Happy Halloween

Stacey and Diane next door made these very cool pumpkins.

4 more days!
I freaked out a lot of little kids at the Kennedy School with this lovely .99 cent mask!
Trick-or-Treat!

Happy Halloween from Chris (the Wrigley Field bleacher bum) and Nate (a very tough umpire!)

our trees

When we moved into this house 3 years ago, we planted two oak trees in the grass strip with the organization Friends of Trees. We know that someday they will be big and grand and we will be able to come back to see them as such.

Chris' tree.

When we did the planting, we dubbed each tree as "Nate's tree" and "Chris' tree". Little did we know that as the seasons roll around we would see how the Chris tree does it's changes always about a week or two ahead of Nate's tree..........similar to so many of the developmental milestones that these two have gone through.

Nate's Tree.

But don't you worry, Nate's tree is a tough little tree.

The latest craze around here is doing coloring books. It's very serious business to these two. They went outside with the intention of bike riding, but about 5 minutes into it they ditched the bikes and gathered their coloring materials. No better place than in the middle of the grass with the wind blowing the red leaves around overhead.

rock the vote

I have spoken.
The boys had their own ballots tonight too, since they've been very involved in the whole process this year. Ever since Barack said that he was a Chicago White Sox fan, Chris just couldn't seem to get past this. It cost Barack his vote!
Don't think the John McCain and Barack Obama are the only two fighting for a nomination....I'm up for Site Council at the boys' school. It looks like I've got a pretty good chance at a win, since there are only 2 candidates and 2 positions that need to be filled. I'll keep you posted. :)

Oh, what a weekend!

Dan and I had our first ever weekend away from the boys, and we went to Sunriver to celebrate my brother Mark's 40th birthday. Auntie Leann and Uncle Frank came all the way from Florida did an amazing job of watching the boys for us, which you can read all about here. We appreciate their help so much, and the boys really had a great time, too.
Oh, what a party it was! Claudine went all out, and hosted the greatest weekend for everyone in this AMAZING Sunriver house. The weekend was filled with sunshine, drinking, shuffle board, hot-tubbing, drinking, catered meals, bike riding, drinking, laughs, good music, dancing and more drinking....you get the picture. Needless to say, everyone left there with awesome memories and a few more wrinkles on our faces from laughing. The perfect weekend, with a perfectly fun group of people. We can hardly wait for Mark's 50th!
A chef came in on Saturday night and cooked a delicious meal for us. We all shared fun stories about Mark. Everyone loves Mark! :)

a great day on Sauvie Island

Auntie Leann and Uncle Frank arrived from Tampa yesterday. They are going to watch the boys this weekend so that Dan and I can go to Sunriver for Uncle Mark's 40th birthday extravaganza! We are really excited for our first weekend getaway since these turkeys were born 4 1/2 years ago!
Today we visited Sauvie Island and went to 2 pumpkin patches---Kreugers and The big Pumpkin Patch. It was fun to pick out our pumpkins and some gourds, as well as a hay ride out to the muddy pumpkin field. Uncle Frank bought a bag of Kettle Korn which was delicious!
Leann brought us a gift that is so special and unique. It's a framed picture of letters that they have photographed on their various travels around the world, spelling out our last name. I love it! It found it's new home in our dining room.

mmmm....bread!

Dan and the boys made bread this weekend. Need I tell you that it was delicious?
There were 2 different types. The loaves that we served with our spaghetti dinner were rustic artisan, and the one we used for french toast this morning was a modified challah bread. Watch out, Grand Central Bakery......there's a new bread maker in town!

baseball playing brothers

Dan took the boys to the park this morning to play some baseball and captured this great picture. It was a pop-fly for Nate, and he was running backwards to catch it---which he did! Chris was right in there ready to back up his brother, had his attempt failed. That's what being good brothers is all about.

pondering 'octo'

The other day I was teaching the boys about the term octo...easy to remember because and OCTOPUS has 8 legs, an OCTAGON has 8 sides.

Chris has a question for me in the car today.
"Mom, how come the word October doesn't have any 8's to do with it, since it has octo?"
Great question if you ask me.

Then a minute later Nate chimed in.
"How come spiders don't have the octo word in them because they have 8 legs??"


Hmmm....makes you wonder. Anybody have an answer for me?

shoes

Chris is a great kid. Rarely acts up, goes with the flow, and is an all-around balanced, happy child.

--Until it comes time to put his shoes on for the day.

The drama that ensues is ridiculous. I have gone through about 5 pairs of shoes looking for the magical pair that will finally be perfect. No crying. No complaining. No yanking the straps so hard that they're about to snap off. (He would wear his rotten sandals which are falling apart everyday if he could.) I thought I had found the right pair yesterday at Target. We tried them on with the thickest of socks and he was happy as can be. But this morning everything changed.

Amidst the tears and complaining, I told him that he might just need some fresh air. We decided that he would run to 'old jeeps' (a house down the street) and work the shoes in. He ran. He came home with a smile on his face. He ran the other direction to 'two rocks'. (his boundary in the other direction) I think this will now be part of our daily routine. Run Forrest, run!

let's go back in time a little bit....

You like????

It's my yearbook photo from the class of 54', 74', and 84'. Looking good. You've got to try this for yourself. (Thanks for the link, Janice!)