Cornelius Chronicles

It was a fun Thanksgiving week for us. Dustin had the entire week off work so I took full advantage of his time off and ran the family ragged. On Monday we went to Space Center. They had a new "National Geographic Maps" exhibit. There were a lot of interactive play ares for the kids to explore that taught them about maps and explorers. They were able to play in a tent, in an airplane cockpit, in a boat, and put together a pyramid, among many other activities. It was awesome! We also did the usual space touristy stuff too. I couldn't resist getting their pictures in this funny cut out. We love playing at Space Center Houston. We are definitely getting out money's worth out of our season passes. On Tuesday we began potty training Loyd. We don't have any pictures to illustrate for obvious reasons. (I would start to doubt my sanity if I did have pictures to post.) He is doing great. We need to invest more focused time with him, but he is catching on. Wish...

Vampire fever hit our house this week. :>D I got to go out with some of my friends for a girls' night out to see New Moon on opening day and Loyd figured out how to wear the vampire teeth from Halloween. I think Loyd looks pretty snazzy with those pearly whites. You may also notice the drool dripping from his chin. Well, this week he decided to get all four of his canines. He has been a trooper through this teething process. I guess he has both the werewolves and the vampires represented. We don't like to pick favorites. ;-) Go Team Loyd! Here are some more pictures of our cute baby Xavier. He is such a good baby. He is starting to sleep for 6 hour stretches at night. Dustin and I couldn't be happier about it. We are so glad we have our little Mr. X. He has such a sweet round face. :) I weighed him this week to see how hefty our little man is getting. Our little chunk is 11 and a half pounds! I suppose it's time to pull out the next sized clothe...

So, I must brag about myself. Let it be known, I have gone on three (yes, three!) excursions outside of the house with all three children by myself this week. Yes, I know, I am amazing. ;>D We were quite the production to behold as I got everyone out of the car. I wore Xavier in the front pack, Loyd was securely buckled in his monkey leash, and Rebekah, the good little girl that she is, obediently held my hand. Maybe I can handle life with three kids, maybe. For now, I'm just glad to be able to leave the house every once in a while. Here is our story time group. They have lots of fun together every week learning about the alphabet. This week they made ice cream (we learned about the letter "I"). As you can see, they enjoyed the fruits of their labors immensely. We also do finger plays, sing songs and read some books. Great Grandma Young would be very proud of me. She would also be proud of Bekah. She has been practicing her finger play, "Houses....

We moved beds around this week. We moved the bunk bed to the kids' room and set up the crib in the new nursery. I'll post pictures of the nursery when we get Grandma C's greatly anticipated quilt for Xavier and hang it up on his wall. Rebekah and Loyd thought it was the coolest thing ever to see the beds come apart. They also thought we had been holding out on them all this time with the bunk bed. Clearly it's really a jungle gym. :) Bekah is enjoying her new bed and sprawls all across it at night to bask in it's giant glory. It also makes for a great little fort to play dinosaur train or princesses on. (Don't the valences look great with the bed spreads!? Grandma P. made the valences and we got the quilts from Great Grandma Young. Grandma C. made the beautiful quilts hanging on the wall in the picture below. There is a lot of Grandma love in this room.) Loyd made the big transition out of the crib and into the toddler bed. We have had a few growing p...

We have candy coming out of our ears and the kids couldn't be happier about it. We had a wonderful Halloween. Here are some pictures of the kid in their cute costumes. Enjoy! We kicked off Halloween with a ward Trunk-or-Treat on Friday. There were lots of ghouls and goblins wandering the church parking lot. Loyd wasn't sure what to think. I'm convinced he thought everyone was the actual creature they were dressed as. Luckily for us, he braved the scary hoard to collect quite the stash of candy. :) On Halloween night we went to our friends' neighborhood and went around with them to collect more precious loot. I'm sure we had the cutest collection of Disney characters roaming the streets of Seabrook . We did get to one house that was decked out with spider webs, bones, tomb stones, and scary music. Rebekah flatly refused to approach the door and proceeded to scream and cry when Loyd went with Daddy to get some candy. She was deathly afraid for his life. H...