Loungin' in the Library

The boys have reached an age where they now share a favorite pastime with Dee - spending time at the library!  They love "picking out" books, after which I have to narrow down their big stacks to around 15-20 at a time.  Last Friday they were making themselves pretty comfortable among the shelves in the children's section!  That bean bag was just the right size for 3 little boys.

Winter Walk of Lights

Today we're all snuggled around a warm fire, and have been watching giant snowflakes fall since the early morning, but just two days ago it was 70 degrees and almost felt like spring!  We were lucky to have planned a trip to see the "Winter Walk of Lights" at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens that evening.  It was quite a sight to walk through and see, and the boys had fun identifying all the holiday and animal shapes made of lights.  There was a neat little flower garden with a bee hive, gingerbread houses and sleighs, and all sorts of woodland creatures hiding in the trees.  It was the perfect night to enjoy this pretty outdoor activity!

Red Tree

The boys have loved all the different colored fall leaves this year.  But the cold front we've experienced early this week has blown just about all of the remaining leaves down and it's starting to feel like winter is coming.  We spent some time last week enjoying a particularly beautiful red tree in our neighbor's yard.  Glad I got some pictures of it just in time!

Little Nemos

The boys love swimming and have started calling themselves Little Nemos lately.  This past weekend we spent a few hours at the pool, and as they were standing together on the far edge I realized that about six months ago they were standing on the same exact spot, wearing floaties.  A solid summer of swimming has certainly gone a long way in making those disappear!  Check out the before and after picture - they even lined themselves up in the same order.  I'm so proud of my Little Nemos and also happy not to have to drag those green floaties back and forth anymore!

April 2014

November 2014

 

Halloween Parties

Yes, I know Halloween is over (phew), but this year, with 2 and 3 year olds hanging on every last spooky detail of the occasion it was practically the biggest "holiday" of the year.  There were parties almost every weekend of the month, school performances, and due to ever changing preferences, I had at least 7 costumes on hand at all times.  So here are A LOT of pictures from some of the parties we attended in October.  One was an amazing bash put on by the family of one of Spencer's preschool classmates, complete with 2 huge bouncy houses, face painting, balloon artist, pinata, cotton candy machine and more... This was one of the only days that the boys wore their 3 Little Pigs costume I put together for them.  Since they refused to put on the cute pig noses and tails, I never got a good picture of them in the complete costume, and then...they got their faces painted.  The face paints they picked out accurately reflected both their personalities and levels of practical decision making associated with their "building materials".  Owen, with the bricks, chose a small, sensible Thomas paint for his forearm; Spencer, with the sticks, chose a moderately strange green monster biting his eye; and Oliver, with his straw, was dead set on getting the boldest and most scary face paint option available!!!  I tried, but honestly could not talk him out of that one.  The cute, 3 Little Pigs idea I had in my head didn't turn out quite as planned, but they were adorable (and funny) in their own way!  And toward the end are pictures of our Happy Jack-O-Lantern, carved just hours before Halloween night.  Owen was determined to have one lighting up our front porch and insisted that he have a big smiley face with diamond shaped eyes and a circle nose.  Our neighbors held a fun driveway party late that afternoon for families with young kids, and then when it got dark out we all went trick-or-treating together.  Everyone was so eager to be the first to the ring door bells.  The boys still don't understand the concept of taking just one piece of candy (at least they pretend not to) and since our neighborhood doesn't get many trick-or-treaters, most people gladly encouraged the kids to take hand fulls of candy for their buckets!  But by the time Halloween night rolled around, I think we'd had enough tricks and treats that month to last until next year!!

Pinata broke!  Little does he know, those are raisins...

Manual labor in between parties

"I got Daddy's drink"

"Oliver, let's take a sip"

Neighborhood trick or treat bunch