The Christmas Holiday has begun...

And Halloween hasn't even past!

Mini-brag alert...I've already hit the deals hard and am now about 50% done with presents.
Yeah me.

Then today...
The Toys R US toy catalog showed up in the mail :-)

The boys broke out the crayons and busily spent the next hour circling photos of toys they think they would like for Christmas.

But the cute thing was that they weren't just thinking of themselves:
Tamlin: "Jude, check this one out!  I bet you would like this train for Christmas."
Jude: "Yeah, Train!"
Tamlin: "Mom, look!  I think baby Elizabeth would like this toy.  It has all these things on it"
Me: "Gears?
Tamlin: "Yeah, gears! I think the baby would really like this one too."
Jude: "Look it is my Scout Dog.  Baby would like this dog too."
Tamlin: "And Frozen, Mom.  Look, it's Elsa.  Ciearra likes Elsa.  I'm going to circle this one for Ciearra."
Jude: "I like Elsa too!"
Me: "Circle all the things!"

I love this time of year.

Halloween Preview

Costume preview :-)

Carving 'em up

 Next we had to carve up the pumpkins and later roast up the seeds.  Everyone got in on the action.  Jude kept wanting to use the knife...Brian can't wanting me to NOT use his big good knives. 

 Jude helped pull out the slippery seeds for awhile...and then he lost interest to playing with a monster puzzle and bike.

Tamlin got into it too...with some great enthusiasm and faces...

Wait, Tam!  Pull up your sleeves!
Are you looking for the perfect pumpkin seed?

You found them!   Yeah! Tam wanted to make sure I got the photo of his successful scoop of the pumpkin brains :-)

I curved Jude's little pumpkin.  He choose the shape of the eyes, nose, and mouth from a sticker book.  He also wanted stars on the sides.

I let Tamlin carve some of his pumpkin with the little carving knives.  He thought this was pretty cool, but tiresome.  He relinquished the knife to me and had more fun popping out the cut-away pieces.

 We were losing sunlight to rainclouds by the time I started in on the largest pumpkin.  I thought to do another face pumpkin to make a totem pole with all three, but went with scary ghosts instead.

Here we are with two of the pumpkins and the boys yelling "Aaarrrgghh!"
Just need to get a few batteries for the tea lights so we can light them up in the front porch....
AND I need to find that pumpkin seed recipe.

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 :-)