Trick-or-Treating

On Halloween I took the boys out trick-or-treating with my friend Natalee while Ben stayed home to pass candy out to the other neighborhood kids. It was fun to trick-or-treat around a neighborhood this year (last year was a total flop around the apartments, remember?). Someone had told me I should dress up like a tree so that Sam could be a monkey-in-a-tree. I thought it was an awesome idea so Natalee helped me tape leaves all over myself. The costume only lasted for 3 houses. At that point, I realized that a) nobody got it (I took an informal poll and was 0 for 3) and b) it was definitely not puffy-hooded-vest weather so I was quite uncomfortable. On our way out of the cul-de-sac I ran back home to ditch the costume. We trick-or-treated on a couple of streets and then Noah announced, "Okay, that's enough candy." So we came home and ate some pumpkin pie. Yum, yum.

Monkey in a tree (get it??)

Family picture (Ben, again, dressed as himself)
Sam ready to ditch his costume
The boys examining their spoils
Our friends, the Stephens trick-or-treating at our house

Pumpkin Carving

Noah and I carved our first pumpkin together (I use the term "together" very loosely as I did 100% of the work while Noah stood by the table and looked on; he wasn't even interested when I offered to let him dig the insides out with his hands). We named him Bob. Noah felt it was important to give Bob his own cowboy hat.




I learned a couple of important lessons about pumpkins this year.

1) Jack o' lanterns should be thrown away the morning of November 1st. If you wait 5 days, it will have become d-i-s-g-u-s-t-i-n-g. It will be soft and mushy and smelly and the inside will be covered with unidentifiable growth (visible through the carved out face because there was no way I was going to take the top off to investigate any further). Oh, and gnats will be flying all around it.

2) Mini pumpkins are cute but one is best off decorating one's mantle with fake pumpkins from Hobby Lobby. Otherwise, one risks having a real mini pumpkin rot and explode, thus staining the mantle and requiring a new paint job.

Live and learn.

Halloween Party

This is quite late, I realize, but I've decided that today will be blog-catch-up day (it's also doubling as laundry day). First up is Halloween. On the Saturday before, we went to a trunk-or-treat party at church. I went as a witch and my main job was decorating our trunk and passing out candy.


I got a little help from Noah toward the end of the night.

As you can see, Noah went as cowboy Woody. He was so so so adorable in his costume. Ever since I gave him his cowboy boots (I'd been hiding them in the closet for the last couple of weeks), he's been wearing them everywhere.


Sam went as a monkey. Such a little cute-stuff!


Ben (who went as himself) took the boys around the parking lot while I passed out candy at the car. Both boys had so much fun. Sam mostly just liked to hang onto his bucket and take candy in and out. Although, when we got home we saw that he had eaten a mini tootsie roll - without unwrapping it first. Such a little monkey.


Here are a couple of my favorite costumes from the night. My friend Suzy, who is 7 months pregnant, dressed her fetus and herself up as a bun-in-the-oven.

My friend Jenn dressed up as the Wicked Witch of the West. Her baby was one of the flying monkeys (her daughters were Glinda and Dorothy).

Eating Well

Okay, so let me list what I've eaten so far today and you can tell me if I'm being sufficiently healthy:

1. One large glass of Carnation Instant Breakfast
2. One can of coke
3. One Nature Valley sweet & salty nut granola bar (the "Nature Valley" brand allows me to feel okay about it, but I suspect that's deceptive... the "dipped in peanut butter coating" description on the box and the mention of 6 separate sugars/syrups in the ingredients are probably more telling about its health factor than the name of the brand)
4. One order of (large) french fries
5. 2 of my kids' chicken nuggets
6. One Dr. Pepper
7. One Snickers bar

Plus, Ben and I are going to a Mexican restaurant tonight which is rumored to have this amazing dessert so I'm not holding out hope for a healthy turnaround at this point. Is that list ridiculous or what?? I'm a little embarrassed about it, but I figured that it would probably make somebody (or, everybody) feel good about themselves for the superior health decisions they are making. So really, this post is kind of like my good deed for the day. I may not have the epitome of a healthy diet, but darn it, I'm a good friend.

Pumpkin Patch, Take Two

Since Ben couldn't join us for our first pumpkin patch adventure, we decided to hit up another one the next weekend. We went to Dewberry Farms this past Saturday (and thank goodness we got there early - it was hot by the time we left at noon!) and had fun roaming around the farm, riding on the tracker-pulled train through the corn (Sam actually hated that, the little party pooper), seeing a mechanical chicken show and playing on slides and bouncers. Here are the pics (and a couple of super short videos) of our trip.

Boys in a corn cob wagon

Daddy and sons
Cute little Peanut
Brothers hanging out on some hay
Cute little Woody (and his hat, of course)
Peanut and some pumpkins

Mama and the boys (don't I look so at home on a tractor?)

