Last week

Last Tuesday the kids and I drove Great Grandma Lich and Grandma Horn back to their house. We stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Horn until Sunday afternoon. We had a great time relaxing around the house (that's what Matt and I really wanted to do). Friday Matt and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. We didn't do anything huge, even though Matt really wanted to. I told him for our 10 year we'll go all out, but not this year. We had a great afternoon together and then headed back to have dinner with the family.
Ben is still sickly and Ally seems to have gotten something as well. It's a good thing they know us really well at the pediatrician!! All morning Ally's asked if I will just take her to see the dr. Umm...NO. I'm not taking you to the dr until you actually have something more than a basic cold. We're hoping to get the tree up sometime this week. Looking at the week I'm not quite sure when that's suppose to happen, but hopefully we'll be able to get that done. To say that Ally is excited about the Christmas tree and Christmas, would be a HUGE understatement. We made a countdown till Christmas chain today and also a chain for on the Christmas tree.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

We can't forget about Benson

Don't look too closely at the first picture or you'll see his yucky nose. Ben loves to crawl into the bathroom.

One of his favorite things to do in the bathroom is knock over the trash can and pull everything out of it, YUCK I know. That's why the trash can is on the toilet. He is such a fun boy. He thought it was hilarious when he knocked over the toilet paper holder.

Sunday dress

After church last Sunday I decided we should take a few quick pictures before changing out of our matching outfits. Ally was in a silly mood and of course Benson wasn't feeling well.

Here's our goofy girl throwing gang signs.

Ally is convinced she needs new shoes and I keep telling her that the ones she has are just fine (we bought them less than a month ago). She then will go on to tell me that she needs ones with heels on them. NOT YET! My toes aren't ready for that yet.

Brown County

Oh how we really like to go to Brown County. The weather was a bit chilly, but the day was beautiful. We went on 2 hikes and Ally walked both of them.

Grandma and Grandpa Horn came with us.

Much needed update

I have been quite busy this last week, which is why I haven't updated the blog. Wednesday was suppose to be pack meeting and that turned into a leaders meeting, Thursday was a stake aux training, Friday we had a teacher apprec. night, and Saturday we had a quarterly activity. Sunday we had church and Matt left for Minnesota, Monday the kids and I went with Grandma Horn, Great Grandma Lich, Great Aunt Kate, and Aunt Kim to the outlets. We found some great deals and great gifts for Christmas. Tuesday night Matt got home from Minnesota. Today we are just lounging around. Tomorrow will be filled with LOTS of food and fun. Friday Matt and I are celebrating our 5 year anniversary. Not quite sure what we are doing yet to celebrate.
Next week I am hoping to add pictures when I'm not feeling so busy. I took Benson to the dr yesterday because his cough was coming back. Luckily it's just a cold and not croup. He's weighing a healthy 17.08 lbs. He's crawling everywhere, starting to pull up to things, and loves it when Al plays with him. He gets upset when he isn't included in every meal (when he's awake). He prefers to eat whatever we're eating and not his puffs or cheerios. Ally is doing great in swim lessons and has improved a lot already. Her teacher said she's pretty much floating by herself now, she just needs to work on trusting her teacher. She can do elem. backstroke and freestyle.
So we've just been keeping busy and getting ready for the holidays. I don't have anymore activities for church for the remainder of the year so that's a huge relief. Ally is getting excited about Christmas and we're trying hard to focus on the reason we celebrate. She's kind of gotten sucked into the present thing already. Oh and she knows how to write her name.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Love the Horn Family

Croup

Mr. Benson has croup again. We had taken him to the ped. almost a month to the day, ago. If he gets it again, this season, then we have to take him to an ENT. The little guy is just miserable right now and I feel so bad for him. He has a glazed look in his eye, yucky nose, nasty cough, and is wheezy. I really hope the medicine we got kicks in soon and helps him feel better.

