Trick-or-Treating and Snow

Well, now that it's almost Thanksgiving there doesn't seem like much point in posting these trick-or-treating pictures, but I will anyway just for posterity.  :)  The boys had such a blast this year!  We could barely keep up with J... he was almost running from house to house and having so much fun.  We started out at our friends' house down the street and then just hit a few houses while walking back to our house.  It was kind of windy and a little bit on the freezing side, but we had fun anyway. 

E did really great walking and holding his bucket all by himself.  He loved it.

 

This was Reid's set-up on the walk and I was totally jealous!  He was very toasty and comfy, but a little grumpy because it was close to bedtime.   

Then a few days after Halloween this happened...

Of course it's long gone by now and we haven't had much since then, but the boys were so excited to see it and had fun playing in it.  They stayed out for a while and then came in for some marshmallow cocoa.

I finally got snow tires on my car, so now I'm ready for more snow!  I hope we get lots more soon!

Pumpkin Carving

The Saturday before Halloween we took the boys to our local high school FFA's pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins to carve.  We were afraid that they might not have any pumpkins left, but when we got to the patch there were pumpkins as far as the eye could see!  The FFA kids had planted about 8 acres of pumpkins, but unfortunately most of them were a little rotten by this point.  We managed to find a few good ones, though, and the boys loved traipsing around through the dirt and weeds.

These aren't the pumpkins we went home with.  J and E picked up the first two pumpkins they saw and were satisfied!  We convinced them to keep looking, though.  :)

Emmett is very, very 2 right now.  He totally refuses to smile for pictures, especially when someone other than mom or dad is taking them.  We had family pictures taken the other day and Phil and I just laughed when we saw them... you can see E actually trying not to smile in most of them!

My attempt at a pic of me and Reid...  :)

I know this is far away, but I thought it was pretty with the hills in the background and all of the pumpkins.  And that's Phil pushing Reid in the wheelbarrow with our pumpkins.  :)

Our attempts at a pic of all three in the wheelbarrow...

Later that night we carved the pumpkins.  I had J choose the shapes for the face and help me draw them, but he wasn't a fan of pulling the innards out of the pumpkin.

He did help me cut a little bit, though.

And E had a blast coloring on our other pumpkin with a marker.  *Please look past our horribly ugly and messy back patio.  That's a project for next summer.*

Reid was enjoying dinner while we carved...

And then Daddy came out to help carve the other pumpkin...

When it got dark Phil lined up all of the carved pumpkins on the step and put candles in them.  It looked really neat from inside, but I forgot to take a picture.

Halloween Post #1 of 3

I realize I'm way behind on the Halloween post train, so here's my attempt to catch up.  I was going to do just one big post, but then noticed that I had way too many pictures.  So I'm breaking our 2011 Halloween experience up into three posts.  Things were not that crazy exciting or anything... I just took a lot of pictures!

First off, a few weeks back we did our annual family day trick-or-treating at the base.  The big boys wanted to be pirates this year... more specifically, they wanted to be Jake from the Disney show "Jake and the Neverland Pirates."  I had bought J a cool pirate costume from Costco a while back, but then when he kept saying he wanted to be Jake I examined the costume and realized that it really looked nothing like what Jake wears.  So then I started searching the internet and found these costumes for $7 on Amazon that look more similar (with the bandana instead of a hat) to Jake.  Plus, they slip on really easily over clothes and I thought the boys might like to dress up in them on days other than Halloween (which they do).  And they were so cheap!  But then I went and blew what I saved on the big boys' costumes on a parrot outfit for Reid.  Totally worth it, though.  :)

I think their favorite part of the costume was their "gold doubloons" necklaces.  I like saying "gold doubloons."

Reid's headpiece was a little snug... here he was chewing on the part by his mouth.  I took a pic and then we un-velcroed it.

We had two grumpy little pirates that day because they were both getting over being sick for a week.  Then Mommy got sick the next day.  We all three had the same thing and it was awful.  I think it's gone now, thankfully.

They picked the two smallest pumpkins in the patch!

Here's Emmett showing off his "Boo!" stamp... 

We didn't stay too long this year since the boys were grumpy.  We left and went to lunch at Subway.

 

Reid loves all kinds of crinkly paper....

Then Jackson got to ride home with Daddy in the Jeep!  He was so excited!  Phil recently painted his Jeep himself.  It looks awesome and I am really proud of him!  It used to be a really faded and splotchy red and now it's this gorgeous dark orange.  He researched a ton about how to do it properly and really took his time and did it perfectly.  We are all about DIY around here lately. 

Then when we got home the boys spent some time checking out their loot.  And then they went down for naps and Mommy stole all of the good chocolate stuff out of their buckets.  I will do that until they're old enough to notice and I won't feel bad about it!  :)

 

I love Emmett's face here... "What the heck is this?!?  This isn't candy!" 

 

DOTS... yucko.  You can keep that one, E!  :)

Big Boys

Here are just a few random pictures of the big boys from a few weeks ago.  First, eating outside together on a Subway dinner night when Daddy was TDY...

Here Emmett is saying "cheese"...

I peeked outside to check on them one evening and saw this happening...

Then Phil gave it the green light so I just let it go and took pictures.  :)  I can't believe these pictures were taken just a few weeks ago.  It is really chilly already.  Ugh. 

We were laughing at Emmett's apple-eating technique at dinner the other night...

Some mid-dinner brotherly love...

And these slippers.  J and E are obsessed with them.  My sister gave them to the boys last Christmas and Emmett liked them okay, but Jackson pretty much wanted nothing to do with them.  This year they can't get enough.  And it was icing on the cake when Daddy pulled out his fun slippers, too.  Phil has had those longer than we've known each other.  :)

 

I just love these next three pictures!

 

Emmett calls them his "brown bear slippers" and Phil and I love how he says those words.  Here's a little video of us talking about them...

And then another of the boys saying their ABCs together and beating on the couch :) ...

Love them so much!!