Halloween in Bed

Well the boys are too sick to do Halloween this year, however I was able to coax David into donning his costume so that I could take some pictures while the sun was still shining.  In case you were wondering my bribe was lollipops :)  The boys are Saint George and the dragon.  And yes that dragon costume may look a little familiar.  All things considered I'm glad I didn't invest a lot of money in new costumes!  The only thing we bought was a $15 knight's weapon set for David which has already gotten a lot of play time.  The rest of his costume I made out of an old pillow case, one of Chris' red t-shirts and some twine to hold up his sheath!

Currently David is helping me keep a look out for trick-or-treaters and Henry is already in bed.  Since Halloween is a bust and I can't take the kids out in public for fear of spreading their disease, I'll be heading out to the All Saints Day vigil mass tonight and Chris will going in the morning.  So I guess the up side to our sickness is that we both get to do mass sans kids :)  

Happy Halloween!

Carlisle is Lovely This Time of Year.....

It's two days before Halloween and this is our house:

I'm not sure, but I think this is unseasonably cold even by Pennsylvania standards.  Our jack-o'lantern doesn't seem to be minding the weather though.......

 Well, instead of pouting, we decided to make the best of it!  Cold air is good for croupy coughs right?

Just Like Dad

Every time we go outside to play in the backyard we have to do a quick clean up.  This time Henry decided he wanted to help too, so he grabbed a shovel out of the sandbox and went to work!  I'm pretty sure he had no idea what he and dad were actually doing!  Don't worry, no babies actually came into contact with anything unsanitary during the taking of these pictures......

It's so sweet how the boys want to be just like their daddy!  And I know Chris can't wait until he can officially turn over this particular chore to the boys for real!

A Day at the Park Cuteness

You can just see Henry's little wheels turning.....how can I get past mom and take a quick swim with those ducks?  

David's New Twist on an Old Favorite

David literally spent three hours yesterday asking me to sing the Winnie the Pooh song simply to have the opportunity to interrupt me and sub in the word "poop" for "Pooh." He couldn't stop laughing. I thought we had at least two more years before the potty humor started. I don't know where this came from--he certainly doesn't hear poop jokes from me! Somehow he just knows that poop is hilarious. It must be an innate part of being a boy :)

Marbles are Not for Eating....

I saw this marble run at a used furniture store in North Carolina and thought the $20 price tag was a little steep.  Lucky for us, Grandma Reintjes in her infinite wisdom knew better!  Who doesn't love marbles?  Who doesn't love to watch marbles roll down a track at top speeds?  Who doesn't love that clicking noise they make as they bang into each other?  Not my boys, that's for sure!  I don't know what I was thinking, trying to leave the store without this thing!  After all it meets all of my dream toy criteria--it's made of wood, it's simple, and it doesn't beep, blink, whistle or make cat noises at me (oh you kitty keyboard how I despise your incessant meowing)!

This is David's favorite toy right now and the first thing I hear once Henry lays down for his morning nap is David asking to play marbles.  And the fun doesn't stop with just the marble run :)  David likes to sort the different colored marbles in muffin tins (I promise all I did was give him the muffin tin and he decided to color sort!).  This easily keeps him busy for an hour which is no small feat!  While he was occupied here I was able to get ready, clean the kitchen and the bathroom!

Of course like pretty much every activity we do, it always seems to end up as a wild game of "avalanche"....oh well.......

Henry loves the marble run too, and it is really cute to watch him focus all of his attention on getting the marbles into the top of the track and then stopping them halfway down.  Of course he requires a tad more supervision than David.......

If he would just stop trying to eat the marbles he might be able to play longer than fifteen minutes without losing his marble privileges......

Nuts are for Collecting and other Fall Happenings

We've been making a concerted effort to get outside every day.  This has involved a lot of running outside and splashing in puddles between bouts of torrential rain over the past week but now the weather has officially broken and we have beautiful fall days once again!

To celebrate I took the boys out to a trail about five minutes from the house that we are always driving by and it turned out to be wonderful--albeit a little closer to the interstate than I prefer on my nature excursions!  Despite the noise from the highway, we had a lot of fun!  David spent his time running around and collecting various nuts--or rather, pointing out the nuts he wanted me to pick up for him, as he did not want to dirty his hands.

Nature treasure collecting bucket, check.  Magnifying glass, check, Rice cake, you bet.  What more could you possibly need on a walk through the woods?  Maybe I should have brought something to transport my nature treasures in because David  absolutely would not allow anything resembling a pretty fall leaf to be put anywhere near his nut collection!

David's collection:  one and a half walnuts, several mostly intact acorns and a lot of unknown brown nuts that I cannot for the life of me identify.  Do they make a handbook for that?  

Aside from nature exploring we've also been keeping ourselves busy here with other activities.  Chris and I have been put in charge of creating a club for married law students--which is only slightly obnoxious in that when I tried to do this during Chris' first year of school I was told that there just wouldn't be enough interest and now that we've only got one year left and I've made my friends the old fashioned way (i.e. stalking women with fussy children in the foyer at mass) the powers that be finally think it's a good idea.  I'm not bitter about it though.... :)  We put together a pot luck lunch at our house for everyone to come and meet each other and I think everyone had a good time!  This was my contribution--and although it's not exactly a culinary masterpiece, I thought it looked too cute not to share.  David was really proud of making the cookies with me.  He's becoming quite the little baker and almost always gets all the ingredients into the mixing bowl now.  

And on a side note:  David eats carrots again, but only with gratuitous amounts of ranch dressing......