And Finally Halloween!

It seems like we have been doing Halloween themed activities all month, but it is finally the actual day! 

Thomas' school gave the a-ok to wearing costumes to school. But they did send a reminder that they needed to be able to get their snow suits on over the costumes and be able to quickly get out of them on their own for bathroom breaks. Thomas and I discussed it and decided the Astronaut suit might be problematic and he opted to go as a Policeman for the school day. 

But trick-or-treating time was back to astronaut! And I decided to join him for the dressing up and wore my Wonder Woman pajamas to walk around the neighborhood with him. It was between that and my Storm Trooper set, but one of my coworkers told me he gives extra candy to superheroes and I was going to hold him to that!

It was a super appropriate weather night for Halloween. We've been dealing with fog for what seems like a week now and it got super heavy tonight! It was perfectly creepy - though by the end of our walk, it was probably getting a little dangerous to be driving around in...!

Thomas was pretty excited about his haul, except for the Twizzlers. He picked all of them out of his bucket and put them aside for his dad. At least someone in the house likes them... 

Love this guy and glad I got to be his trick-or-treating partner. Plus he shared some of his haul with me!

Oh and my coworker came through with the candy for superheroes promise. Woo! :)

Halloween Cookies

As much as I love decorating cookie, it has been a long time since we have decorated them! Brittney texted me a few days ago to ask a cookie decorating question and it was definitely an inspiration to make some cookies!

Thomas was, of course, on board with making Halloween themed cookies. Though you can see that we used more than just the standard Halloween cutters. And the Texas cookie cutter made an appearance (as always!).

Heather had invited us over to a Halloween themed dinner party, but the original planned day didn't work out, so she rescheduled to tonight. I told her that was fine as long as we could bring our cookie decorating stuff with us. Obviously, she didn't mind!

Thomas was a decorating champ! Sometimes the boys lose interest after a few cookies, but he powered through some cookies. I think it was the candy eyeballs - he put them on almost every cookie he decorated.

Not a bad assortment of cookies, huh? Heather's friend may have put a big line across one of my Texas cookies, so I altered it to make it a happy Texas. Don't Mess With Texas!

Heather didn't get to decorate with us since she was busy in the kitchen making us dinner. Thomas thought the mummy bread, meatball eyes and worm pasta was the coolest Halloween dinner ever. He even took some home with him to pack for lunch the next day. Clearly a win in his book!

Unlike the caramel apples! He was fine with eating an apple on a stick, but he wanted nothing to do with the caramel or the crushed up toppings. Sometimes there is no explaining this kid... ;)

Trick or Treat in the Street

Last year, we had quite the group for Trick-or-Treat in the Street in downtown, but this year it was just Thomas and I. But he didn't seem to mind me being his only companion - maybe he thought he would get more candy that way??

Both boys took it super easy on me with their costumes and wanted to dress up in outfits that we already owned. I personally love this astronaut outfit and was super excited that was what he wanted to be. :)

He was most excited about this giant SWAT truck parked on the sidewalk and I can't really blame him - it looked pretty intimidating!

But he didn't hesitate to just jump right in and explore it. 

We weren't making a ton of progress on candy gathering - it seemed like there were fewer businesses participating this year. Or maybe it just seems less exciting without the crowd of friends. But I promised Thomas that once we were done that we would go to my favorite ice cream shop when we passed it on the way back. 

Apparently Thomas wasn't feeling the trick-or-treating either because he decided he was done before we made to the turn-around point. "Can we just go get ice cream?" Ummm heck yes, we can!

They had such a fun assortment of Halloween themed flavors, including a Vampire Slayer that was made with garlic... I had been pretty excited to try the Toasty Ghosty made from toasted marshmallows. (And it was as tasty as I had imagined!)

Thomas was only interested in the plain vanilla, but he was just as happy as could be with it. Wild Scoops does so awesome on their flavor combinations, but apparently they can nail a plain vanilla too. :)

We headed back to the car through town square because the event map showed there were some fun activities there. Thomas was super excited about the bounce house and could only be convinced to leave by promising him one last treat for the day...

Hot Chocolate at the coffee shop! It occurred to me that I *might* be spoiling him just a bit, but in my defense the hot chocolate was free to kids in costume and I needed to buy a bag of coffee anyhow... Plus look at that smile!

