One Final Halloween Post

Whew! October was a busy month for us! Between the birthday party of the century, 2 actual birthdays, Tim's surgery, his recovery, multiple Halloween celebrations, and Halloween, we have had quite the month. Yesterday was the perfect Halloween. Beautiful weather, 2 happy boys, and a whole day spent together as a family. After naps we carved the pumpkins we had picked at the pumpkin patch. James picked out the designs and scooped out one spoonful of pumpkin guts before he lost interest and just wanted to watch Tim and I do the rest.

We had our traditional Halloween dinner of Pumkin and Sausage Pasta and then headed out to get our trick-or-treating done while it was still light out. Much like the parade, Mac loved every single second of trick-or-treating. He kicked his little legs and was waving to everyone he saw. He also took one of James' whopper boxes and shook it like a rattle and chewed on it until it was a soggy mess. James chose which houses we went to (the more Halloween decoration, the better) and then we all headed home to pass out treats. Earlier in the day, James wanted to make our house look spooky, so he and Tim hung up every single Halloween craft James has done for the last month in the front windows. It looked very festive.

 My vision of a photo of both boys in their Halloween jammies with our jack-o-lanterns failed miserably.

 Compared to last year, we had hardly any trick-or-treaters this year. James LOVES passing out candy and seeing other kids in costumes, so he was a little bummed. After putting Mac to bed we read a bunch of our Halloween books one last time before packing them away tomorrow and passed out treats to the few trick-or-treaters we did get. James ate a few pieces of his candy and went to bed a very happy and very tired boy.

Halloween Weekend Part 2

We went to the Haleys for a pumpkin carving party tonight. James and I made spider and spider web treats for the kids.

The Haley, Nichols, Gahn and Andrews kids are a pasty, blonde bunch that are especially prone to red-eye, so pardon the fact that they all look like zombies in these photos.

 Seth went to his parent's farm and got us all huge pumpkins to carve. I got to use the power saw to carve ours!

I had the brilliant idea to take pictures of all of the babies inside the pumpkins. If torturing your child for the sake of a funny picture is wrong, than I don't want to be right.

 We only carved our big pumpkin from the Haley farm tonight, we have 2 more to carve tomorrow. We can't put them out any sooner than tomorrow night anyway or the savage squirrels of Old Town would demolish them in about an hour flat.

I just ran across some photos from a trip we made to Anderson Farm a couple of weeks ago with the Haleys. They had some seriously big pumpkins-the boys loved climbing on them.

 A picture where all 5 kids are (kind of) looking at the camera!

 Silly boys.

More festivities to come tomorrow!

Halloween Weekend Part 1

So we solved the problem of how to get Oscar the Grouch around to all of the Halloween festivities...

Last night we took James over to Longmont High School for Trick or Treat street with the Haley family. James played every game there and scored a few pre-Halloween pieces of candy. He and Macky (and me) were a big hit with our costumes. Except to Colin who thought Mac was a dinosaur and wondered why I had a lid on my head. Clearly the child does not watch enough television. Here we are with the Haley boys-John is a robot and Colin is a "mower guy."

 This morning we had the best event the Mont has to offer-the Halloween parade! There were SO many kids there this year and we saw a lot of great costumes. Aimee brought Stella, the Nelsons joined us again too, and we met up with a bunch of our Mont friends. James was a total grouch for most of the parade, but Mac was having the time of his life (they should have switched costumes). Mac was pointing and waving like a mad man and loved seeing all of the people. I probably had at least 10 random people ask to take our picture because they liked our costume so much :-)

 James and Riley in front of the best costumes that I saw-Lego people. James LOVED them and we had to go check them out up-close multiple times. I wish I would have taken a photo from the front-they even had a (fake) Lego baby in a stroller!

 After the parade James got over his grouchy mood and had a blast playing with his friends. Here he is with 2 Rapunzels-Mallory and Longmont Riley and Snow White-Riley.

 Cameron, Carter and Cormac-3 C buddies in green. How cute are they?!

 All of the waving must have worn Mac out. As we were walking home, I looked down at the wagon and saw this. For a kid that fights naps like crazy, this cracked me up. He must have been exhausted!

 We took pity on him and laid him down for the rest of the ride.

We are decorating pumpkins tomorrow and have a Halloween party at James' school on Monday as well as trick-or-treating. Thank goodness we got our snowstorm over with last week, it is supposed to be 70 degrees by Halloween!

