Halloween Through the Years

Justin 2004 - Frog Prince

Justin 2005 - Wags the DogEvan and Justin 2006 - Purple Dragons 2007 - Evan - Kangaroo, Justin - Green Dragon 2008 -Evan and Justin - Red Dragons 2009 -Justin - Anakin Skywalker, Evan - Knight. This is the best of the pictures of the kiddos together on Halloween last year. In my defense I had the swine flu and dragged myself out of bed for the festivities but obviously wasnt on the ball with the camera.

I have this sentimental quirk wherein I like to drag out the pictures from years past at every holiday to compare and remember. Indulge me here with Halloween through the years with my kiddos... PS- My kids REALLY like dragons (if you count this year's costume we now are the proud owners of SIX dragon costumes of various colors and types).

The Weekend

I better get this all down before the week finally disappears and we move on to new weekend with other activites. This past weekend was quite a busy and fun one. We havent had much "family time" lately. Its been a divide and conquer approach to life, with G and myself splitting up with various combinations of children. Lots of car seat shuffling as I like to think of it.

Saturday we decided to have a family day. No projects, no boxes to unpack, just time together. We spent the morning in our old college stomping grounds at a local museum/Planetarium. They were having a Halloween bonanza with everything you can think of related to Halloween - hay rides, pumpkin carving exhibits, characters dressed up, Fall crafts. We had so much fun. Later in the afternoon we drove further South down to our dear friends Susan and Dan's house (Justin and Tyler grew up together, meeting before their first birthday and donig weekly playdates together until their family moved away a few years ago now). It was Tyler's 7th birthday and they were having a giant Halloween celebration. The kids got all dressed up and played Halloween games and enjoyed themselves immensely! What a wonderful day. Im posting some pictures of the boys in costume Justin is with Tyler and Evan is with Brayden (they are similiar ages as well). Justin's costume is Dan and Evan is Drago (from the Backugans if you arent in the KNOW).

Happy Eleven Months (Yesterday)

Happy Eleven Months Old Nathan!

I think that Nathan is allergic to oranges. Garren is allergic to cinnamon, so I suppose anything is possible. After giving him some watered down in his sippy cup two days ago, he broke out in a rash on his face (you can see it on his cheeks here) and very badly on his bottom. After my friend suggested it might be an allergic reaction, sometimes its about seeing the trees between the forest (or however that saying goes), I stopped the orange juice and the rashes are gone! We go in a couple more weeks for his allergy testing, so until then, no organe products.

Anyways, enjoy his eleven month pictures and ignore the rash. PS- You know what comes next month?! ONE YEAR. Thanksgiving Day this year. How can a year have possibly gone by so fast? But, up first...Justin's 7 year birthday!!! Stay tuned :) its a big month for us.

Goodbye Front Teeth!!!

Justin lost his other top front tooth this evening. After a traumatic few minutes where he was spitting blood (Justin HATES blood) he was all smiles and posing for this picture. What a cute smile. I just want to freeze him like this forever....sigh...

This is WALKING!!!

What did I say in my last post? A month? A few weeks? Try a few days. Here are the first pictures of our little man walking away. And the adventures get bigger :)

Some Videos

These videos make me smile. The video of Nathan walking with his ride on toy is about four days ago. In the meantime he has started WALKING! Just about 3-4 steps at a time but, its completely AMAZING!!!! Warning - my children/house has no volume control so these are best viewed with the volume LOW.

SOCCER!

Some pictures of Evan at soccer this past weekend. Brrr...it was a cold one! But, he had a blast nonetheless. Evan is #4. He is the littlest one on the team and also the youngest one by over 6 months! He just made the cutoff to play this year. He holds his own despite his age and size though and always has so much fun!!!

Cuteness and Nathan Update

Some random cuteness to make you all warm and fuzzy...

Nathan is standing on his own now for brief periods at a time. Its almost as if he lets go and forgets he is standing there until he falls or tries to move without holding on. I think its only a matter of time before walking. His hair is getting long. When wet its a reddish blond, when dry its a white blond. He still only has 6 teeth, two bottom and four uppers, you can just now start seeing the uppers when he smiles below his lip line. He is a terrible sleeper (still) and I blame this fully on G who was just like him as a baby (or so the stories go) and because it feels good to have someone to blame :) Nathan has only slept through the night about 8 times since he was born and those being in the past month or so now. We have been in full cry-it-out mode for a couple weeks, which is torture for everyone involved. We are hoping to have sleep trained him by his first birthday or we welcome earplugs as wonderful first birthday presents! Other than sleep he is the happiest and most lovable baby. He is always smiling and goes to/with anyone, very friendly child. He loves to eat and feed himself solids. He has been slowly giving up his bottles (as part of our crying it out we dont feed him at night anymore). He is allergic to eggs and milk (the known allergens - at his one year checkup he will get blood work done to test for more allergens) but for the most part eats anything else without complaint. He loves his big brothers and always wants to be around them and watching what they are doing. He is little for his age still, I have no idea how much he weighs, we havent been to the doctor in quite awhile, but, he wears mostly 12 month clothes, he still fits in a few 9 month things. He has the bluest eyes. Sparkly light blue and so beautiful. He looks so much like Justin at this age, its uncanny. We are blessed with a very wonderful little boy!!!