Worth it! :)

Pumpkin Carving

It was getting close to Halloween and I realized that we hadn't done the most critical Halloween activity yet - pumpkin carving! To be fair, I hadn't really remembered to carve pumpkins for about the past three years, but this year seemed like a good year to do it! 

My favorite part of pumpkin carving is always the initial stabbing of the pumpkin. It's possible I may have some aggression issues against squash to work out... ;)

This guy was super excited about carving pumpkins, but less helpful about scooping out the goop. So I told him I would scoop if he would pick out pumpkin seeds for roasting. He was not too enthused about that because it was "gross".

This is how many seeds he picked out for me until he decided that was enough to roast.

Soooo helpful, son.

I figured we would each pick a pumpkin, but he wanted to draw the designs for both. He wasn't quite up to drawing on the pumpkins, so he drew out the designs on paper for me and I transferred them over to the pumpkins. (Henry didn't get a pumpkin because he and Matt left us to go to Texas. So we were having Halloween fun without them!)

He was feeling up to carving out the shapes I drew on the pumpkin. He managed to get a triangle eye out, but the thinner shapes he wanted me to do. So he's not quite up to solo carving, but he did pretty good!

Our finished pumpkins!

He seemed pretty proud of them too! We don't have any lights for inside of them, so we have to go get some before we stick them out on the porch, but we are ready for Halloween! :)

Also, he decided he really likes roasted pumpkin seeds and was all sad we didn't have more. Next time maybe he will put a little more effort into picking them out of the pumpkin goop. ;)

Halloween Houses

I had to go to Michael's the other day for something cake related and stumbled across some awesome Halloween house kits for the kids. Pretty much couldn't resist buying them and the two of them have been super excited to build them. 

Thomas wanted a little bit of help to glue the big pieces together, but was then more than happy to do it all on his own. Since he was doing such an awesome job, I just took photos instead. :)

Henry needed a little more help, so we worked together on putting his purple house together. To be fair, the kits are both for kids 6 and up. 3 plus a little adult help equal 6, right??

I think the haunted mansion just looks super cool. I helped Thomas some with the windows because you had to pull the frame away from all the black squares and it was a little prone to ripping. (It's nice to be needed!)

Henry was so proud of his finished house! 

And look at this masterpiece! It was a little more involved than his brother's but he got it all done like a champ! 

Also, I love his dinosaur pj's - he gets tons of hugs from mommy when he wears these cozy things. :)

School Halloween Party

Thomas' school had a Halloween in mid-October and Thomas was super excited about it in the week leading up to it. Siblings were welcome to come, so we are decided to go join in on the fun!

His school has a few long hallways, so they sent up a trick-or-treat hallway in one that had people at every door to hand out candy. Any surprise we ended up there first??

Trick-or-treating inside. So much warmer! And I thought it was pretty cool that the nearby high school had lots of their students volunteer to man the different stations of the Halloween party. So nice of them!

They had a few inflatables set up in the gym and the boys wanted to try out this new one we had never seen. I thought the line was a little long, but we went ahead and waited in it. (Good thing, it was three times longer the rest of the night). 

I was a little concerned that my two guys would even like this giant wrecking ball themed enclosure, but the two of them loved it.

Henry got knocked over a lot, but he just kept popping back up for more! Thomas was much better about keeping his eye on the ball and managed to push it away more than it knocked him over. 

He was also pretty excited to show me his artwork hanging in the hallway. We don't go into the school much with him, so it's fun to see what is up on the walls!

After lots of fun playing, we took a break for pizza time! Henry actually ate some pizza since they had plain cheese. This kid claims to love pizza, but he won't eat it if there are any toppings on it. Which is nice to know - we love doing pizza night and he wouldn't ever eat it. At least we have one option now...

One of the classrooms was set up as a cake walk and they both got to pick out a fun dessert when their number was called. Nicely, it was play until you win! :)

There were several game areas set up for playing (also manned by high schoolers). They got quite the haul of little trinkets and candy - I think Thomas picked out about 5 tiny magnifying lenses. Also, in case you can't tell, he dominated Henry on Tic-Tac-Toe - that green one in the area landed perfectly to finish off his row. 

Kudos to everyone who helped pull this Halloween party off, it was tons of fun for both of them!