Noah's beloved bouncer-thing

Laughing hysterically after falling down

Sam at the toddler playground area

And here are a couple of videos of us going down the roller slide, which was a big hit! Well, it was a big hit with Noah. Sam didn't seem to care one way or the other. Ben and I didn't think the pain of the ride was worth the thrill (see video below for further comment on that!).

It has since occurred to me that, despite having visited 2 pumpkin patches this year, we still have not bought any pumpkins (except for the little ones I've decorated the house with). What's that all about? I'll tell you what that's about. It's about playing at the pumpkin patch until we see the beginnings of a meltdown and then high-tailing it out of there before one actually occurs. I guess next year we'll have to pick our pumpkins out first before we get too distracted.

Pumpkin Patch

We've been able to go to two pumpkin patches so far this fall (by the way, it's finally cooling off a little here and I LOVE it!!). A couple of weekends ago my friend Courntey and I took our kids out to a small pumpkin patch. It was waaaay out there, and our directions were totally off so what should have been a 45 minute drive ended up taking us 2 hours!! Thankfully Courtney's a fun friend so we still had a good time just chatting and being in the car (and thank heavens for DVD players in cars). Here are some pictures from that trip:

Moonwalk (Noah's favorite part of the day)

Noah fishing for pumpkins

Hayride

Courtney and her daughter Greta

Basking in the sun on the hayride

Sam stealing my glasses (rascal)

Kisses from my boy

(I wasn't able to get him to sit still for a picture, but he would for kisses! Hopefully he'll always take time out to give kisses to his mama, cause I love it!)

First Steps!!!

Okay, okay, so I've been a really crappy blogger lately. I guess I was in a blogging funk. Plus, I haven't been feeling too great lately so there's my excuse. But fun things actually have been happening over here despite all that, including... Sam's first steps!! WHICH, I just so happened to catch on video!! How lucky was that? Unfortunately, I did not realize at the time that you can't turn the video around later if you hold the camera vertically while shooting the video. So you'll all have to turn your heads to see the unbelievable cuteness (I promise, it's worth it!).



By the way, just so you know, I was totally aware of the 3 choking hazards that Sam had in his hands/mouth while taking his first steps. I'm a good mom, I promise.

(P.S. Thanks, Melissa and Terica for the kick in the pants to get my blog on. More to come, I promise!)

Perching Peanut

Lately, Sam has become very fond of climbing up onto various places and just sitting there, very proud of himself. Some of his favorite perching spots are:

The sofa (it's a sectional, and he loves to climb up and then crawl around both sides of it before settling into a spot):

The reading chair (here he is intently watching a show):



His activity table (he took the top off of it before climbing up):




His Sam chair:

Meet Woody

Lately, Noah wears his cowboy hat everywhere. EVERYWHERE. (It's become so normal now that I didn't even really notice it in the pictures I posted below until I received a few comments on that hat!). Also, he insists that we call him Woody. If anyone dares to call him Noah (or Beeju, his nickname) he'll say, "Hey! I'm not Noah, I'm Woody!" Then he will wait until you call him Woody before he will respond. It's hilarious. One of the bag boys at the grocery store today remembered us from our last trip (I go to the grocery store a lot... I'm apparantly incapable of planning meals very far in advance, or of remembering everything I need on any given shopping trip) and, without prompting, said, "Hey, Woody!" Noah was floored. I now love that bag boy.

This probably goes without saying, but Noah will be dressing up as Woody for Halloween. Although, don't suggest that he be a cowboy like Woody. If you do, he will respond with, "Hey, he's not a cow-Woody! He's just a Woody!"

Update: Just to emphasize how serious Noah is about his new identity, he just came into the office and saw my new posts on the screen. He wanted to look at the pictures and when I asked, "Who's that," in every picture of himself he said, "Woody!" Should I be concerned that in 15 years all of Noah's friends will be calling him Woody?

Visit From My Mama

The week before last, my mom came to visit. I love when my mom comes. It was a short four days, but we had such a great time with her. The timing worked out well since it overlapped with a work trip Ben had in Chicago. It was a bummer that my mom and Ben only got to see each other one night, but it was really great for me to have some company while hubby was out of town (and it made me a little less jealous that he got to go to Chi-town).

Anyway, this was the first time that my mom has been to visit since I moved to Houston so it was really fun to show her where I live and the places I go on a regular basis. Also, while my mom was here we took the kids to a puppet show, went to the beautiful Hermann Park, went shopping and out to dinner (without the kids), and played a lot of Skip-Bo. A perfect weekend, if you ask me!

Here are some pictures.

Watching the puppet show at the Sugar Land Town Square

Train ride through Hermann Park

Walking around the lake

Tunnels at the playground

Noah and his Grammie