Kids Say the Darndest Things Halloween Edition

When the doorbell rang for the first time, Easton shouted, "An unsuspecting stranger!"



While Trick or Treating, Dalton acted the part of Woody and exclaimed, "There's water in me hole!" (Woody says, "somebody's poisioned the watering hole").

He's clearly trying to pick up expressions he hears but earlier in the day instead of saying "Oh nuts!" he just said, "Oh peanut!"

One house went all out with a hay maze through their driveway to the door. We got to the end and Dalton said, "I 'cared (scared)...let's get outta here!"




Once we made it back home and turned on our porch light we were hit with billions of costumed kiddos. I was nursing and Jason was handing out candy with the boys when they ran out candy in the bag they had...we had to send Easton to the kitchen for back-ups and he ran to the door with the bag exclaiming, "Here's some more candy, folks!"

The best part of my day was when he cuddled up to me telling me out of the blue, "I loved trick-or-treating, Mommy. Thank you for taking me."

Happy Halloween to all and to all a safe night!

All Hallows Eve Eve

If you don't like Halloween, this isn't the post for you. This one is filled with our festivities mostly from Halloween Eve (today). I'm so timely!

I said this post would be mostly from today, but some of our festive fun began a few weeks ago. In the past we've done professional pictures of the kids in their costumes. This year, Jason didn't want to so I did some myself with a sheet draped over the couch mostly to minimize the backgrounds. Without any further adieu, I give you:

Bumblebee!




Woody!




And, making her Halloween debut...our mermaid!




We sent those off to the grandparents but we had to include something more than just the pictures. So one day we finger (and foot) painted these cards:


Dalton's spider "but actually looks like an octopus" (said Easton):


And Easton's spider which he insisted on giving the proper number of eyes...poor guy wanted to line them up as you can see, then ran out of room in his line. Isn't he so cute, though?


And these are both Easton's...Dalton didn't want to toe paint:


I had to wait to share all of the above until I knew The Alabamaws had received theirs...which G-Ma let me know they got them today.

So, now I can fill you in on today's festive fun. Let me tell you, it's been jam packed. First, we went to the grocery store for chocolate doughnuts. We don't usually get chocolate at Krispy Kreme or anywhere because the children (Dalton) have a nasty habit of eating only the chocolate off the top. Easton eats it properly now, but he was a little chocolated out after his first doughnut and didn't want another unless it was chocolate free. Anyhoo... we made our traditional spider doughnuts:






It's a little silly to make it and then immediately take it apart to eat it, but the kids loved it. Last year too. I even made a double decker one for Jason when we were newly dating. :) My mom raised me to be a festive gal, what can I say? Doughnut spiders are her doing...she even provided me with all the pipe cleaners and googly eyes to make that one for Jason 6 years ago. Hee hee!

After breakfast we moved on to some crafting. First I traced the kids hands and feet on black and white paper and we made bats and ghosts from them, gluing them onto construction paper which they then embellished:






And when I say embellished, Easton went to town. His creative juices were flowing. We even ended up taping another piece of paper to either side of his original. He just kept going and going drawing pumpkins and sticking stickers and writing who knows what and doodling mummies:


Dalton, however, wasn't feeling as paper crafty after awhile and moved onto posing:






And playing guitar:


Dalton wasn't the only one posing...our family pet is a Halloween fan too. How much more Halloweeny can you get than a black cat?

Jason believes Blitz's birthday is likely Halloween too. That's what we say. Jason snatched Blitz out of a gutter as a kitten and the vet guessed his age at the time. Halloween was a likely birthday.