Random September Photos

September was definitely a blur! I blinked and it was suddenly October... "/

Nonni stayed with us for two weeks at the beginning of school and through her birthday. She requested ice cream for her birthday instead of cake and we were more than happy to oblige such a reasonable request! :)

Thomas started his Tae Kwon Do after school program and they gave them a pizza to take home and bake the first day. I am not 100% sure why, but he was super excited. Well except for the fact it only came with pepperoni. So I went and bought his favorite topping (sliced olives) to put on top instead. He put together the whole thing without help, but I failed to noticed that he used to whole can of olives until he was done...

He *really* likes olives.

Henry has finally started drawing people! They are much different than Thomas' first people drawings, but equally as creative. My blue hair is apparently blowing in the wind and I have no idea why Nonni has no arms...

I moved to a new group at work and despite my old group calling me a traitor* for leaving, they apparently are going to miss me enough to make me a cake. Kathryn made me this awesome masterpiece complete with our team logo and my favorite emojis on the side. Plus is was chocolate-chocolate, which she knows is my favorite. I am definitely going to miss this crazy team.

*Traitor (and back stabber) was because we have a long running team building going at work that involved playing other teams every month. And I was trying to figure out if my old or new team had a higher ranking before committing to staying on the old team. Ha! Also where the team logo came from. Yes, that is a shark with an executioner blade. And a pear on it's arm. It's a long story...

I finally bought a 3D printer! Sometimes at work they give us little "bonuses" for when we do something above and beyond or help out in different areas. So when I got my most recent one, I decided to put it towards something fun for the family. As you can see - the boys really like watching it print! Especially when I am printing toys for them!

Or hanging out with me when I am trouble-shooting a particularly difficult print... Sad penguin is a great visual of how I felt at this particular moment.

This forklift was such a pain. It would get 75% printed after sooo many hours and then something would fail. The supports snapped off several times. I finally flipped it to print on it's side and that completed the print, but it's so rough on the side. Ugh. Matt still liked it enough to use it, but I wasn't super happy with it. (It's a phone stand for his desk at work - it's not shown here, but it has a bright orange seat that goes with it.)

Thomas and I played Waterworks for the first time! The boys have gotten so much more interested in playing games with me and I love introducing them to ones I played with my family when I was a kid. I definitely beat him on this one, but he seemed to like the concept once he was got it.

Henry didn't want to be left out and demanded to play Kerplunk. I totally lost on this one... My spatial awareness failed me this particular morning!

These kids are obsessed with making cheese bridges. Anytime we have grilled cheese sandwiches or quesadillas, the two of them compete to see who can stretch their cheese out the furthest. Thomas definitely won today!

There is an apple picking place just down the hill from our house that we have never been to. One of my friends at work said his kids had a blast picking apples, so I told them boys we would get up Saturday morning and go pick apples! Except it wasn't open anymore...! There were still some apples on the tress, but the gates were locked. The boys were so devastated. :(

Luckily, I had gotten an email from the farmer's market and some of the vendors were bringing apples. So it wasn't quite "picking" apples, but the boys seemed just as excited picking out apples from the giant bucket.

Matt even pointed out that some of the apples still had "tree" attached to them, so the apples with leaves still attached were definitely their favorite. Crisis averted and we got enough apples to make mini pies and apple bread. Win-win!

I volunteered at the zoo the other day to help hang up the Christmas lights, so I wanted to take the boys and show off all of my hard work. They seemed suitably impressed, but more excited to just be back at the zoo again. Our membership had lapsed a few months ago and I finally renewed it. They love the zoo!

The seals were super interested in the boys today. I swear this guy kept coming up to the glass to say hi - though I told the boys he was trying to give them kisses, which led to hysterical laughing. :)

Since Thomas is now in real school, Henry is now our crock-pot chef at daycare. He was super excited to do his first class and it was chili, which is usually pretty tasty. He had a blast and I didn't have to make dinner! Also, I just happened to have fritos, so it was an even better dinner! :)

I love going through Thomas' school work he brings home because he gets to excited to tell me about every worksheet. Sometimes parts of the sheets are blank and he likes to make up his own work at home. I walked over and he had made this one into all of the important flags. Soooo proud that he has Texas, Alaska and the US flag. That's my boy!

Not sure how the railroad track in the corner is related, but that boy does love his trains...!

I taught him this trick this morning when he was pestering me for waffles. He was a little nervous about the fact that the waffles would be too hot, but after I convinced him to just let them cool for a bit, he was all over it. He even made one for his brother!

One more chore I can hand off to the little guy. :)

State Fair Time!

