Random

When Hailey got home from school today, I could tell that she was tired. She went right over to Alyssa. Before I knew it, she was putting her (clean) finger in Alyssa's mouth since she couldn't find a pacifier and proceeded to suck her own thumb. We have some serious oral fixations in this family.

I told Grant that babies grow very quickly. Every morning he asks, "Did Alyssa get a little bigger last night?" He loves being a big brother.

First Sunday

We took Alyssa to church for the first time today. She slept the entire time. Unfortunately, now we have high expectations.

Sleepy Baby

Alyssa is a marvelous sleeper. She sleeps between 5-7 hours at night before she wakes up to eat and then goes right back to sleep. She is so good natured and I just love to watch her.

She's here!

We're so excited that our little girl is here. Alyssa Elaine Stradling was born on October 28th and weighed in at 8 lbs. 6 oz. She is so sweet and the other children are loving having a little baby around. Hailey cried this morning as she left for school because she didn't want to leave her sister. I'll post more pictures later.

Marriage

Hailey came home from school the other day telling me that she was going to marry a boy in her class and was wondering if that was OK. We talked about waiting until she was older, etc., but I did ask her what it was about this boy that made her want to marry him. "He's nice." was her reply. A good starting point. Tonight, she told me that he had "broken up" with her and was going to marry her friend. Am I being paranoid, or is 5 a little young to be discussing marriage and breaking up? I'm totally not ready for this!

Trunk or Treat

We had our annual trunk-or-treat at church last night and all of the kids were excited to dress up and get free candy. Grant was easily talked into wearing our giraffe costume that we already had, but everyone else got to choose their outfit. Hailey was a cat (and let me tell you-she was totally convinced she looked AWESOME. She loves her costume), Carter went as Harry Potter, and true to his favorite past time, Andrew went as Mario.

Pumpkin Patch

I took 3 of the kids to a local pumpkin patch last week as they had a day off of school. They were able to feed the animals, play in the corn maze, slide down the huge blow up slide, take a hayride and ride the ponies. We also grabbed a couple of pumpkins on our way out. All in all, it was a great day.