Eventually Dalton moved on to some foamie fun instead, putting this pumpkin on this green bag:




Eastie made one too once he finished up his 3 page mural:




We also made lollipop ghosts (another idea courtesy of my childhood with Moosie):






And their finished paper crafts:


Then Miss A decided she could wait no longer for her lunch:


So I fed her while the boys ran off with their ghosts to play Legos in the basement. After Autumn finished I got started on the boys' lunch...breadstick bones:


Oh...and cheese cut out with cookie cutters, cut up fruit leather for the faces, and "blood" for dipping:

How fun am I? ;)

After lunch we didn't have a ton of time. Dalton certainly didn't have time to nap because we were all heading to Jason's work party. We learned that Kaiden wasn't going to be there (because of kindergarten) and then our friend Baby John's dad doesn't work there anymore. So we didn't have any real friends to look forward to seeing. We had a fine time, though. Didn't really take any pictures except for these two mere moments before we left for the day:




We stopped at Noodles on our way home because I had a BOGO and we all love Noodles. Autumn was ready to get home for some milk, though. She was much happier with her full tummy:


And she thinks her Halloween p.j.'s from Gramoo are pretty cool too:


The boys are in their Halloween jammies tonight too:


In fact...we all are. Are you ready for the very first photo of the "S" family all looking at the camera???

Here we are!

Thank you, Timer! (Hey, it's something...can't believe this is the first posed picture of the 5 of us, though.)

And with that, all the kids went to bed. Easton hopped right into his top bunk. Dalton didn't last long with the rocking. Neither did Autumn in her Pack & Play. As you can see, we've had a full day. And tomorrow promises a lot of fun too!

Till then...

Snow Day #2

We've had piles of snow in the last two days. Jason has been working from home. However, he actually works when he's here. We hardly see him. He now has a lovely basement studio/office and he goes down there and we hardly know he's here except for the boys wondering, "Where's Daddy? Can I go see Daddy?" and when he comes up to eat or go to the bathroom it's, "Daddy, do you want to go outside with us? Daddy, what should we play?"

Instead, boring ol' Mommy is who they're stuck hanging out with which they normally don't mind so much, but knowing their exciting Daddy is just downstairs and suddenly I'm chopped liver.

I broke out the Floam...




It lasted less than 5 minutes. We came up with some other things to do of course and we had a fine day...it's just hard on the boys when Daddy is here but unavailable.

My girl, however, is happy as long as Mama is around. Got that going for me, at least--for now. Her skin's happiness is a different story. Either I ate something that made it angry, or it's not eczema and the lotion I put on it (fragrance-free, of course) made it worse:

Poor thing. Hope we can figure it out soon although it doesn't seem to bother her a bit. And if we're far enough away you can't even tell she's "all rashy" (as Easton said):

I've got her all bundled up there with the hat because I thought she'd need to go out in the snow with me. Her wool hats make her skin 10 times worse so she's got that cute little cotton one instead.

Even with the snow, I had Easton's parent/teacher conference. My mom was going to come watch the kids but once the snow was forecasted to be as bad as it was, Jason planned to work from home and we weren't going to make my mom drive in that snow just for a 15 minute conference. Lucky for me, I got Autumn to sleep and the boys in quiet time so that I could go kid-free like the teacher prefers. Jason obviously didn't get to join me this time but I learned that Easton is doing very well. She tells me that he is very very bright but also unmotivated. He apparently has a hard time choosing work each day (Montessori has the kids choose things independently like that). I am not surprised. Now that his "quiet time" isn't in his room anymore (because D naps in there) he often has a hard time finding things to do to fill that hour or so. Mrs. M's personal goal is to get him more excited about learning this next semester. Like I mentioned, she said he is very bright...but she says kids like that often have a hard time when it comes to practicing basics like writing his letters...he knows all his letters and the sounds they make and all that, but he has little interest in writing them. Or he has little interest in doing some of the boring Montessori tasks like arranging a bunch of rods from shortest to longest (can't say that I blame him). It's almost so far below him that he doesn't care to even try. If he were like I was, he'd like to show off how simple it is for him. But he doesn't care about the public approval so much. :) Now, if he could somehow learn independently about space or dinosaurs or bugs he'd be great...but writing his letters or having to color inside the lines or stacking largest to smallest...not really something he wants to do much of. However, he does really enjoy math and she said that he is still very advanced in his math skills compared with his peers. I'm not sure what preschool "math" entails at school but I know he does enjoy some basic addition and subtraction problems with Jason here at home. He begs to do it.