A random post

First I'll start with our night last night. We took Al to the pediatrician on Wednesday and he said what she has is viral, so we get to see how long this sticks around. She has a super loud, awful sounding cough (almost like my brothers cough he had with H1N1, but the dr said she doesn't have that). So she's been waking up during the night from coughing. Last night we laid the kids down at 8ish and then we went down to the basement to watch some HGTV. At a little after 10pm we heard Ally coming down the stairs. So we finished watching the episode we were watching and then all headed to bed. She slept until 2:45am when I heard her going down the stairs (at this point I leaned over and told Matt, thinking he'd take care of it) and heading to the basement to watch tv. At 3:35am Matt and I woke up to her walking up the stairs and then informing us she was hungry and needed to eat and get a drink. Once it registered with Matt that she had been in the basement watching tv at this hour, he got mad and stormed down stairs to turn off the tv. Ally layed in our bed all distraught that she couldn't watch tv now. When Matt got back upstairs and into bed Ally asked if he'd get her a drink. He hates making extra trips so this really got him going, but he went and got her a drink and in the mean time I coaxed her into her own bed. At 5 something Ben woke up and Matt went and got him a bottle, then got him back in his own bed. At 6 something Ally woke up and we told her she could now go and watch tv. I got to sleep until just before 8am because Matt had basketball. HORRIBLE NIGHT! I'm pooped. Thanks Matt for making all those trips up and down the stairs. That's another reason you're on that side of the bed!

A fun morning

While Ben was taking his morning nap (which by the way, he doesn't mind taking this week) Ally and I played Candyland and then she asked if we could build a fort. Sure! I always enjoy building a fun fort (seriously), it's just the mess that gets made in the process of destroying the fort (Ben will be the culprit) that I don't like. So we built a fort, played for like 2 minutes and then off to a nap she went. I have such awesome napers, I LOVE IT!

If you look at the circle on the purple tent, you can kind of see Ally.

This little stinker is into a lot of things. He really likes to crawl into the kitchen and pull all the gatorades out and roll them around the floor. Ally kept asking me this morning why his jammies weren't buttoned, well the reason being, this way he gets better grip with his knees when he's crawling.
I promise, I didn't do it!

Like sisters, like brother

Ben shows lots of the same interests in things as his sisters. Books are a big one.

When we are in the library he loves to crawl over to the bookshelf and pull out books and right now he chews on them, but he loves it. He enjoys hearing books read to him. I'm glad that he enjoys such a wonderful thing. So far, he hasn't shown any interest in the rest of the books that are at his level, so we'll see how long that lasts. I've already decided that the day he takes ALL of the books at the bottom, off the shelves, I will organize the books better. I know it sounds crazy to organize the books when I KNOW he'll just pull them down again, but at some point he'll realize you take one down, read it and put it back.

*Side note: we're still working with Ally on this.

Fun afternoon with Daddy

Yesterday while Ben and I attended a baptism at church, Matt and Ally went to the park. Their original plan was to go putt putt golfing, but they are closed for the season. So they decided to stick with doing something fun outside and headed to the park.

The weather was great. It was in the 70's.

Here's to hoping we can have at least a few more handfuls of days like yesterday. We got zero yardwork done, but our kids got their naps and had a fun day.

*Side note: I was looking at what we have on the DVR and noticed that someone (if not me, then of course Matt) recorded a My Little Pony movie. I thought that was really sweet of Matt and had to have taken a lot for him to push that record button. Thanks for being such a great daddy.

Oh the joys of being 6 months

Ben loves balloons. Friday night we ate dinner with Matt's parents at Red Robin and of course had to pick up 2 balloons on our way out. Yesterday Ben had a blast with his balloon.

She kept closing her eyes, so oh well.

oh to have no cares in the world and know nothing but joy.

I love this face!

A bit of static hair.

A few hard days...

So from the title you can probably guess that we've had some rough days. We've done a few things to deal with this.

1. we've watched some movies (Ally loves Johnny Lingo)

Benson has even gotten in on watching a few movies.
2. We've gone to the cemetary and had a good talk about how it's okay to cry when we're sad. We can always talk about Cosette. Ally was hit pretty hard the other night emotionally and so the next day we took a little drive to the cemetary and talked. It was a chilly morning.

3. Ally drew Cosette a picture. She said Heavenly Father was going to come down and pick it up and take it back to Cosette. I think we're all doing better for now.

After a night of trick or treating the kids were exhausted. Really we did our little loop and then drove to another house. We were back home and handing out candy with an hour still left of trick or treating.

Ben had been resting his bottle on Ally's shoulder. It was cute.