Fall is coming (and going)

So fall has come and pretty much gone in our neck of the woods, as evidenced by our snowy drive through the canyon this weekend. To welcome the colder weather I got the girls some new clothes last week and Rachel was so excited about her new shirt with a "starf" on it! I put it on her and tied it, but she kept re-tying it how she thought it should go. The only problem was, the way she tied it wasn't how I thought it should go. I finally convinced her to let me tie it my way long enough to take this picture (with my phone camera since the battery on our camera died just in time for the finished product).

Jeff snapped this photo during the battle-of-the-starf-tying (just before our camera battery died).
In other news, Rachel got to be the leader in her preschool class last week. She was so excited! Each week one of the preschool friends gets to be the leader as they walk to and from their preschool classroom. I think Rachel thought she was pretty important stuff with the big job that was placed upon her shoulders. I am glad I left to pick her up early enough this day so that I could snap a few photos with my phone.



And finally, I had to add a picture of Jaki sleeping. It is quite the feat to be able to rock this little one to sleep. She's not such a fan, but Jeff finally conquered the task.

Oh yeah, and here's a cute little video of Jaki and Rachel helping Jeff sweep up a crumbled roll. Jeff was trying to help Jaki hold the little broom and sweep it into the dustpan and Jaki thought she needed to lay on her belly and get down close to the mess.

Keeping Me On My Toes

Rachel says some funny things. At work I'll tell some of them every once in a while (probably more often than my co-workers want to hear) and one time another nurse told me I should write them down. What better place to write them down? Now you get to hear them too!

The other day she was sitting on her little princess lunchbox and the lid of the lunchbox was out in front of her. She was looking at the princesses telling them what colors they were wearing, "Belle, you are wearing yellow, Cinderella, you are wearing blue, Sleeping Beauty, you are wearing pink." And then she took a close look at each of there faces and said in such a sweet little princessy voice, "Sleeping Beauty, could you please move your hair so I can see your earrings?"

In preschool they must've learned about communities today, because at the library thats all she could talk about. "Commudidy this, and commudidy that." When we got back out to the truck I asked her if she knew what a community was.
"Yes, a commudidy is a turtle."
Me: "No, a community is a group of people, like Logan is a community."
Rachel: "No a commudidy is a turtle. And a commudidy is a bear. And a commudidy is a rabbit"
Well, I thought it was funny anyway.

This morning she came in to sleep with me for a couple hours. When my alarm clock went off she kinda woke up, mumbled something about a turtle, and then tried to go back to sleep.
Me: "What were you talking about?"
Rachel: "Well, Swiper (from Dora) just came and tried to take all the bunnies."
This is the first time she's ever remembered about her dreams that I can think of. Before I would ask her what she dreamed about and ask if she dreamt about horses and she would just say, "Yeah, I dreamed about horses." But there was no prompting this time.

My favorite happened a couple weeks ago. I was carrying the trash out and was just about to the front door and Rachel was walking into the bathroom to go wash her hands when I hear, "What the h#$@ are you doing here?"
I stop in my tracks and ask, "What did you just say?"
"What the h#$@ are you doing here?" (with a little emphasis on the h#$@)
I set the trash down, turn around, and just before getting to the bathroom control my laugh/awe. Rachel, we don't say h#$@.
Rachel responds, "What the h#$@ are you doing here?"
"Rachel, don't say h#$@, say heck." (Yes I know, it is much better to replace real swear words with fake swear words.)
Rachel looks back into the mirror and says, "What the heck are you doing here?" And keeps repeating this as I walk out to put the trash outside. So far she hasn't ever said it again. Sadly enough I'm pretty sure its from watching Lost with me. I've been in quite a lost kick lately since we've turned off our satelite and I can watch Lost online. One day while I was trying to rock her to sleep for her nap I had Lost on and thought she was getting pretty sleepy when a scene comes on with Jack and Rachel says, "What's Jack going to do? Is he going to kill him?" Apparently I've got to rethink my choice of viewing material. (At least while Rachel's in the room.)

Holy Cow!

I have so much that I would like to post right now, but I know I won't get to all of it. I had started this blog hoping it would be like my journal, but I often either forget/don't find the time/ or just don't want to blog and soon I find that I've not recorded a lot of the goings on in our family. I guess what I'll do now is start from Halloween and go backwards and see where I get.

As you can see, Rachel was a beaver and Jaki was a Utah State cheerleader. Aren't they so cute!

For Family Home Evening we went on the Pumpkin Walk in North Logan. We dressed the girls up in their costumes since they had warm costumes and it was a cold night. They had fun posing as these and many other characters. The hard part of the night was keeping Jaki out of the jackolanterns. She is getting so fast!

The night before Halloween Charlie, Debbie and the boys came over to carve the pumpkins with the girls.

I know this picture looks kinda scary, but don't worry, Rusty totally has it under control!

Jaki just mainly had fun eating her cookie.

Charlie and Debbie were exhausted from all the festivities.

Before our Trunk-or-treat party I took the girls to a couple houses around our neighborhood. Jaki caught on to the idea really quick! She quite enjoyed trick-or-treating.

I even dressed up as a referee!

