Brent watched the kids while I went shopping at Target for after Halloween sales. I found Ava and Coen costumes for next year, and I found myself some real life Tupperware. Oooo so exciting, Target sells Tupperware now!
Playing fishing with daddy.
Audrey's face when I told her a new friend named Cory is going to come play games with her at preschool. (Speech therapy!)
Daddy is nice and makes the kids pancakes or waffles for breakfast on the weekends sometimes. I am never motivated to make breakfast for the kids- once a day cooking for dinner is enough for me!
I took the kids to see Ava's friend in Beauty & the Beast. It was at Lane Community College which is on the south side of Eugene, about 20 minutes away from our house.
The kids loved it, even though a lot of the singing and acting was questionable.
Daylight savings time meant we got an extra hour in the morning on Sunday. I had time to do braids on both girls!
Ava practicing the piano- not sure if you can tell she has a scowl on her face. Every day I need to sit by her to practice or else she won't do her songs, and every time about 10 minutes into her practicing she gets angry about hitting wrong notes.
A selfie from Coen I found on my phone. I'm guessing he is giving a thumbs up because it's his birthday :)
Ava and Coen had no school on his birthday so we got McDonalds for lunch since this is what Coen asks for multiple times a week.
That evening we had two families with boys over for tacos and to play games. Coen is usually the only boy with his sisters, cousins, and friends, so I made sure to have lots of boys for his birthday!
We did a little Luca theme with the Luca toys and blue decorations.
His happy/shy face blowing out his candle!
Opening presents:
At 7 years old, Coen is a kid of opposites. He is a perfect angel at school- his teacher adores him! When he gets home, he can be a stinker and throw fits and scream. He can be the sweetest brother to Audrey and diffuses her bad moods by talking to her in his gentle, high sing-song voice, which makes her immediately melt and agree to anything he says. He can also be the annoying brother who can't stop teasing her. He is Ava's best friend and enemy. Coen is extremely smart and excels in math and reading. He also is a slow-poke and always the one we're waiting for. Coen is very inquisitive and a deep thinker. He asks questions about death, and God, and the way things work. When I give him an answer, he'll be quiet and stare in the distance for a minute. It always reminds me of a picture I have of him as a newborn in the hospital, when he was staring off into space, totally pensive and we said, wow, how deeply this baby is thinking! Coen is a sweetheart and still likes to sit on my lap to listen to me read. We sure love our Coen!
Audrey said, "I know Cory at my school!" The speech therapist works with a couple other kids at the school, so she was excited to hear she got to play with her too.
The kids had picture day at school so I took my own after school, including Audrey so she wouldn't feel left out.
I wanted to remember what a good reader Coen is in 1st grade, so I took a video of him reading a book he had never read. He can read almost anything without needing help, including scriptures.
The kids had Spirit week and this was "fancy day."
One day when Ava was practicing her scale she said "For some reason I feel like my left hand is smaller than normal. Either that or the piano is crooked." I laughed so hard!
Ava said mom, look, we can be a star! Take our picture! 
Tammy Peaslee showed Coen a book called "Creepy Carrots" one time when she came to read to the kids and Coen loved it! So she bought him his own copy and made him a scavenger hunt for his birthday. This was a clue:
The kids LOVE Tammy and we are so grateful for good friends who step in to become special people to us when we don't have family around.
I made this Fall garland at Super Saturday. I had a nice time visiting with the ladies in my ward!
Audrey had Family Day at preschool and Brent and I went to watch her sing songs with her class.
Delicious chocolate ice cream:
Our kids are growing up! I feel like the recorder is a rite of passage of childhood.
I took Ava and Coen to our second play of the month, Alice @ Wonderland. It was at our local high school and we went to support a girl in our ward. Brent stayed home with Audrey and they had a great time.
The play was funny and good! Here are the kids with Felicia, the white rabbit.
An awesome hairdo for Audrey:
Brent and I had a date to see Christmas with CS Lewis at the Hult Center. We were kind of laughing because we felt like the only people below 60 in the theater.
Pizza and a movie at Dad's office was so fun for Audrey and Coen! Ava stayed home with me and all the kids were happier and more peaceful. Sometimes the best thing we can do for their fighting is to just split them up for a while.
Video Audrey's speech therapist sent me, that just melted my heart! I love seeing her big eyes looking up at the therapist, trying so hard.
Brent coordinated a YM activity where they put together Thanksgiving dinner kits for some needy families in our ward. I went to Target and bought 10 turkeys of varying size and got some other supplies ready for the activity. He was worried about the activity since the YW ended up not coming due to a miscommunication. But the YM got 10 kits done and delivered to the families who were very grateful.
Audrey told me one day "Me no Audrey Grace. Me big. Me Audrey Dahn now." She keeps getting mad at us if we call her Audrey Grace!
A couple pictures from Audrey's date with dad at home. This book, by the way, if the funniest! It's called Norman Didn't Do It.
It was an amazing play though! It was a one-man play, which I've never experienced before. The man was CS Lewis and he talked to us as if we were in his living room, telling us about his Christmas memories. Brent's professor's son watched the kids for us, and after we got pizza and ate it with the kids (the parents were out of town).
A solo-cup-little-people world in our living room.
I printed our Christmas cards nice and early! They turned out really dark (below) so Walgreens fixed them for me, and then started the long process of addressing envelopes and getting them out.
Audrey was being awfully quiet when I found her hiding under Ava's desk. She said, "don't look at my hands." She colored on them with markers!
Googly eye children, haha. They wanted to see what they looked like with these on their eyes.
Thanksgiving- I spent the previous afternoon and most of Thanksgiving morning cooking the meal. I cooked the whole thing by myself for our family and 4 missionaries. It was tiring, but fun and all turned out yummy. In the morning we watched the Thanksgiving parade for a bit.
Then we went for a bike ride -it was pretty chilly!
The sisters and elders from our ward came to eat with us. One of the Elders came in with a pie he had made himself! We had a nice meal together and toasted our martinellis to what we're each grateful for.
The following Tuesday we had the missionaries over to dinner again. Here they are teaching the lesson afterward and involving our kids.
Ava lost a tooth and Coen wrote this note to the tooth fairy that made me laugh. It says "Dear tooth farry I lost my tooth and i lost it :( could i still have money?" In case you're wondering, Coen did get a coin that night from the tooth fairy for his sweet note since it's true- he once lost a lost tooth.
For activity days we went to sign Christmas songs with Tammy Peaslee's mom. She's in our ward and has dementia, and loves music. She led us all as we sang. The girls all loved it- it was a great activity.
We started out our Thanksgiving break with 7am dentist appointments on Wednesday morning! All the kids were good and brave for their cleaning.
The cute sisters in our ward.
On Friday our family went to a movie- Strange World. I think Coen is the only one who liked the movie. It was still exciting to get out of the house, and we even got a popcorn, which the kids were so happy about.
Audrey had a teddy bear picnic at her school and chose to bring her favorite pink elephant.
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