Friday night

"it's Friday, Friday...." can often be heard as it's sung around our house on, you guessed it, Fridays. The boys practically live for that day because of our dinner and a movie tradition. It used to be pizza and a movie tradition but tomato based foods (we think) are giving Chris stomach issues now thanks to the chemo drugs. As a result I'm having to get more creative for dinner and try and substitute other "fun" dinners that can be eaten over a blanket downstairs. Last night we ate chicken pot pies and watched Quest for Camelot.

Trick or Treating

I wanted to get Alec's perspective on Trick or Treating and asked him to say some things for me. Chris will do something similar with him sometimes when Chris writes his brother, Edward on his mission. I'm not sure who Alec thought we were sending this to but its still fun hear his voice in the conversation.

Me: "Alec, What do you want to say about Trick or Treating?"

Alec: "We had so much fun! Do you don't 'member what I was? Hmm.... I want to say... Say.. I know if I say Trick or Trick (write that down.. trick or trick) I know you're not going to give me candy. We got a lot of candy from someone else.. and you. And I want to say, we got a whole bunch of candy! And we heared some fireworks but they were so far away, I know that. I didn't know (write that down) I didn't know Max, one time at the last one, I didn't know we were at Max's house with the dog. Did you meet Max's house? He's our neighbor... Max is our neighbor. Man, I got a lot of stuff to say! He loves to bark. When we woke up we didn't know it was Halloween and we were so essited to go trick or treating. We first did pictures before, and we did a game. There is, we hanged donuts on strings and we hang it on a hard thing thats round and so long and we put the ribbon around it and then we tried to eat the donuts without using our hands. That what game I'm talking about. Write that down..."Th-Th-That what guh-guh-game I'm talking about. Now you write your thing about Halloween."

Ok, Its my turn I guess. :) Chris had his blood work appointment in the late afternoon and then had to pick up our van from the tire place, since we got snow tires put on, and didn't get home until 6:00 but we still managed to have a fun Halloween party as a family. We ate chips and dip

Alec wants to interject: "and the most yummy thing I liked was..the dip and chips. does that rhyme?"

and root beer floats and another of my baking experiments. I tried crossing a biscuits and rolls to try and make something similar to those crescent-rolls-in-a-can you can buy at the store. It turned out close but not quite there. ANYWAYS, (sorry for the tangent) we played the donuts of the string game and then started Trick or Treating at 7:00. The kids only lasted 30 min because after 25 minutes we heard some soft booms in the distant (we're assuming fireworks?) and both boys got scared and tried to plug their ears and said they wanted to go home. Although we did have time for one last house -- our neighbors who have a dog named Max. When we got home we dumped out all the candy in one big pile and let the kids choose a couple to eat right then. Lucky kids. Then Chris and I put them to bed and watched a movie and ate more than 'a couple' candies. Luckier parents. I told Chris it'll be a sad day when the kids start to notice that we've eaten their candy and he said, "well that's when we'll just start teaching them about taxes."


Charlie was giving me such odd "smiles" I told them to pretend like they were laughing and I would take their picture:

Corn Maze and Pumpkin Carving

We went to a corn maze a few Saturdays ago. It was a first experience for me, that I can recall. Alec really enjoyed leading us through the maze. He really enjoys doing (and making) mazes on paper and the magnadoodle so he absolutely LOVED the concept of walking through a maze. They had a fun bouncy pillow thing too that the kids and I jumped on. Personally, that was a lot of fun for me. I think its been too long since I was on anything like that.

The kids and I also devoted a few days of playschool devoted to "P is for pumpkin." We traced the letter, drew pumpkins made pumpkin cookies, a pumpkin jelly roll, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin muffins, roasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkin Chex mix. Of course, we also carved pumpkins.