1 and 4

We finally got around to taking the boys to the doctor for their well child visits yesterday. They both did great at their appointments and it seems like they are just about perfect in every way. Despite the fact that I think Mac is positively ginormous as well as having most people who meet him tell me how huge he is, weighs only 21 lbs 4 oz-he has gained just 1 pound in the last 3 months and is down to the 21st percentile for weight. Quite a drop from being deemed "abnormally large for gestational age." He is 30 1/2 inches tall, which is in the 64th percentile and his head is holding steady at the 97th percentile. I think his massive head just creates the illusion that he is bigger than he really is :-) If Mac's temperment since he has turned 1 is any indication of what his toddler years will be like, we have our work cut out for us. This kid is either as happy as a clam and charming everyone around him (crazy hair and all).....

Or he is the unhappiest, grouchiest baby on the planet. Mac can throw a tantrum like nothing I have ever seen and when he doesn't get his way, watch out! 

When he gets what he wants (like an empty percocet prescription bottle) to play with, I can actually set him down for a minute or two before he throws another tantrum or wants to be held by me (and only me). 

James is up to 32 lbs 8 oz, which is in the 18th percentile and he is 40 inches tall, which is the 40th percentile. A few things about James at 4 that I forgot in his birthday post: He invented (and uses frequently) the word amn't. Me: "Hey James, are you going to finish your cereal?" James: "No, I amn't" He even told me that amn't means am not. Duh. He also still uses his made up words yesteryear and yesternight instead of last year and last night. He is still loving all things superhero and is in heaven playing with all of his new toys from his birthday, including this Batman costume he got from Steve, Amberly and the girls. He is a crazy good builder and is getting pretty good at making some awesome creations with his little Legos.

We are ready to move on from our awful week here including stomach bugs for me and James, colds for all of us, a power outage for over 24 hours after our first big snow and temperatures in the teens, and a broken dishwasher. Our Halloween festivities begin tonight and we are very excited for a long holiday weekend of fun! 

Sneak Peak

I have had the worst 24 hours of my parenting career this weekend involving lots and lots of vomit, even more laundry, the crankiest 1 year old on the planet who is getting his molars, attempting to sleep on a twin bed next to a vomiting 4 year old all night and a husband who still only has use of 1 arm and can pretty much do nothing to help. Really the only positive spin that I can put on this is that my washing machine just got fixed on Thursday after being broken for 4 weeks, so at least I was able to wash all of the vomit covered bedding and clothes immediately. 

Anyway, to make me smile, I am posting a sneak peak at the boys' Halloween costumes (we had a dress rehearsal on Friday after the pumpkin patch). James was quick to inform me that he was in charge of picking out both he and Mac's Halloween costumes this year and went back and forth between wanting to be Batman and Robin, Buzz Lightyear and Woody and finally settling on a garbage truck and Oscar the Grouch. Oscar was actually a compromise because James really wanted Mac to be a bag of trash. I had final veto power over dressing my baby as a bag of trash and suggested Oscar instead. While still following the garbage theme, it is a little cuter than a trash bag.

 We need to figure out what James can wear to look like a trash man, since he does not have multiple trash man outfits like his BFF Alec, or at least put him in something different than a white shirt since it doesn't really do much for the white garbage truck. And I need to figure out how we will haul Mac and his trashcan around for the parade next weekend. But I think they are pretty darn cute costumes. My dad made most of the garbage truck when he was out for the boys' birthday party and Tim put the trashcan on the side to collect candy in (it swings into the dumpster on the other side). I got Mac's hat from Etsy and he is stuffed into an olive green hand me down shirt of James' that is perfect Oscar color.

We have been decorating the house, reading Halloween books and making a lot of Halloween crafts to get ready for the big day. James loves Halloween and it is so much fun celebrating it with kids!

Pumpkin Patch

 The weather has been amazing this week, and Tim is finally comfortable enough post-surgery to leave the house so we visited the pumpkin patch this morning. I have decided that it is impossible to get both of my boys smiling in the same photo. Seriously, impossible. But they are still pretty cute.

 Yes, I bought Mac a pumpkin hat to wear. I couldn't find one small enough last year so I figured this was my last chance for a pumpkin hat in a pumpkin patch photo, so I went for it.

We made it home with 3 pumpkins that are going to live in the safety of our house until the day before Halloween so that the squirrels don't eat them.