My Little Turkeys

Having Hank in Kindergarten has made me appreciate the special mornings (Hank's Kindergarten is full-day, every other day) that I get to play with my boys at home. No therapy, no playdates, no errands...just good old mom-and-boys time. So this morning we decided to get our craft on and the boys and I made these cute little turkeys. I'm just surprised at how well they can pay attention, follow directions, and concentrate--when they want to, that is. I have to say, I'm pretty proud of the final products (they made the turkeys all by themselves...cutting, glueing, drawing, and everything).

Hank embellished his project by drawing a castle around his turkey.

Max though his turkey needed hands and feet.

Bragging About Hank

At any given time, if you look at the camera roll on my phone, you may find 20-30 random pictures of Aaron's feet, the remote control, or the underside of the kitchen table. My little budding photographers love clicking away at the camera...but sometimes the subject can be interesting. So, it made me smile when I found this cute little self-snap shot of my Hankie.

The other night Aaron and I got to visit with Hank's kindergarten teacher for parent/teacher conferences. Although his teacher did report that Hank is all boy, and likes to wrestle with his friends, and push his way in line, she confirmed what I already knew to be true: Hank is a smarty-pants! I don't know if all of our future parent/teacher conferences will be this enjoyable, but it was a treat to listen to someone else tell me how awesome my kid is. Tell me something I don't know! I love this little boy and I'm so proud of the awesome little kid that he is turning into. Smart. Intuitive. Sweet. Helpful. I love you, Hank!

Happy Halloween!

Hank and Max decided to be firemen for Halloween this year (again!) and Ben of course was made a fireman by default (and likely will be for the next five years since I now own fireman costumes in every size). The boys have been playing dress-up (or whatever manly version it is that boys do when they were costumes) all month long. By the time Halloween finally rolled around, the costumes were looking a little bedraggled with stains from two church trunk-or-treat parties, one preschool party, and Hank's kindergarten party. At least I got my moneys' worth on our costumes this year.

The boys could barely stand to wait until it got dark outside to head out trick-or-treating....I'm not going to lie, we were definately the first trick-or-treaters on our block. Ok, I confess, I was excited, too!

Ben barely made it around the block before he was ready to go back inside, but Hank and Max couldn't get enough. Greedy! By the time the night was over, our noses were cold, our feet were sore, and our pumpkin baskets were HEAVY!

A few funnies from Max:
- Even with the repetition every single time we rang a doorbell, I couldn't get Max to say, "trick or treat." Instead, he'd tip his hat and say, "howdy!" To be honest, his greeting probably earned him more candy than the traditional phrase, anyways.
- One friendly neighbor told Max that he wished he could be a fireman when he grew up, to which Max wisely responded that he should eat his begtables (vegtables).
- My brave fireman retreated from every doorstep where he heard a dog inside the house...imagine how afraid he was of some of the neighbors' gory decorations.

Not bad, right? This much candy will probably last....like, at least a couple weeks:)

Jack-o-Lanterns

When I have to physically break up the boys' wrestling, yell at them for burping at the dinner table, and hose them off after covering themselves from head to toe with sand from the sandbox, I am convinced I live with the most unrefined, rough-and-tough group of boys. But times like last night, when they refuse to help scrape out the pumpkins because they are "too icky," I wonder if my rough-and-tough boys are just a bunch of softies. So of course, the boys watched from the sidelines as Aaron scraped out and carved the pumpkins.

Don't be deceived, I literally had to bribe the boys with an M&M cookie to get them to just put their hand inside the pumpkin.

Check out Max's incredulous expression when Aaron pretended to eat a spoonful of the pumpkin guts.

Of all the pumpkins, my favorite is the cute one in the middle.

Pumpkin Masterpeices!

A-dor-able

Look at my big boy with his big boy haircut....a-dor-able.

Hotel Getaway

Who doesn't love a good surprise? We pulled off a huge surprise last weekend when we packed up a change of clothes, grabbed a couple Happy Meals to-go, and spent the night eating junkfood, splashing in the pool, watching movies, and staying up way past bedtime at the downtown Marriott (thanks for the free night, Marriott!)

Not the best photo, but you get the idea: we partied, we snuggled, and we vegged out.

My boys usually aren't big risk-takers, so I was surprised that they were so fearless in the water. We had to tear them out of the pool, pruny fingers and everything.

Visit to the Pumpkin Patch (wink, wink)

I'm glad the boys love the rubber ducky races, the bouncy rides, and the petting zoo so much because otherwise they'd see right through our trip to the pumpkin patch for what it really is: an excuse to sneak in a family photo-op! Oh, and pick out a couple pumpkins. This year, we visited the pumpkin patch a little early because 1) we decided to capitalize on a brief window of sunshine, 2) Nana and Papa Z came to visit and who doesn't love the pumpkin patch? and, 3) we're just crazy like that.