Our Wet Halloween....

What a day! We are all tuckered out, a little wet, but loaded with candy and good memories.

It was a school day for both the boys, so that meant parties in both classes.

Ty's party was a lot of fun. Teacher Cathy dressed up as a banana, her asst. Gen was an M&M. They set up carnival type games, had things to color, made treat bags, sang songs, read books and had a special snack.

Getting ready to go trick or treating around the school offices...

Waiting his turn....

"Whas dat, Meme?"

We left early from Ty's class to go catch up with Cody's crew. They spent the morning playing games and making their treat bags, then walked over to Old Fair Oaks for their safe T-O-T. This is the 3rd year we've done the safe T-O-T, you go around the businesses in the village and they have treats and things. There was also a carnival set up in the clubhouse, but we skipped it this year, too much excitment for us!

Cody walking over with his class...

My favorite puppies....

Then we spent time driving around town, going to visit Uncle Eli, Dad and back to Gma/pa S. house. After some much needed naps, we ate an easy dinner and headed out around the neighborhood for some more candy collecting. They had a great day, and both used their manners for the most part. I love this time of year!

Snuggle me, Snuggle you...

One of the gals at Keith's work is about to have a baby, so we are going to a potluck lunch for her on Thur. Hating to go empty handed, I made here this snuggle blanket for the baby. Ty has one like it and it's his best friend, can't sleep without it. It's not very big, almost 24x24", just big enough to cover and infant car seat, drag around and snuggle with at night.

The weekend harvest fest

Some friends of ours have started a yearly tradition of hosting a harvest gathering at their house. It's a potluck dinner and we all bring a craft for the kids to do. It was our first year going and it was fun for the kids. They were able to make carmel apples, paint mini pumpkin, decorate sugar cookies (our craft), get their face/hands/body painted, make spiders from styrofoam balls, paper pumpkins, masks, necklaces, more spiders, ummmmmm yeah.

So we went and enjoyed. There are only a couple kids remotely close to the boys' ages, most are 4+ years older, but they tagged along and had fun.

Found a new park....

Keith took the boys to an old park, revamped on Sat, so great we went twice! They have two play areas and a ton of grass to run and play. The grass area is shapped down into a bowl, so no soccer/baseball to clutter the fun, or make it crowded on the weekends.

The coolest things there are the spinning chairs, Cody loved them!

Ty did as well, even after I spun him too fast and he ended up on the ground. Here are some of our other coold finds....

Our Favorite Day...

Fridays have become a favorite day at our house. Both boys get to go to school, weekly shopping happens on Fri nights and Keith gets home for the weekend.

This week Keith was supposed to go to Phoenix Thur night, but his ride fell through so he was home with us instead. He took advantage of the day off on Fri and came to school with us. Ty loved it!

Painting, his new favorite thing...

Hard at work..

Coasting down the hill, super smile...

The "too big" bike...
Watch out, here he comes!


So say a little prayer as we enter our Halloween week. It's jam packed, starting on Sun, but it will be fun!

A morning "off"...

Actually it was a kid-free morning, not really "off," but more relaxed! It was spent baking for the majority of the time, cookies for this weekends harvest festival at a friends house. Then some internet time, because I'm overly addicted. After lunch and reading a chapter in my book, awesome, (Thanks Jen for another great series!) I started Cody's robe.

The boys came home around 2pm after a fun filled morning at Apple Hill with G-ma & pa S, Aunt Virgina and Uncle Eli. They had a great time, visiting 3 farms, getting donuts, seeing tractors and cows, and doing lots of running through the fields, I'm sure.

After they were home and settled into naps I was able to finish Cody's robe. I seem to do a lot of projects in multiples, so the second go at a robe when much smoother!

Aarrr! A pirate's robe for me!

He'll be excited, he's been wanting a robe for a while, easy request to fulfill! I still need to hem the sleeves, on both robes, but it has to be done by hand, so that's tonight's TV project.

Anyway, that's what I did on my almost day "off" !

I was a guest blogger!!!

How much fun was that?!?!
One of my girlfriends from HS asked me to be a guest blogger on her crafty blog site she is starting. It's a compilation of real Moms and the crafty things they do, every couple of weeks or so she switches topics and has people submit things. She asked me to blog about the boys' puppy costumes, check it out here.

It's such a cool idea and hopefully I can contribute again!

Thanks Malissa!

Dollar Store Treasures.....

I forget the treasures you can find at the "good" dollar stores. I found these there tonight....
No, I won't tell you what there for, or why I have 18 of them. But damn it, they're cute! I was so excited to find these, way too excited, and the characters are cute, not dollar store cheap!

Bishops Pumpkin Farm

We woke up bright and early and headed to Wheatland for the morning. This is by far our favorite pumpkin patch and farm in the area, totally worth the drive. It's been a couple of seasons since we've been and they have improved the ground tremendously. Here's our day in pictures....

Ty was ready to go, smiley and laughing, Cody was not smiling for the camera. Don't know why, must be a 4 yo thing!

There's a smile!
Ty thought these were really funny!
Yes, black eye. Some show of brotherly love!
After arriving, we bought our tickets for the train and headed over to the animal area. Ty was really timid about the animals, most of them are 4+ times his size, so I get it. A big improvement from last year was Cody wanting to pet and be around the animals.
Ty was not so sure, hated the big goats and would run the other direction.
Feeding the goats, 1 piece between his fingers. Then he would turn his head and run!
After the animals we headed over to the wooden play structure to climb around a bit.


Then it was time to ride the train, one of our favorites about this place. It went around the monster pumpkins, saw more livestock and a bunch of old farm tools.

Classic pumpkin pictures....
So serious...

To make him smile we asked, "Do you have a girlfriend? Is it Jenna?" This is the look he gave me!
There's lots to do, so we headed over to the barn slide and the tower slides. They had a good time, getting rid of some energy!


From there it was time to watch the pig races. They put on a cute show and the boys thought it was funny.

After a quick trip back to the van for some snacks, it was time for the hay ride to the pumpkin patch. We were getting pretty tired at this point, so we had our serious faces on again.

Searching out the perfect pumpkin...

Oh, the faces of Cody...

Asked him to smile at me with his pumpkins....
So we headed for home after this, right as it was really starting to get busy! G-ma S. came along for the trip and treated us to lunch on the way home. We had a lovely napping afternoon, almost 3 hours of sleeping!

After dinner we put our faces on our pumpkins.

Puppy for Tyler...

The pig and kitty for Cody....
Complete with Mama Bear. Keith is thinking he's going to carve his, so we'll have to wait and see what becomes of the big one in the back.

Great day, can't wait to go again!

Clifford....

One of the fun things that has carried over from preschool last year is getting to take Clifford home from school for a few days, almost a week. They rotate through the names in alphabetical order, so I knew it was coming, and was so happy when it was finally his turn! Cody has been asking me for weeks when it would be his turn, and was ecstatic to take him home on Mon.

In Clifford's bag are about 8 books, a ball for Clifford and a DVD of the Clifford shows from PBS. So we've been going through the episodes over the last few mornings, I think there are 8 on the dang thing! We read the books throughout the day and the boys love dragging him around.

On our way to the pumpkin patch....

"My picture too, MeMe!" Tyler with his water monster.
Class mascot at the class field trip.
Getting the mail, cruising in the hot rod.
Playing with our Clifford.

Tomorrow we take him back to school, with all his stuff. It's been a fun week, and we'll get to have him again, I think.