Anyway, it sounds like Mrs. M enjoys Easton...she says he never gives her any problems other than wandering around awhile trying to avoid choosing work. She tells me he watches her and that if he thinks he's getting caught he'll quickly choose something, the goob. I asked what I can do to motivate him but she says it's more of a classroom thing and therefore her job. He's very excited about learning things he wants to learn about...even writing letters. But, he only wants to do it on his terms when it strikes his fancy. :)

After the conference I had to run to the store for a few groceries and, most of all, diapers before the rest of the snow hit.

When I got home, quiet time was just about over, Autumn was asleep so the boys got ready to head outside to play:


We have two boys and one pair of snow pants...and one pair of waterproof gloves. Poor Dalton got shafted, we need to do some shopping for him. But he still had fun:




Easton is a snow bunny and was out there for, like, an hour:


Daddy joined them only briefly:

He was going to help them with a snowman but it wasn't the right kind of snow for that today...you people that don't get snow probably don't know the difference but just trust me...sometimes snow can't stick to itself to make balls, etc. Hee hee!

Jason's time in the snow was spent mostly shoveling instead:


He hasn't been out to shovel at all today. Good thing I'm not trying to go anywhere.

Once Easton finally came inside he had some hot chocolate and eventually bundled up in Daddy's clothes and glasses:


We had our new favorite recipe (sort of a black bean chili) for dinner. Dalton hadn't napped in two days and with the snow play in the afternoon the poor boy was absolutely worn out and fell asleep at the dinner table:

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I carried him up to bed where he woke up when I tried to put some p.j. pants on him (he woke up crying that he only wanted black pants). So he came back down to dinner and went to bed at their normal time. :)

Once the boys were asleep I was almost relieved to see that baseball is on this week...it means less TV shows to "have" to watch/stay caught up on (Glee and House are the Fox shows I watch). Autumn kept us company while we watched SVU and some of the weather on the news:


Then she treated me to sleeping entirely through my night again. I could get used to that. Unfortunately she likes to change it up on me...a few nights ago she was up twice (usually it's just once). Oh well. There will be plenty of sleeping-through-the-night years ahead of us. I will cherish this stage while it lasts.

However, Autumn went back to sleep at 6:45 until about 9:45. It gave us time to cozy in the bed in the dark watching cartoons with the boys, make chocolate croissants for breakfast, and snap some more pictures of the snow that had fallen throughout the night:

That's our picnic table but without much contrast it's sort of hard to see. This is a better picture of the boys' table and the grill:


Once Miss A woke up she decided to fill her diaper and the back of her jammies with poo. So we decided she needed a bath and my two trusty helpers gave me a hand. They loved seeing her in her princess towel:

(The boys are usually asleep when Autumn gets bathed.)

And I felt like pinking her up a bit despite her blue Miracle Blanket:


I don't care a bit that my daughter has a blue blanket. We know she's a girl...and she doesn't wear that in public. I don't need to go waste money just to have a pink blanket. We bought a Miracle Blanket in "natural" and this blue one (a hand-me-down from Ember) works just fine too. We don't own any "girly" blankets, actually. But that's okay with me...if I'm gonna spend the money I'd rather spend it on something else. I just don't know what that "something else" is other than those Chucks. :) Actually I splurged on Christmas outfits for the kids...and by "splurge" I mean like, $21 for a 3 piece outfit for each boy...but I think I'm going to return them. We'll see. I just don't have the budget for it, but I do want them to have Christmas outfits this year. We'll see. I've got some time as it's not even Halloween!

Okay, that got really off track again. Boys are done with their quiet time. Must find something fun to do to distract them from the fact that Daddy is in the basement! Adios!