At the Trunk-or-treat party Jeff passed out the candy. Jaki thought it was fun to watch Jeff toss the candy into the kids' candy buckets.

Now it is going to be fun to get ready for Thanksgiving!

Adventures in Anchorage

We are lucky enough to be in Anchorage right now, and why, do you ask? All because my wonderful mother signed us and the rest of my siblings up for a cruise in Alaska! In about an hour we are going to head for the cruise ship, but for the last two days we have been seeing what there is to see in Anchorage.
Here is a little of what we've been doing:


Jeff and I were the first from our family to arrive. This little fur shop is right by our hotel so we headed there to see the furs. I thought I'd try one on and grabbed a hat and a little cow made of fur to pose for the picture. As I was taking off the coat the store worker came from behind and was quick to snatch the coat back to put it on the hanger. We left and I told Jeff, well that was kinda rude! He told me it was because the coat was on SALE for only about $3000! I guess the lady could tell we weren't serious customers.


Walking around the shops we saw another little fur shop, and this one looked a lot less fancy. It just so happens we met and talked to this funny Japanese man for a long time. He was hilarious! He had asked us if we were mormons and we told him "Yeah." He said: "That good. Mormons good guys. I never met a mormon dingaling."
Yeah, he was pretty funny.
We told him we hide all the dingalings in Utah. (Just kidding)


Yesterday we got to take a jetboat up the Talkeetna river. We stopped along the way and posed for this picture. The scenery might look pretty, but watch out! The berries'll kill ya, and one of the plants right behind us will get into your lungs and cause them to bleed. Yeah, we're adventurous.



Next we headed off to the Iditarod headquarters. The Iditarod is a huge sled-dog race from Anchorage to Nome. We got to have a short little ride on a sled on wheels pulled by some sled-dogs. These cute little puppies don't even know what they have in store for them....Or do they?

This was just an awesome truck!

Just kidding, the picture is actually of the mountain in the background. It is Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. The Japanese guy in the previous picture actually said he made it to the top 5 times, a trek that takes about 2-3 weeks to complete! Another name for this mountain in Mt. McKinley.

We're having lots of fun!

She's a First Timer

My little Jaklyn's got her first set of painted nails. Rachel was getting her fingernails painted and I decided to paint Jaki's too. Matt held her and I tried to hold her feet, but she is pretty good at moving. If you would've seen her feet + my hands yesterday you would've thought someone was performing surgery. After Jaki was finished Rachel's dear uncle Matt painted her toenails. What a good uncle! I added a splash on my fingernails just so I wouldn't feel left out.

Jeff made the comment that Grandma Flake would be so proud!

Jeff also made the comment yesterday that Jaki's got the classic Flake trait: when she smiles her eyes dissappear.

I guess I'd have to agree.

If you have to inherit some traits I'd say you can't do much better than the Flake traits!

PS
We are missing Rachel! She went with Nae and Matt yesterday to the cabin and spent the night/day. Poor Jaki doesn't know what to do with herself. Her bath last night was a little somber. She has never spent a night (besides her first at the hispital) without her big sister. I wish I would be here to see Jaki's face when Rachel comes home tonight but I have to be at work, dangit.

And She's Off...

So much has gone on the past couple of months, but I haven't found the time (or maybe wanted to spend the time) uploading pictures. So until I decide I want to do that, here's a quick note for posterity's sake on the milestones Jaki is making.
On June 1st, about a week and a half shy of 8 months, she started crawling, and I mean the one-knee-in-front-of-the-other kind. She had been doing the one knee forward, one leg dragging behind kind of scooting (maybe thats called army crawling) for probably about 2-3 weeks, but she got the whole thing down on the 1st. Then 2 days later she decided to try for another milestone and pulled herself up to the couch. We were at Jeff's grandparent's cabin by Bear Lake and I guess thats where she got the inspiration. She just did it once while we were there, but now we can't keep her down or in one spot! She is quite the little mover.
She's also got her first ear infection, but we've been feeling pretty lucky that this is the first because Rachel had had either 2 or 3 by the time she was this age.

Wheel Rock You!

Last week Rachel was sitting on my lap while I was putting on my makeup and out of the blue told me,
"Mom, thank you for sharing my dreams with me."
A little background: She has a book that has about 10 verses to the song I'm a Little Teapot and that is one of the phrases in one of the verses.
Then a few seconds later she told me,
"Mom, thank you for sharing that nice little nap with me."
Background: She had taken a nap with me an hour or so earlier. The phrase she came up with on her own.

Then today we were on our way into town and Rachel brought a lid to her toy bucket that has holes in the shapes that the blocks fit into. She grabbed the lid in both hands and said, "Look, Mom, I'm driving!"
I asked her, "Is that your steering wheel?
She says, "Yeah" and than sets it back on the bucket, starts drumming and tells me its her drumming wheel.
"Your drumming wheel?" I ask her.
"Yeah, my drumming wheel"
Then I hear her babbling in a little sing-song voice, "Wheel. Wheel. Wheewel, wheewel. Wheewel, wheewel, wheewel. We will, we will rock you! We will, we will rock you!"
Isn't it crazy what goes through these kids heads and how much they can remember!

I guess I'd better go, because Jaki is about to jump right off my lap. That little Jackster is such a wiggle worm!