Pumpkin Time!

It is that time of year when pumpkins are the focus of our family fun.  Last week Grandpa Roper came out and spent a couple of days with us.  We went to the Punkin’ Chunkin’ competition.  As we discussed on our way out, it is kind of absurd that people pay good money to watch other people launch (or try to launch) pumpkins as far as they possibly can, but the huge crowds we passed who were waiting to get in prove that it must have some sort of draw to people other than just us.  After all, how can anyone resist gigantic contraptions made with the sole purpose of launching pumpkins?  Not us!

I like this next one.  It looks like Grandpa is a serious punkin chunker!

We also had fun with Grandpa Roper picking out Halloween costumes, but there will be more on that later.  After he left, we decided that since our Halloween costumes were all set, we needed to also pick out our Halloween Jack-o-lantern carving pumpkins!

We headed out to Rock Creek Farm north of Denver where we let each of the boys pick out their own pumpkin.  It was quite the process.

Run before everyone takes the best pumpkins!!

The risk of the best pumpkins being taken before our boys chose one was actually quite high.  After all, there was a lot that went into determining the best pumpkin.  It had to be be tough enough for a 3-year-old to stand on…

Not too heavy…

This one had a worm, which actually made it climb in the rankings for awhile…

Too small…

It must be inspected for approval by the Pumpkin Princess…

And then finally a selection is made.

To celebrate the victory of finding the perfect pumpkins, I thought I would take a picture of all my little pumpkins.  I forgot that they’re actually my little monkeys.  It was a miracle just to get them all in the same frame- forget the adorable fall pumpkin photo-op!

We also had a little bit of fall fun to go along with the pumpkin hunt.

Fun- or terror- depending on how you look at it.  In this case, Derek thought pushing Adam down the slide (at our request, since he wouldn’t come down) was fun.  Adam thought it was terror.

I think we’re officially ready for Halloween now!  Wow- and 2 weeks early!  So far, fall of 2013 is proving to be a success!

One Year

Amelia went to the doctor last week to see how she has grown in a year.  Here are the stats:

She went from this:

7 pounds, 9 ounces; sadly I don’t remember how many inches long, but it was between 18-20.  Her birth was a little unusual, after all.  It must be documented on her charts somewhere, right?

To this:

Weight: 18 pounds, 8 ounces- 31st percentile!!!  She jumped up more than 20 percent in her height and weight since 3 months ago.  She is our first child to go above the 20th percentile in weight.  She actually fits in 12 month clothes!!  Maybe we aren’t all doomed to be shrimps!
Height: 28.5 inches- 29th percentile!  The nurse said it is rare for a baby to be as proportionate as Amelia in height and weight.  Not a surprise, since she is practically perfect.
Head: 18 inches- 69th percentile!  She must have brains in that large head of hers somewhere, although her reckless desire to crawl up the stairs then turn around and dangle dangerously on the brink of sure disaster makes me wonder sometimes.
Favorite Foods: Amelia loves whatever the rest of us are eating.  No matter how much she loves whatever else I’m offering her, if the rest of the family isn’t eating it, it gets thrown immediately to the floor.  She loves meat of any kind and freeze dried fruit puffs.
Favorite things to do: Amelia LOVES wearing necklaces.  I know they are a choking hazard, but she finds those things and will not be stopped until they are hanging around her neck.  She puts them on and takes them off and puts them on and crawls around for awhile then takes them off then puts them back on ALL DAY LONG.
Also, Amelia has recently started walking around like a pro.  She actually prefers it to crawling, unless she is on rough terrain or is trying to get somewhere fast (like away from me when she wants to do something naughty like climb the stairs).
Talents: On top of walking, Amelia can clap her hands and wave (although I think she associates that movement more with popcorn popping on the apricot tree).  She knows the word “bonk” and loves to bang her head against ours when we say it (Adam loved that too.  I think it is kind of disturbing.).  She is starting to make intonations of words without really saying anything recognizable.  For instance, she says the tones of  “uh oh” without it really sounding like the words, if that makes sense.  She also says the tones of “where is it?” and actually says Dada.

And, just because she is so cute and I can’t take enough pictures of her, here are a few more pictures:

We love our one year old!

The Joys of Home Gardening

We love our little garden here at out house.  We’ve been planting and harvesting for years.  Even though our plot is so small that we never seem to yeild enough food to satisfy our appetites, we still enjoy our little harvest every summer.  This year we had some particularly interesting produce:

The Angry Bird Tomato:

The Crazy Corn:

The Two-Headed Grape:

Okay, so the grape wasn’t from our garden, but we got it from the grocery store from around the same time we were harvesting the others.  Hmmmm… maybe it is something in the soil this year?

