Witty November Post Title

Okay, here's the deal, I don't have the time to put the pictures in the blog where they belong. Too bad, you get to see all the pictures and read the captions then read the rest of the blog if you want.

Emily is getting so big these days. She won't let us spoon feed her anymore. She needs to be in charge and therefore will eat anything she can put in her mouth by herself. She doesn't have any teeth yet though so she gets a lot of soft foods like bananas. I don't think she minds.

Carving our pumpkin this year. Gwen was so good at scooping all the pumpkin guts out. That was her very favorite part. Then we sorted the seeds out and baked them, another big hit with Gwen.

We carved a witch holding a pumpkin. Yay for carving kits with easy to follow directions. Gwen wanted to help out more with the actual carving but a 3 year-old doesn't mix with sharp little knives. Instead, I gave her a crayon and let her color on the back side while I carved the front.

Emily the pony. She did not like wearing the hoof gloves or the hat.
Cowgirl Gwen and pumpkin Boot. Gwen thought it was very funny that the dog got to dress up too.

My cute little girls. Jonathan wanted them to dress up in a theme so I thought this was a cute one.

At grandma's house Gwen found a scary witch hat to wear. She was sort-of obsessed with witches and if she could have picked out her costume she would have switched between a witch and a princess. Too bad they had a cowgirl costume on sale because that's how I decided what they where going to be.Halloween night - the entire Rail family. I was a tiger and Daddy was a ninja.

Gwen has happy with her loot. Emily was jealous.

Gwen found out that she loves playing the leaves. She doesn't love being thrown into them though - right Daddy?

This is such a funny picture to me. She ran up to me with the camera and said take a picture of my bum. Then she struck this pose and I took the picture. She wants to take pictures of everyone's bums now.

After we put Emily down for her long afternoon nap we go on a walk to the mailbox. It usually means that we pretend that we're Dora the Explorer and Swiper etc. This day she wanted to take her stuffed "Boot" with her on the walk. Here she's making it sit.

Emily loves her bouncer. Sometimes it just wears her out though.

Gwen walking her "Boot".

Gwen's dance class performance. She's one of those blurs in a big poofy tutu.

What a pretty dancer she is. If only she'd pay attention in class.

Jami, Gwen, and Sam.

Mason, Emily and Sam crawling around after Grandpa's funeral.

Playing with all the second cousins (my cousins kids). There sure are more girls than boys in our family.

Noah stole my camera the night of Grandpa Madsen's viewing and took some good pictures of people for me. Here's my mom, my cousin, and my dad.

So, I typed out this huge blog post last night at work because we were slow for a few minutes and the computer didn't save it. Argh. Oh, well, I have a few spare-ish moments now before I have to leave for work in a bit to try to remember my post and add some super cute pictures.

We had Grandpa's funeral after I last posted. Although it was sad to say good-bye to Grandpa it was so neat to see all my cousins. There's 27 grand kids and 44+ great-grand kids. All the grand kids were able to make it to the funeral and it was so special to spend some time with all these people that love so many of the people that I do. It was also fun to hear so many stories about Grandma and Grandpa Madsen that I had never heard before. I actually learned a lot about him.

Okay, I really need to write about Halloween. It was awesome this year. The weather was just perfect. It had been cold and snowy the days before but for Halloween night it was about 55 degrees and dry. Gwen dressed up as a cowgirl and Emily was a pony. I found both the costumes for less than $15 at Kid-to-Kid. I love that store. We went to Grandma Buckholts' ward party on Wednesday as a dry-run for the actual Halloween night a few days later. It was fun to see it all click for Gwen as she went from car to car getting candy in her little pumpkin basket.

On the actual Halloween day I had to work at the clinic until about 5:00 then we went to our ward's trunk-or-treat. It was so fun to watch Gwen really love to see what everyone else had dressed up as. There was a guy dressed up as Bert from Sesame Street and she really wanted to go see him. We were walking up to him and he took his mask off. Gwen just froze in her tracks and stared at him. "He not Bert." she said to me looking disappointed. I explained to her that he was just pretending to be Bert like she was pretending to be a cowgirl. Although she was temporarily disillusioned, it helped to to realize that the people who were dressed in scary costumes weren't real either and were just pretending to be scary.

Also, this month Gwen had her first dance recital. For Gwen's birthday this year, Grandma Buckholts gave her dance lessons. It was for 3 and 4 year-olds and I think that Gwen was just a bit too young this year for it. She had fun at class but had a hard time paying attention for an entire hour. The teacher was really fun and engaging though and she loved getting dressed in her leotard and tights. For her recital I had to work, but Aunt Heidi and Sam and Jami came down to watch her. Aunt Heidi had made her a pretty dancing skirt and she loves it so much. Jonathan video taped the entire performance and I really didn't miss much. Gwen didn't even do the dance they had learned. Instead, she played in the big black curtains and got the other little girls to join her.

Thanksgiving is next week and we're looking forward to spending time with the people that we love and eating yummy food. I'll remember to bring along the cameras and make another post before too long.