Pumpkins!

 During the summer months, our little town had a farmer's market on saturdays, to which we were fairly regular visitors.  One of our favorite vendors sold fresh flavored popcorn, yum!  He let us know that there was a pumpkin festival in our nearby town this month.  We had to check it out so we could get our pumpkins (and some popcorn).

It was a beautiful fall day, and a bit warmer than expected.  At the festival there were craft and garage sale vendors, a bit of food, crafts for the kiddies, and even alpacas to pet.

 Jude was all about finding his own pumpkin...mostly by trying to pick each one up.

Aw...the perfect one :-)

 Tam wanted a big pumpkin, but not too big.  Brian made a cowboy pumpkin.

 There were also crafts and goodie bags for the kids...they made pumpkin and bat ornaments to hang up.  I can't wait to carve these gourds up!

Art

A few more pieces of artwork from the kiddos...

 This past week was fire safety week at both the grade school and at the Y.   Tam's been working on taking his time and coloring within the lines (vs. hurry hurry get it down sloppy so I can go play).



Jude has been practicing drawing firestrucks... do you see all the tires?

 Tamlin was very proud of this alligator.  He hadn't finished it all at school, so spent another 20minutes (!) at home drawing in all the scales.

This one is a great piece of art from Tam...The swirls are racetracks / roads.  See the car near the bottom?  And then he added bugs and practiced counting.

 Here's a kite Jude made in late spring, but he still plays with it around the house.  The plane picture he colored with the magic wonder markers.  These markers are great because they only turn this special paper color, and do not write on hands/tables/normal paper.

 Both boys have been into art quite a bit when we come home from school.  Cool. I'm also impressed with what Tam is learning in art at school...though he still working on using scissors and fat/thin marker lines.

New little neice...Elizabeth Aileen

We have all been waiting for my sister to give birth to her new daughter.  She was due around October 4th...and with her excellent blood pressure (hate her), her doctor was letting the birth start naturally instead of inducing.  Well, this meant we had no real idea when the little girl would make her appearence in the outside world.  I had went ahead and taken the following Monday off, just in case we had to drive out to Greenville to welecome the baby.  By Friday, I thought it would be a bust and the baby was never coming out.  Shelly was fairly miserable and walking around like she had a baby stuck between her legs.  Mom was pretty sure the baby was coming soon.

Well, Friday after work I start making my bill-paying phone calls while the boys were in daycare for another 30 minutes.  Then Mom tries to call me...again...repeatedly...while I'm on the phone with various customer services.  When I got through I heard the news that Shelly's water broke and she was on the way to the hospital, meaning we should get around to heading her way soon.

After pizza with the family, I packed up the boys and got on the road for the 2 hour drive.  We meant Mom in the town and got the latest update with the news...Shelly's going in for a C-section 'cause the wee one isn't so little.  Mom and I head to the hospital and arrive just in time to see Rick in surgery papery garb gazing happily at his new daughter.  She weighed over 9lbs and was quite long with long fingers and surprisingly not big feet.  We got to oggle little Elizabeth for awhile, Shelly was still in recovery, we texted all who wanted to know, and then I took Mom back home.

The boys and I stayed at Rick and Shelly's house for Saturday and Sunday.  We got to sporadically go in and see Shelly and the baby and play with Ciearra.  We took tons of photos and got lots of holding the sweet baby time.
Well done, sister :-)

 Wrinkly little feet with long monkey toes.

Little Elizabeth was even awake and smiling a bit on our last visit Sunday morning.
So much fun to have a new little squishy :-)

Getting ready for Halloween

 It is October and time to dig out the Halloween decorations...
With the move last year, some items were left behind, so I am on the hunt for new things this year.
(Like a few cool things scored from the cousins' yard sale earlier this summer).

This halloween pinwheel is one of Jude's favorite items.  He loves turning it around by hand; it's metal so no wind-powering going on.

We tried on all the masks and costumes.  The spider headband is never very popular with the boys, but they still try it on.

I love this hockey mask on the boys...very scary!

This was a new masks scored this year...Jude did NOT like the scary masks and emphatically told us so.  Brian had the bright idea to hang both of our skeleton-like masks on the lampposts flanking the door, to scare trick-or-treaters.

The spiderwebs and plastic spiders were by far both boys favorites.  For the next several weeks, the boys keep taking the spiders off and moving them around to different spots on the spiderwebs.

We finished the decorating with Brian reading to the boys a Halloween story, complete with spooky voices.

Can't wait to have the costumes finished!

Passing the time with Books-on-CD

Ok...

I'll admit...
I pulled this horrid book-on-cd from the library this week.
Background:   As a family, we have been listening to children's books-on-cd while driving on trips to see family or go anywhere with a little distance. It has been fun choosing classics like Motorcycle Ralph, the Boxcar Children, and the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  So far, Tam has enjoyed the boxcar children mysteries the best.  I'm not entirely sure that Jude is paying attention.  Brian usually rolls his eyes and falls asleep.

Well, I enjoyed this so I decided try some reading/listening for myself, esepcially while traveling to and from work.  I have found that adult section for audio listening at the library is a bit overwhelming.   All the CDs are in alphabetically order by author, and only separated into fiction or nonfiction.  I was overwhelmed and couldn't find anything!  I'm used to flipping through a book and reading a passage or two before deciding to check it out or not.  This last time, I had two tired boys in tow and I panicked... I pulled the first CD set where I recognized the title vaguely and knew that it had been popular a few years ago.

Ugh.
Double ugh.
It is so bad I'm mildly intrigued.
It really is Ann Rice done badly.
Very Badly.

Yep...I pulled...
It is full of cliches and teenage angst and vampires.


Good Lord... I don't remember being that way as a teenager!

But...I'm five disks in and haven't been to the library yet to check out something else.

Is there any saving grace?

It is a love story.

And it does make me remember all the little things about Brian that I love :-)  Yep...I am still in love with that man of mine
(And he isn't a vampire)

Magic

On Fridays, the boys and I order a pizza and watch a movie. We rotate who picks out the movie with the agreement that everyone must be okay to watch it.   This last Friday, I suggested an older favorite: Night at the Museum.   A fun movie in which the museum's displays all come to life at night, much to the watchman's surprise.  There's a bone chasing dinosaur, a silly monkey, little arguing soldiers, and an Easter Island statue that chews gum.

In one scene, the watchman impresses Attila the Hun with a few magic tricks.  He makes a coin disappear into thin air and then pulls it out from behind Attila's ear.  They are all momentarily impressed.   Tamlin was also impressed and totally believed in this magic.

The next morning, Tam was tossing a pirate coin up into the air and catching it.  On one of the tosses, he missed the downward fall and the coin "disappeared."
Tam: "Mom, Mom! Guess what?   I just did magic!"
Yep, he was convinced that he had made the coin disappear ;-)