A Vist with Great Nana

I took the boys over to my aunt and uncle's house the other day to have a visit with their Great Nana and their cousin (second once removed? I dont know the technical term) Allison. Nathan got some love from Great Nana and the boys got a real treat when we got to go to my aunt's neighbor's house to see her petting zoo in her back yard! She has goats, ducks, sheep, chickens, rabbits, pigs - OH MY! It was wonderful. It is a hope of mine to some day soon have egg laying chickens on our property. Im slowly working on G on this idea, he is a bit more hesitant than I am! It was great to see her chickens and find out some of the details about raising egg laying chickens. Justin was over the moon with happiness that Uncle Tom brought him to see his "awesome, giant rock collection" and gave him some rocks!!! Thank you Uncle Tom, you made Justin's week!!! Nathan especially loved Allison's pink tea set (there is hope for me yet in the girl's cute toys department). And Evan, who has really been missing our dog Chewy lately, got a chance to love Duffy for a few moments that he allowed:)

Fall Fun!

With the unseasonably warm Fall we have had, the boys have had so much time to be out in the yard exploring our land and building their own fort! I posted a few pictures of them in the woods on our property. They have their very own "look out" rock which is a giant boulder on our property, as well as a whole forest of trees to use to erect their fort. And we have the PERFECT climbing tree in our yard. Im sure it will be the perfect fall-and-break-your-arm tree too, but, Im learning to let go of my nervousness a little:) We are in LOVE with our yard! Its just a dream come true to have a huge space for the boys to explore and play and just be kids.

The boys painted their pumpkins! This year they both wanted castles on their pumpkins, for whatever reason. And thats what they painted. It was alot of fun being outdoors in our new yard doing the painting.

Fall fun includes warm snuggly outfits for Nathan. I love footsie pajamas and sweaters and sweatshirts on Nathan, it makes him irresistably huggable!

One Month Anniversary!

This weekend marks our one month anniversary in our new home. I think its important to say how very fortunate we are to have found this house and made it our home. The house is coming along quite well. We have most the major projects on the house done, minus a pressure pump, overhead lights in the kiddos rooms, the hardwood floors in the dining room and a shed! Some of those projects will have to wait until the Spring now! Among the most exciting is the furniture in our entry way room that got delivered this week! Im in love with how well it came out, we picked it out unfinished and had the shop finish it for us so we really didnt know how nice it was going to be until it arrived. Its fabulous and quite practical too. We got a giant wardrobe for the coats, a bench for the boys to put on their shoes at. A hanging piece for backpacks and hats and mittens storage. And we got a duel recycle bin unit to hide the nasty recycling away:) It really makes the entrance space a finished room now and Im so happy with it.

We absolutely adore our new neighborhood and town. The boys LOVE school. Justin has made a wonderful transition to first grade. He has the sweetest teacher this year and he is doing really well academically, our little reader has finally emerged! Evan really likes preschool, and didnt seem to mind the change in school, teachers and children. I am surprised at how easily he has adapted, typically our "shy" child, Evan seems to be growing some wings this year and has become more independent. He comes home all smiles and stories from school and thats whats important at this age. Justin joined a gymnastics program close to our house, which he really likes. Evan is doing a library story hour program in town. He also adores town soccer which G is coaching this year. Its a great way to get involved in the town. I have started getting involved in the community as well. I volunteer weekly at the school and I joined a couple mothers groups in the area.

Pumpkins and Talking

You know, when I go to post these pictures of our fun activities as a family, or any picture at all, I keep thinking, "its the effort that counts not the end result", because try as I might I cannot get a picture of all the boys looking at the camera and smiling (okay not even smiling, with their eyes open would be acceptable). My boys hate cameras. I love cameras. Its frustrating sometimes...enjoy these less than perfect but certainly effort intense photos:)

Today we took the boys to the pumpkin patch for some pumpkin picking, hay bale jumping, goat feeding and apple cider donut eating. We have a 5 year tradition in our family of painting pumpkins on my birthday. It started when Justin was nearly 2 years old and I didnt want him wielding a sharp knife to carve the pumpkins. And we have kept it up, along with some great memories and photos over the years. [I especially look back fondly on the year about 3 years ago when I thought Evan could handle joining in the tradition and he ate the paint off the paint brush and projectile vomited everywhere, luckily we usually do the painting outdoors.] So, today we got the pumpkins for said painting this week. The boys all had a blast at the farm. Nathan LOVED the goats and was eager to get his little hands all over them (which we hand sanitized immediately following). The big boys got all sweaty and covered in hay in the hay maze which they always love. Everyone got their cider donuts! A day well spent.

Nathan is TALKING ALOT. He says "bye bye" consistently now and waves. My favorite is when he is done eating dinner and waves and says "bye" to his food unprompted, even when mommy and daddy want him to eat more! He says "hi" and he says, "mama and dada" but not appropriately at the correct person just more like at everyone and everything. And when he is upset, which is always, "mama, mama, mama". Its really cute, he has a sweet little voice. Anyone remember Evan's voice at this age? It was that raspy smoker-like voice. Nathan's resembles more of what Justin's voice sounded like at this age.

Happy October!!!

Fall happens to be our family's favorite time of year, not only do we get to celebrate some pretty special people's birthdays but the leaves, apples, pumpkins, Halloween all add to this time of year! The weather finally felt like Fall today, the boys were wearing shorts and t-shirts to school with the exception of a few days, all year, maybe we can finally put them away. It was cool and sunny and smelled like autumn, we enjoyed alot of time outdoors today doing yard work, loving every inch of our beautiful yard we are so grateful to have. I got some pictures and video of Nathan enjoying his time outside too. Nathan loves to be in his walker and cruise around our culdesac, he gets going quite well in that thing and its only a matter of time before he is toddling on his own around it! Enjoy the pictures and video (burping audio on the video provided by Justin).