The Real Thing

We made it! We spent the evening at my friend's house so our kiddos could trick-or-treat together. Their neighborhood is so much fun and completely decked out with Halloween decorations. Really, I've never seen anything like it. Almost every house was lit up with lights and carved pumpkins. Some really went out of their way... to the extent of having a blown up castle in their front yard with smoke and music, one front yard was roped off with a man laying in the grass and a bear with his shoe, Chewbacca(from Star Wars) was standing on one porch greeting trick-or-treaters, and handfuls upon handfuls of candy. What a night!


Daddy got a kick out of Chewbacca
Jacob loved trick-or-treating and wanted to be right beside his friend Kailey the entire night. He's getting so independent, now insisting on being with friends instead of holding mommy's hand. Gavin was such a trooper, I couldn't be more impressed with how well he did tonight. We walked from house to house for over an hour and he kept right up with the older kids. I don't know how those little legs endured so much walking. I think the candy helped. ;) Every house we went to had at least two stairs (I probably wouldn't notice if I didn't have a toddler), so he fell more than his share of times. My friend said I should've taken a picture of every time he fell and scrapbooked them. It really would have been an entertaining page. There would have been at least ten pictures of Gavin, not to mention three or four of Jacob. At almost every house, one of them fell. Seriously.

It was a fun night. So precious and memorable when they are that little... I loved it.

The littlest trick-or-treater fell asleep in her Mommy's arms

Practice round!

The Y had a cute trick-or-treat parade that we went to today. Jacob was in preschool, so I dressed up Gavin and met my friend and her baby there. Gavin was only seven months old last Halloween, so I basically carried him while Jacob ran from door to door. I'm so excited that he is the perfect age to participate now. He can walk, carry a pumpkin bucket, say tri o' treee, and taak too... and that's all you need to know, right? ;)

It was adorable to watch. Really adorable. At first, Gavin wasn't sure what to think or do. Then the first dressed-up adult gave him his first candy. You could almost read his face... "Really, I just stand here and look cute and you hand me candy? This is the best game EVER!" After that, he was ALL OVER the trick-or-treat game. He happily ran from person to person, filling up his pumpkin. Actually, he held onto as many treats in one hand as possible before dumping them in. He did not want to let go of his pumpkin bucket the whole rest of the day. It was his pride and joy.

Gavin and my friend's baby, Ethan
Getting this trick-or-treat thing down
Feeding Ethan a candy bar, wrapper and all!
Completely and utterly obsessed with their candy
My friend Laurina and I with our lil' guys
Our pumpkins this year ~ Daddy, Mommy, Gavin, Jacob, and Sy the puppy (Adam gets all the credit for the dog pumpkin)

Boy toys

We went for a ride (Jacob and Daddy on the Honda, Gavin and Mommy on the go-cart) to the playground the other day. All of the boy toys in our garage are seriously out of control. Motorcycles, bikes, go-carts, model airplanes... you can tell we have a family full of boys! How did I let Adam sweet talk me into all of these? I have to admit though, they are pretty fun. I can't help but love our family rides as Daddy waves to Gavin on the go-cart and I wave to Jacob on the motorcycle. I appreciate that at least mommy gets to be a part of all the boy fun.

The conversation at the playground was pretty funny:

Jacob: Daddy, please help me on the monkey bars!
(Adam helps him.)
Jacob: That's a good boy Daddy. GOOD BOY. I give you two leaves. (Proceeds to pick up two leaves and place them in his hand)
Adam: (Looks at me with a smile) He's paying me in leaves?
Meanwhile, Jacob has moved on to the rock wall.
Jacob: Mommy! I need help on the rock wall. I will give you a treeat!

The next funny thing happened in the bathroom before bedtime. Jacob was in there a. long. time.

Jacob: Mommy, I just gotta go poo-poo when I ate too much. Go poo-poo and then I don't have a bad dream. (Giggle.) I'm just being SILLY!

Fun at the pumpkin patch

We went to the pumpkin patch last weekend with my dad, step-mom, sister, and her family. Here are some pictures!

How many minutes can I keep my house clean?

Today I had a baby shower at my house for my friend. So yesterday, I had to clean. and clean. and clean. I don't actually like to clean, but I love it when my house is clean. The nice part was that our builder was paying for our tile to be cleaned... so that part was done for me. It was pretty funny because while the man was cleaning, Jacob and Gavin were both crying. Jacob was upset because I had moved all of our furniture around and he wanted me to move it all back. Gavin was throwing a fit about ~ whatever he was throwing a fit about.
He looked at me and said, "I don't know how you do it."

Me - "You don't have kids?"
Him - "No. And I don't want kids."
Jacob and Gavin cry some more.
Him - "Doesn't that ever get to you? (Looking uncomfortable) It just makes me feel so claustrophobic."
Jacob - "Mommy, move it back! Move back the furniture!
Gavin - WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
Tile man looks nauseous and exits the scene.

Anyway, so I finally finished cleaning after the boys went to bed. Since the baby shower was after church, I knew that Jacob and Gavin wouldn't have time to create much of a mess. I was wrong. They managed to get a lot accomplished in the few minutes they were running around before church. Gavin pulled out a few pan lids to bang together. Jacob's sippy cup lid was loose and milk was splashing out. Gavin reached up to the fill his cup with water from the refrigerator, which he proceeded to dump on the floor. Sy slept on the couch and shed his white hair everywhere. And brought in his dirty footprints after going outside. So how many minutes can I keep my house clean? I guess however many minutes everyone is sleeping. :)

Trick-or-treating, HERE WE COME!