I wonder what we’ll dig up next summer!

It’s Birthday Time Around Here!

With back-to-back birthdays, it is hard to keep up with documenting the festivities.  Last week Derek turned 9.  Wow, that’s old!

To celebrate, we took 4 of his friends out to breakfast at his favorite breakfast spot, The Original Pancake House.  He invited Paxton Becker (whose birthday is the day before Derek’s and we actually celebrated on Paxton’s birthday since Derek’s birthday was on Sunday), Bella Mullen, Wyatt Stockton, and Luke Upright.  It was fun to watch him interact with those kids- particularly Paxton and Bella, who have been his best friends now for a couple of years.  They are goofy, that’s for sure!  Bella kept reminding us that girls mature faster than boys.  I think she felt like she had plenty of evidence just from that one outing!

We brought a little quiz to the party for the kids to fill out.  It was fun to see their responses, and they enjoyed laughing about the answers.  See how many you know (you might have to click on the picture for a larger image if your eyes are bad)…..

Wyatt and Luke both said Derek’s freckles are their favorite thing about Derek.  Paxton said Derek’s positive attitude.  Bella said, “He lets me annoy him and he lets me call him ‘Freckled Face’.”

The servers came and sang to Derek (much to his embarrassment), and we had a fun morning together.

On the actual birthday, Grandma and Grandpa Ludwig came over.  We had a golf ball cake (inspired by a little miniature golfing outing I took the kids on right at the end of summer break).

We opened presents.  We got him a Star Wars paper airplane book.  Grandma and Grandpa got him an electric helicopter, and Evan got him a pack of Pokemon cards.  I think the presents were a hit!

It is fun to watch Derek grow up.  He’s a kind, cheerful boy with a lot of energy and creativity.  He’s turning out to be quite helpful and so far, being 9 years old is treating him well.  Happy (belated) birthday, Derek!

P.S.  Answers to the quiz:
1. Wednesday
2. Utah
3. c
4. b
5. e
6. b.
7. d
8. 5
Are you an expert??

The Birthday Party

As much as I wanted to throw a fun party for Amelia’s birthday, it just didn’t work out.  The people we would typically invite were not able to come.  Not one to give up, I decided to have a party anyway even though it would just be our little family in attendance.

The party started off a little rough.  I made Amelia a cute pink ruffle cake and topped it with a pink candle.  I lit the candle, we started singing, I placed the cake in front of her and started to take pictures.  Suddenly she reached out to grab the flame (which I should have anticipated).  Startled, I lunged forward and hastily blew out the candle (and by default blew straight into her face) with a bit too much alarm.  It scared Amelia so much that she immediately burst into sobs and we had a hard time cheering her up for quite awhile.  The poor thing.  We never even finished singing “Happy Birthday.”

  You can see that while she never really got into eating the cake (despite the fact that it was healthy and delicious), she at least cheered up a little bit.  We managed to salvage the party spirit and enjoyed watching her sample the cake.  At least Glenn and I enjoyed it.  The boys all thought she was taking WAY too long and that watching her eat tiny cake molecules was a bit boring.  Anyway, here are a few shots from the party…

That last picture makes me laugh.  I love how she’s holding up one finger like, “Wait!  You just blew out my candle?  And didn’t even finish singing?”  We all got a good laugh out of the tragedy except Amelia (and maybe Evan, who couldn’t believe I was so negligent to put her in danger like that).

Then we remembered her party hat, and she thought about cheering up and eating the cake…

She did cheer up (a bit), but still wouldn’t eat the cake, so we gave her a fork.

And she ate some cake at last…

Since the cake didn’t seem to be a huge hit, we decided to move on to opening presents (messy frosting hair and all).  This had a slow start as well, but pretty soon Amelia was having a great time shaking the presents and trying to get them open.  She loved them all!

(Presents: toothbrush and toothpaste, cute outfit and mittens from Aunt Amy, stacking cups)

Amelia also carried on the Roper family tradition of getting her own tissue box to empty for her birthday.  She got about half way through the box, and seemed pretty fascinated by the fact that another kleenex always popped up, no matter how many she pulled out.

As the party started to wind down, I changed her into her cozy PJ’s and we had some snuggle time (especially since her birthday brought the first snow for the season here in Denver).

Then, just to show us who is boss, she decided that although she rejected her cake, she would happily gobble up handfuls of peas for dinner.  I guess I can’t complain, but I didn’t work nearly as hard on the peas.

We ended the evening with a little visit to the spot where she came into the world a year ago…

Despite the lack of distinguished guests and the hasty candle extinguishing, the party was a success.  It turned out to be a happy birthday after all!