It's that time of year again! Fair time!!

Unlike last year, it was not terribly sunny and warm... Honestly, this whole summer wasn't terribly sunny or warm. Hopefully that means we will have a nice winter to make up for summer being a little lame?

Matt and I actually went to the fair last night as well for a concert! I heard Third Eye Blind was coming and knew we *had* to go! We have spent sooo much time jamming their first album that I wanted to see them live. I was worried they would only play newer stuff, but they played so many old ones - including our absolute favorite: Motorcycle Drive By!

Thanks so much to Nonni for watching the kids so we could have a date night! (And it only rained on us a teensy bit...)

And since I was already on the state fair website booking special events, I decided to buy tickets for the Monster Truck show. I absolutely love monster trucks and haven't seen them since we left Texas. I figured it would probably be a little lame compared to MONSTER JAM!!!, but the boys would probably still think lame trucks were cool!

I got *so* excited when I saw this guy from a distance. "No way that Grave Digger is here!!!" And he wasn't, but when I saw this guy was named Identity Theft, I decided that was worth loving him too. :) He even got some good jumps in!

Which brings us to the fence situation. We always sit fairly high at the Monster Jam because we have read too many horror stories about tire flying off of the trucks and into the crowd. And then I buy tickets that literally have us at tire level. So while it was fun, I doubt we will be doing this again...!

The bikes were equally as exciting to the boys and not nearly as scary to the parents. Well maybe a little scary to the person still nursing a broken collarbone...?

I would just like to include this photo because Henry is so adorable. And he even was willing to wear his ear muffs - which is a miracle sometimes. ;)

Actually, they requested the ear muffs back for the lumberjack show! We don't usually have them and they end up covering their ears, so they were pretty happy this time. We made it through the show and a few more snacks before these guys decided it was too cold and they wanted to go home. So not our longest visit to the fair, but given that I got fair food last night, I was ok with calling it a day.

Here's hoping for more sun next year! :)

Kindergarten! :) :(

I can't believe that Thomas is actually old enough to be starting Kindergarten! I have been in a little bit of denial about the whole thing. We went and met the teacher last week, then he had a practice kindergarten for a few hours. He seemed fine with the concept, but I was still worried about his first day...

Which was ridiculous apparently. He walked into school and to his class like he was a seasoned pro! Put all his stuff away in his bin and was ready for the day. I know that is a good thing, but he looked like such a little boy. My baby is officially a Kindergartener... :( 

So proud of him though! :)

Nonni didn't want to miss out on the fun either! Not only did she get to be part of such a momentous day, it really helped ease our minds about the after school Tae Kwon Do program. We were nervous about him figuring out the bus ride over there and she was able to take him the first few days. After a day or two of being escorted, he was ready to try out the van with Nonni following and finally didn't need any sort of help. Such a big guy!

Weekend in Talkeetna

Since Matt was supposed to be gone for a few weekends, I had made plans to go to Talkeetna with the kids and just hang out. I figured we would miss Matt less if we weren't just hanging out at the house. But since he was back home early, he came with us!

We hadn't stayed in the cabin for a few years, so I was pretty excited about going back. Plus you can have dogs in the cabin, so the girls got to join in on the family trip. Not for the photo though... Matt can't exactly hold a dog leash right now, so they were stuck inside for photo time.

After breakfast, we wandered down to the river to see if Denali was out (though you can tell there really wasn't much of a chance of that based on the weather...). I was going to let them throw rocks in the river, but it was much higher than usual and I didn't want them getting close to the bank at all!

Luckily there was a nice beachy area just to the left!

Much less scary to let them throw rocks in where the water is gentle. Unfortunately, the girls were not at all impressed by the fact I wouldn't let them in the water. Sorry girls - you have not proven yourself very competent with currents, so it's not happening!

We randomly picked the weekend of Denali's 100th anniversary to be in Talkeetna - which happens to have the ranger station that is the home base for all mountaineering adventures to Denali. A park ranger found us throwing rocks in the river and told us to stop by since they had all kinds of activities for kids. 

The boys had a blast with several of the activities, including these rad "100" glasses! But the best park where the park badges they were handing out. We've collected several of these and they are always plastic, but not today! Since it was such a momentous occasion, they had badges laser engraved out of birch. They were only for the celebration and the kids thought they were the coolest thing.

Happy Birthday Denali! :)