last night....she fell asleep on the couch at 6pm (ugh)....she has the opposite problem where she doesn't take naps anymore (since she has afternoon kindergarten) but then by about 5pm she is grumpy as all get out and will fall asleep in random places if I'm not vigilant. It's funny how different my kids are!

Here's some artwork that the kids have done lately....these are Malea's:

The top right and bottom left are Isaac's:

Couple of haunted house pictures Malea drew:

(the windows have little dots in them that are the heads of "Monster High" dolls, lol)

Malea's writing has REALLY improved in the short time she's been in Kindergarten. It is seriously amazing! For some reason this picture turned but here she wrote my name a few times....I thought she did a great job!

This is very common to find around the house, where she practices writing certain letters over and over and over. It's pretty neat!

Isaac has also been enjoying school and has been getting more in to crafts as well.

Here's Malea holding a snake that we found in our front yard the other day (*shudder*)

The other day I couldn't find Isaac so I went looking for him downstairs.....I was starting to get worried that maybe he wandered outside (as he often does) but then I realized that he was hiding underneath this white bin! He was holding super still and the only way I knew he was in there was I could hear breathing....what a funny kid!