Alec did his ENTIRELY by himself. With those plastic kid-friendly carving utensils he was having a blast. It actually made the whole experience really great for me. I love seeing him do a fun art project all by himself. Charlie did really well too, although his attention span lasted only as far as taking the seeds out. He really liked the idea of roasting the seeds and eating them. Gwendolyn, like most babies her age, didn't like the goopy pumpkin innards. She didn't want to touch them and instead tried to contain the mess better by picking up stray pumpkin seeds and putting them in the bowl. She's an excellent cleaner-upper and is the first one to help me pick up. She also is the first one to make the messes in the first place.

The finished products! Pretty good! There still is one big pumpkin left to carve....maybe Chris and I will get to it tonight.

At the dinner table

Anyone else hearing this in their heads?

"Could somebody please remove these cutleries from my knees..."

Pre Halloween treat

"To infinity and beyond to the rescue!!!"

Charlie is 3

Our impish, smiley, whiny, adorable, independent, basket-ball-short-loving, chipped teeth Charlie turned 3 last week. The day started off with breakfast in bed since Alec has been wanting that ever since Fathers and Mother's days. "When is brother's day? When we will get breakfast in bed?" He had asked. And yes, I am talking about Alec, not Charlie. But everyone knows whatever Alec wants, Charlie wants, so breakfast in bed it was for our little Charles Leland. He woke up at 6, excited for his birthday and I had to tell him to go back to bed because it wasn't 7:00 yet. Amazingly he obeyed and a bit later I got up to put together eggs, toast and a sprinkled donut for him. And we all went in there to deliver it to him singing all the birthday songs. He beamed through out all of it and opened up a small present...or two...or three. Wait, I think I kept him to just two. Personally, I like to save most of the presents for later so there is still something to look forward to.

We went to the nearest pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins. It was an hour North of the city. I couldn't believe that was the nearest one... and in fact its the only one and was more of a Halloween Carnival with mazes, tractor rides, puppet shows, food arena, pumpkin painting, petting zoo, haunted house, bands playing etc. It was pretty cold and windy and expensive so we just got 3 of the smallest pumpkins, sat in on a short puppet show and rode the free tractor-pulling-a-big-trailer thing.

Then we had cake and ice cream at home as a family. He wanted a "rainbow cake with light buzz in a rocket." So we ended up having this:


Rainbow chip cake mix cake swirled with the usual Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate cake and a Duplo Buzz Lightyear standing on a rocket drawn on with frosting surrounded by rainbow sprinkles. I think it worked for him because he didn't complain. He usually eats just the frosting and ice cream and leaves the rest of the cake anyway.

He had said he wanted a party with his old EV friends so we did a little virtual party using gmail's video chat on Monday. It was a costume party and we played freeze dance and ate cake. It was fun to see our old friends again and Charlie loved the attention.

We've told him for a while now that he'll be too old to use pacifiers once he turned 3. He happily cut the tips off and threw them in the garbage. He's not complained or even asked for them once. Although he no longer naps and has the HARDEST time falling asleep now...it usually takes 20 minutes of crying. Poor kid, he has no idea how to fall asleep on his own. But I believe he'll learn pretty fast and I'll gladly take 3 years of almost drug-induced sleeping behavior for this adjustment period.
Our Charlie loves following Alec, waking up early, wearing underwear to bed, kicking balls, running "sootah fast", trains, Thomas, trucks, race cars, "Lightning an' Mcqueen", "Light Buzz", helping me in the kitchen (meaning liking bowls and eating dough), taking things from Gwen and giving her hugs, eating off of yellow dishes, drawing race cars on the magnadoodle and has recently really gotten into coloring. He brightens up our life and has the most kissable cheeks of any 3 year old. Happy Birthday Charlie!

Little ham

Gwen already loves to make people laugh. She'll tease me by telling me she's all done with a meal (when she's clearly not) and then laughs at me and whines when I start to take away her tray. Then she'll do it again as soon as I give it back to her. Today she put this crown on upside down and backwards by herself and the boys laughed and laughed so she kept doing it and strut around the house with it on. Silly girl.