Here are this year's Halloween costumes. We tried them on today to make sure they fit. ;) We also practiced trick-or-treating. I couldn't find any candy though, so I filled Jacob's pumpkin with plastic binoculars, bubbles, and macaroni and cheese. Which he LOVED, by the way. You should've seen how excited he was over the macaroni and cheese.

Gavin's tigger costume was Jacob's costume two years ago.

Jacob's pirate costume just came in the mail yesterday. He didn't want to be a pirate... actually, several different ideas were expressed before finally settling on an octopus. Seriously, is that even a costume? I ended up finding this super cute pirate costume online, so I bribed him a little. Pirates have a blue glow-in-the-dark sword. (We bought them at the Puyallup Fair for a Christmas present, but I decided to break them out for the sake of the pirate costume :) It worked and from then on, gung-ho about being a pirate.

Since Jacob got a sword with his costume, of course, Gavin had to have a sword with his costume as well. Tigger with a sword. Nice. This is how we keep them from fighting the majority of the time though... get two of whatever we are giving them. Sharing just isn't working right now. Plus, then they wouldn't be able to have a sword fight. ;)

Preschool crush

Ever since Jacob started preschool, he has been talking about a girl named Kelsey M. nonstop. Sure, he'll tell me about what he did for a craft, what he ate for snack, what playground equipment he played on... but you can be sure that the majority of his conversation will be about Kelsey M.

"Mommy, I play with Kelsey M."
"Kelsey M. is my bestest girl."
"I go to preschool and see Kelsey M."

The first time he mentioned her, I asked, "Oh, you have a friend named Kelsey?" Big mistake. "NO MOMMY. KELSEY M." So I concluded that there must be two Kelsey's in his class, and his friend went by Kelsey M.

I had to see who this Kelsey M. was that my little boy was so smitten over. So when I walked Jacob up to his classroom on Monday, I asked his teacher. She replied, "Oh, you mean Kelsey Ann? She's right there." She pointed to this adorable girl with wavy brown hair and big brown eyes. I expected Jacob to run up to her, grab her hand, and off they would go together. But he didn't. He shyly walked by her with a smile and headed to a different center. Hmmm... so are they best friends or does my son just have his first crush? The kind where you're too twitterpated to actually talk to them. Does that even happen at age 3?

On the way home from preschool, Jacob said with confidence, "Mommy, I have three bestest girls. Maddie (his cousin), Kailey (his most frequent playdate), and Kelsey M." Adam and I tried to explain that her name was Kelsey Ann. He looked confused. "Kelsey And?"

Oh, well. He'll figure it out soon enough. Then he told us that he loved girls AND boys. And that his bestest boys are Travis (his cousin) and Ayden. Apparently, friends are playing a bigger role in his life now... especially his bestest girls.

OUCH!

Crash! Bang! Boom! Waaaahhhh! These are the sounds we hear each day with two active, little boys running around the house. Sometimes I think... Jacob had it so easy when he was eighteen months. No big brother to push him down, nobody to share (or steal) his toys, having mommy and daddy all to himself. Life must have been a piece of cake.

Poor little Gavin hasn't been so lucky. In fact, he has more scars and bruises than Jacob has ever had. If Jacob was the one who knocked him over, we are right there to make sure he apologizes. But since our actual words are "Say - sorry Gavin", Gavin is the one who through his tears says, "Ahh-wee" to Jacob. It melts your heart. Depending on the situation, Jacob may get a spanking. If he does, Gavin stops crying and gets this little look of concern in his eyes. His crying always stops though. As if we made him feel better about the situation by spanking Jacob.

This little scar will probably be with Gavin for life. (Have you ever seen George up close on Grey's Anatomy? He has the exact same cheek scar!) It actually wasn't Jacob's fault. We were in a Verizon store and he fell into the phone rack, slicing his left cheek. I was sick about it, and Adam drove us to the emergency clinic to make sure he didn't need stitches. (He thought I was totally over-reacting, but went to make me feel better :) The woman who was there when we entered examined him and said that she was pretty sure it didn't need stitches. It was after hours and the wait would have probably taken all night. So we took her word for it and went home.
This one was Jacob's fault. He slammed Gavin's finger in the door. It looked really swollen and sore, but wasn't turning purple or anything so we thought it would be fine. Until I saw it hanging by the cuticle today. Ouch. I cut it down to the cuticle the best that I could, so I guess we'll wait and see how long it takes for the new nail to grow. I've never seen a fingernail fall off before. Pretty gross actually.
Despite all of these injuries, Gavin is back to his normal, smiley, make a pretend drum and dance, self. So don't feel too sorry for him. ;)

Getting used to my new schedule...

So I am an official traveling mom now. (I hear this happens when your child/children go to preschool.) I went from a pretty much unscheduled, laid-back summer to having almost every day completely packed. Although preschool on Monday and Tuesday works really well with my Thursday and Friday schedule at work, it makes for a busy week! Life seemed so much more flexible before preschool began. It was nice to be able to go to the Y if I wanted, but I could be lazy and stay home if I wanted too. Jacob loves preschool though and I think it's a great experience for him. Anyway, I think I've finally got this crazy schedule down!

Monday, bring Jacob to preschool and take Gavin to the Y with me.
Tuesday, bring Jacob to preschool and take Gavin to Little Gym.
Wednesday, take Jacob to Awana while Adam and I go to small group
Thursday and Friday, working... (with a more high maintenance class than I'm used to though)
Saturday, ahhhh, finally some relaxation. (or as much relaxation as you can get with a toddler and a preschooler anyway)
Sunday, church

Wait a minute, when do I clean my house? That's just on the backburner for now. :)